I switched my desktop to mint a few weeks ago. Kept win10 on a separate drive, but I haven’t booted it since.
Just get Linux and run a Virtual machine if you want to Game on PC
I use Linux for everything, including gaming, but I have a VM with win11 for when I need ads in my os.
I stayed with XP until 7. I stayed with 7 until 10. I’ll probably stay with 10 until the next Windows. Assuming it actually is decent again, and not just even shittier than 11.
I only went to 11 for better HDR support. I’d definitely still be on 10.
I’m not going to Windows 11 or Linux. I found a copy of Windows 10 LTSC with support til 2027+.
Any advice for those of us wanting the same?
IIRC, you can download the .iso from Microsoft themselves, then use a keygen program to create an auto-renewing key. WindowsKMS, I think it was?
massgrave.dev has .isos and instructions
You need the enterprise edition? What about pro? I would rather switch to Steam OS if it was out.
The Enterprise LTSC versions will be supported for a few more years, regular support for Pro is ending in October same as Home. Some of the worst stuff like Co-Pilot hasn’t made it in to LTSC (yet).
I had to install Win 11 on my work computer and it is still total dogshit. One example - The search from the Start menu never works so you have to pin every app to start or go through the whole app list to find the one you want. Its been like this for a year at least. Things, like my speakers, just randomly stop working and I have to restart to get them to work again.
Not that you should have to, but there are a lot of ways to fix the most annoying issues. Usually reg edits, better drivers and Powershell scripts.
Openshell makes start at least usable: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
Am going through this on our corp PCs.
Lol, I remember using this to fix Win 8 before they added the start menu button back. I might have to set it up again.
Does the job & will let you pare down the menu to the essentials, move start position etc. Can also be deployed and configured by GPO, which has been a godsend.
For the issue that you can no longer tell Windows to show all icons in the system tray, you can manually drag them out of the overflow into the visible part - or slap this into a powershell script and have it run at logon to do so automatically:
$Name = 'IsPromoted' $Value = '1' Get-ChildItem -path $RegistryPath -Recurse | ForEach-Object {New-ItemProperty -Path $_.PSPath -Name $Name -Value $Value -PropertyType DWORD -Force }For the right-click menu being shit, hold shift before clicking, or put this one-liner into an adminstrative command prompt for a longer term fix. Restart explorer or the PC as a whole to apply afterwards:
reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /veSnappy Driver Origin is great for obtaining up to date drivers. I’ve also had good luck pasting the hardware ID into search with
site:driveridentifier.comto snag better drivers. IDs can be grabbed from device manager, under the details tab for the device properties. Example.
The context menu! The fucking context menu!
The default context menu is So godawful, luckily you can get the old menu back with some mod applications
Not on my company laptop sadly.
Find out what IT likes and bribe them for a little GPO adjustment…
I like the optimism of Linux users thinking there will be a massive flood towards their favourite Linux distro.
When the obvious path the majority of gamers will take is just … not upgrade anything and stay on an unsecure OS until their next major PC upgrade.
Most users don’t care about security as long as it allows them to do with their computer what they want.
If Microsoft didn’t push people to a new version, you know too many would still be rocking Windows 8.
Windows had to force updates because so many people just didn’t update
Anyone that is on 10 still isn’t going to go to Linux
Anyone that is on 10 still isn’t going to go to Linux
Eh, there’s a few of us. I intend to at least give Linux a solid try before I swap to Win11.
My thoughts are that at that point I realistically have to swap anyways. It’s just a question of whether I’m going to Win11- which I’ll have to customize to my preferences and generally figure out, or Linux- which I’ll have to customize to my preferences and generally figure out.
I’m on the tech savvy side of things, and I still find Linux intimidating so I don’t think this will be a mass migration to Linux or anything.
I’ve considered Linux a couple times in the past, but generally stayed away because my PC is primarily used for gaming which didn’t have the best support then. Things are kinda different now- support is generally better.
I’m still on 10. I’m waffling between installing bazzite on my laptop, building a new computer and installing bazzite, or just using my steam deck as a daily driver. But none of the options include using windows.
When I was young and dealing with Win 98 and XP before all the service packs updates had like 10% chance of bricking the OS and would give me anxiety so I’d avoid them. Even with Windows 7 had an update that made explorer.exe refuse to start. It hasn’t happened in many years, maybe they got their shit together but I still have anxiety about updates even though I’m savvy enough to fix issues now. Just because I can doesn’t mean I wanna.
I dual boot and still use Windows 10. And everything I’ve seen from Windows 11 just seems like trash to me. My mother got a new laptop about a year ago and I came along to help her set it up. With her previous laptop, I opted to not do the free update to Windows 10 because people were complaining about it at the time (and I was still on Windows 7), so she ended up stuck with Windows 8.1 for years. So this time I did opt for the free update to Windows 11 and it feels like a huge mistake so far.
Her machine is now slow and struggles to get things up and running. And every single fucking time she tries to use it, it decides to run virus scans and download and install updates all at the same time. And these updates often seem to take an entire day. The last update took two days where she could barely do anything on her laptop because it was slowing things up so much.
And that all makes the frustration add up when you come across the other fucking stupid things they’ve done. So now when you right click on the desktop there’s a few seconds where Windows needs to get its shit together to show you the new useless menu that’s been slapped on top of the old useful menu. Then you need to click ‘show more options’ for the actual useful menu. Then another few seconds for Windows to get its shit together to load that menu.
And I don’t want to load a bunch of stuff like classic shell or winaero tweaker because she’s old and just wants to play hidden object games and solitaire. So I’m going to have to come running every time something happens that she doesn’t understand. So I prefer leaving it vanilla.
But fuck Windows 11. It’s absolute fucking garbage based on my experience so far. I was going to hold out for the inevitable Windows 12 because Microsoft seem to love using their paying customers as beta testers with every second OS they release but now I’m not so sure. Hoping there will be some sort of hack to keep enterprise updates coming or something.
Still on 10 here, turned off the TPM chip, got kubuntu on a second drive, just hoping proton can get the other 70% of my vr library to recognise before EoL
You mean 7, right? Most people skipped 8, and that’s why Microsoft made the update to 10 free.
I know someone that is deathly afraid of tracking by Microsoft to upgrade their pc from Windows 8. They won’t spend the time to learn linux, as they use a proprietary app specific to windows for what they use. I point out Win8 has the same kind of data collection and they dismiss it with a head-in-the-sand response.
No they’d still be running XP if they could.
I know i would, lol! I def fit the type being described. I just jumped over to Linux after having a hard drive crash necessitating the installation of a new OS. I was just gonna go with windows 10 again but it was giving me fits trying to install it for some reason. Starting to wonder if i had a bad PC and not a bad hard drive, i decided to make a bootable usb stick with Mint using an old laptop. Eventually i got it to boot up my PC and i never looked back. Took a little while to get used to the new system but so much of it works the same way as Windows that i had little trouble bridging any gaps. I don’t do PC gaming though, so i probably haven’t run into the problems that i imagine are preventing others from making the leap. I guess I wouldn’t bother going back now even if I could, now that I’m talking about it…I’m very happy with Mint.
Yeah, I stayed on xp until I got a new pc during 7, then I stayed on 7 until I got a new pc during 10. I’ll probably stay on 10 until whatever is after 11 comes out, even though I know better, because I just don’t care enough.
Just like skipping Vista was the way to go. We need to skip Win11.
If Microsoft didn’t push people to a new version, you know too many would still be rocking Windows 8.
You mean Windows 7
You mean Windows XP.
Yea, as someone who games on linux (ArchBTW), I don’t know if its really there yet for mass adoption, I was helping a younger sibling troubleshoot their dying PC and they even suggested I install Linux on it for them. With a fresh Linux Mint iso on my Ventoy USB, the voices raged at me to convert another penguin. But sadly I knew, deep down, they are not ready to deal with the issues if something goes wrong, a software has no Linux support, or if they ever want to mod their games.
Those kinds of people probably wouldn’t be able to deal with issues in Windows either. Just teach them how to install the OS and start firefox. If it completely breaks at some point tell them to install the OS again.
M$ ended win7 support in January 14, 2020. Steam did not end win7 support until January 1 2024. M$ ending support for their OS does not mean Steam will do so anytime soon. Considering how small number of their users has updated, there’s a good chance Steam will keep supporting win10 for many more years. By that time I know I will no longer be using Windows.
There’s a decent chance M$ continues supporting Win10 after “End of Life,” just like [ checks notes ] every single “mandatory” update they’ve ever attempted.
You are not wrong here. However, this is a double edged sword. By running windows 10 after a good while (let’s say, after 1 year of eol) you are risking for malware that is going to be non patched on windows 10. Of course, if you use the PC mostly for gaming and get stuff mostly from the usual places, I really doubt you get anything. If you work with documents however with macros and stuff, or you might have questionable internet hygiene or foreign external devices like usb on a frequent basis, do not get close to an out of date system
Yep, that was the only reason I finally pulled the trigger. What makes me laugh is it wasn’t even about windows, it was because of fucking CHROME.
And even then, the only reason Steam ended support for Windows 7 was because it’s an Electron (Chromium) application. They decided to upgrade their version of Electron, probably to take advantage of newer security fixes in Chromium, which forced them to drop Win7 support because Chromium already had ended support for it.
The other half is running linux, right?
Right?
Every single edition of Windows introduces new forms of bloat and new ways for MS to overreach and attempt to play corporate nanny over a user’s system; why the fuck would anyone willingly upgrade Windows when they have the chance not to?
IF steam OS is ready for wide release by then, you’ll see massive adoption.
Microsoft is so powerful they’ll be able to force many games to only work on Windows
Still plenty of other games to play. I’d be happy to not give them any money.
I mean, they haven’t been able to do that so far. Not even close.
Linux is already the superior OS for gaming and has been for a while. Windows represents a consistently degraded experience.
We’re entering the robber barron era, get ready for them to play hardball if their monopoly is threatened
How could they do it though? For already released games there is nothing they can do. Even future games they don’t have direct control over most as they don’t own the games. Banning steam from Windows and require using the Windows store perhaps? I think that is basically Windows in S mode.
Diablo V: Exclusively with Gamepass Ultimate - only on Windows
Then why haven’t they?
Do you think 24 months is a long enough time to be confident about how a company will behave over the next decade?
Especially wheb Moore’s Law is dead and they need to take ever more extreme measures to make those numbers go up.
Why would Moore’s law matter here for an operating system? Also both are far older than 24 months.
Microsoft is a tech company, so if tech has hit a way they’re going to have to find new ways of monetization to keep the numbers going up
Microsoft is so incompetent that they’re buying IPs and doing fuckall with them.
They havent even done that to their own games
I know some people who use linux exclusively for the better performance it has when playing modded minecraft
I was so surprised when I was preparing for the battle of installing it on my kids’ computer and found out the answer was … dl the linux version from the minecraft website.
You could also install one of the third party launchers( as flatpacks or from their website) to easily download mods
Thanks, I’ll check that out.
Prism launcher and ATlauncher are 2 good options
For prism launcher, it may be required to manually choose which version of java to use
I use Linux and windows. Windows is so much simpler for 99% of ppl that grew up with it.
I love your optimism. But if even a single digit percentage of them migrates to Linux, that would be mind boggling.
I’ve been meaning to get a Linux VM spun up for testing games. I gather that I’ll have some issues (i.e. blockers) with multi-player games and cheat-prevention, but I’d just as soon play single player games anyway.
I’ve been a Linux/Unix admin for 25+ years so I’ve no excuse other than convenience. But I’m done.
I’d recommend the other way around; Windows in a VM for the vew games that don’t work on Linux.
Kernel anti-cheats won’t (shouldn’t) work in a a VM
Now no one should have those but if someone was smart enough to know that then they would be on Linux already
Wait, really? I only knew VM-detection from malw… oh.
I’m sure you know this already, but for anyone who doesn’t: If you want to know if a specific game will work under Linux, Proton DB is your friend!
Thanks for posting this, I didn’t realise how many of my most played games have issues, or are unplayable, according to Proton DB. I forgot that it was effectively impossible to play a huge number of multiplayer games with anticheat/whatever stuff.
Again though, appreciate it!
That’s really unfortunate, but yeah, better to know beforehand.
The really painful part about this is it doesn’t need to be this way. A lot of popular anti cheat software supports Linux, but the game devs just don’t enable it. GTA is one example of these. It’s allegedly just a checkbox that Rockstar won’t check.
Out of curiosity, what games are you looking at?
R6 Siege, Apex Legends, PUBG, Insurgency Sandstorm (which seems to be an off/on thing from the descriptions.)
Honestly I migrated to bazzite about a month ago and my entire library has just… worked. It was shockingly easy. I haven’t changed anything from defaults at all.
Only reason my new rig has windows is for some specific peripherals that just dont seem to have good solutions for linux (logitech g600 MMO mouse, and an NZXT kraken cpu cooler display). The mouse gets completely jacked up and has all the side buttons rebound to numpad by just using it in my experience. Had to reload the mouse firmware on windows to restore basic functionality.
The user experience was honestly vastly superior on Fedora KDE, and my next GPU will be AMD so i can give it another shot on linux
Windows has a pattern. Every other release blows. Just wait til 12
hmm not sure about that, if we see how everythings change, AI, Ads, and stealing data…
There seems to be an understanding that the average user is going to switch from windows 10 at EOL. I’m quite confident most personal devices will run it until it stops working flat out. Your average PC user has no concern about security vulnerabilities until they’re exploited in a way that actually breaks the functionality of the thing.
A migration to to Linux will be very delayed. Like months or years. In lots of cases probably long enough that people will be shopping for new hardware anyways by the time they have to decide on a new OS.
Buddy, some of them still use windows 7😅
really? how can i use win 7 right now?, are there any issues using win 7 rn?
Well as long as you don’t connect to the internet
I still use it on my living room PC to this day. No issues so far (steam still works fine as well).
Just like anything make sure you have backups and watch your accounts.
I’m certain there would be a pile of unpatched vulnerabilities with windows 7.
I would not recommend it.
oh okay, make sense… linux then… thank you sir
pardon my english
8.1 was slightly better
Gross
They’re right though. 8.1 had the best of both 7 and 10, with none of the bloat. Only reason why I stopped using it was because I was forced to because literally no one supported it. Which is a damn shame cause it was considerably better than 7. Just got a bad rep because of 8.0.
Naw.
Mostly I just hate the start screen :P
