Windows 10’s free, guaranteed security updates stop in October 2025, less than a year from now. Windows 10 users with supported PCs have been offered the Windows 11 upgrade plenty of times before. But now Microsoft is apparently making a fresh push to get users to upgrade, sending them full-screen reminders recommending they buy new computers.
↫ Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica
That deadline sure feels like it’s breathing down Microsoft’s neck. Most Windows users are still using Windows 10, and all of those hundreds of millions (billions?) of computers will become unsupported less than a year from now, which is going to be a major headache for Microsoft once the unaddressed security issues start piling up. CrowdStrike is fresh in Microsoft’s minds, and the company made a ton of promises about changing its security culture and implementing new features and best practices to stop it from ever happening again. That’s going to be some very tough promises to keep when the majority of Windows users are no longer getting any support.
The obvious solution here is to accept the fact that if people haven’t upgraded to Windows 11 by now, they’re not going to until forced to do so because their computer breaks or becomes too slow and Windows 11 comes preinstalled on their new computer. No amount of annoying fullscreen ads interrupting people’s work or pleasure are going to get people to buy a new PC just for some halfbaked “AI” nonsense or whatever – in fact, it might just put even more people off from upgrading in the first place.
Microsoft needs to face the music and simply extend the end-of-support deadline for Windows 10. Not doing so is massively irresponsible to a level rarely seen from big tech, and if they refuse to do so I strongly believe authorities should get involved and force the company to extend the deadline. You simply cannot leave this many users with insecure, non-maintained operating systems that they rely on every day to get their work done.
> Not doing so is massively irresponsible to a level rarely seen from big tech
By now, that level is par for the course.
My computer, Ryzen 5, can’t be upgraded to Windows 11. I remember back in 2012/2013, when Microsoft told us that Windows 10 would be the final version, an eternal “rolling release”. And here we are again, in a big upgrade mess only competing with Android upgrade. Still have a computer running under Windows XP (or Windows 2000) and doing just fine (not connected to the Internet though).
Kochise,
Feature-wise, I don’t think many people really care about having microsoft’s latest and greatest…there’s hardly a selling point. Unfortunately though microsoft have been effective at making software incompatible by introducing new run time libraries that break backwards compatibility.
I support software that’s been around since win2k and should still ostensibly be compatible with it (even if not officially)…But because the company keeps upgrading visual studio & dependencies, the software, which doesn’t depend on anything new, has become backwards incompatible with all the operating systems over the years: win2k, winxp, win7, win 8…. Nothing is source incompatible, but microsoft has programed the new standard libraries to break on those older operating systems 🙁
Personally I would have stuck with older runtime to retain compatibility, but it goes against the company policy, which is to move in lockstep with microsoft.
And so this is how my windows 7 computer became obsolete…it wasn’t lacking features I wanted from windows 8/10, but an increasing amount of software was becoming incompatible as developers recompiled it. 🙁
Indeed, the new Visual Studio compilers changes many definitions that makes old code barely compilable without changes. I just stick to GCC (with its own tweaks) or LCC (Pelles C). So that I can compile from Windows 2000 to Windows 10/11 without a glitch.
Are you sure Ryzen 5 isn’t supported? I got a Ryzen 5 3600 from 2019 and it is?
This list will tell you:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-amd-processors
Ryzen 5 2500U (Lenovo Ideapad 330-15ARR), not supported, no TPM, only 20 GB RAM maximum (4 GB soldered and 16 GB SODIMM). Not going to try Windows 11 just for the sake of it, for what I do with my computer Windows 7 was way enough, even XP is perfect (coding, office and browsing, rarely gaming).
Ah well, I am in the same boat with my hardware. I recently was forced to upgrade to Windows 11 on my work laptop and it was just slower for no reason at all for no gain (I like the looks slightly more but the UI is worse than 10). So I know 11 brings no benefits.
The Ryzen 3600 is a Windows 10 desktop that is used for gaming only but Steam handles 95 percent of my games on Linux. I am pretty sure I will be a Windows free household when eventually Steam stops supporting Windows 10.
If I recall correctly, and I might not, I think MS promised at the time (or maybe just made it look like they did – IANAL) that Windows 10 is the last version of windows, and that users would not need to upgrade to a new version again.
I’m pretty sure their lawyers know what they can get away with, and I guess they might with this one, but indeed I also think they can’t close their eyes to the fact that most Windows users are still on Windows 10.
This was a misunderstanding that got blown way out of proportion. What happened was a Microsoft developer said they were currently working on the last version of Windows where he meant they were working on the “latest” version. This was also just a random employee, it was not a company statement. Microsoft never once said that there would be no future versions.
So may Microsoft stories have been this recently.
Features or discussions in the canary branches or just a Dev not choosing his words very well is then reported and repeated as if it’s true.
Pure FUD that is Very easy to check the validity of.
I am one of the users who still use Windows 10 as main desktop OS.
Until it gets officially EOLed, I have no particular incentive in upgrading or switching to a different OS.
While this opinion may not be popular here, my experience with it is not at all bad. It is stable, it does what I need it to, and mostly stays out of my way except for the occasional reboot to install some security update.
In the many years I have used computers for leisure and work, I have also used a great many OSes, from DOS/Windows 3 to windows 95, at which point I switched to Linux (also as a developer) and stayed there until macs became sexy (I still remember the ‘The power of UNIX. The simplicity of Mac.’ ads, and back at the time, they were true).
After moving away from my last mac, which was a 2011 macbook pro (I like my hardware to be serviceable by myself), I tried Windows 10 expecting to hate it, and instead ended up staying there until now.
Mind that my main workstation uses a hypervisor OS nowadays, with Windows 10 being one of the many VMs running within (with passed-through access to GPU, NVME and USB contr0llers).
Sadly I don’t see any on my openSuSE Tumbleweed gaming PC. Left out of the “fun” again…
They kind of did, there will be ESUs for Windows 10 until October 2028, but they locked it behind a paywall that you aren’t even allowed to buy into as an individual. Individuals can buy ESU for Windows 10 only until October 2026.
And so started the great sailing of the high seas, in search for ESU…
That’s part of a bigger question: How long are OS vendors obligated to provide security patches? And should the timer start from the first day the OS was released, or from the last day the OS was pre-installed on a device?
I am asking because Microsoft provides a reasonable 10 years of support for Windows, but it counts from the day the OS was released, so there are people who bought Windows 10 computers in 2016 and 2017 and aren’t going to get 10 years of support for Windows 10 (and aren’t eligible for WIndows 11 either). Same for people who bought Windows XP netbooks during the Vista era and also got less than 10 years of support.
What some hypothetical piece of legislation could do is impose a minimum OS support period for every device, with the timer starting from the last day the device was shipped to retail shops. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I guarantee no such legislation will be forthcoming. I actually suspect most of the European regulations on software and other US exports will be withdrawn in the future as part of NATO modernization.
Meh,
I experienced that fullscreen ad garbage yesterday. I just hit Esc.
That’s not how I want to live personally.
I’ve been installing 0patch on customers Windows 10 PCs are still running well but don’t qualify for Windows 11. With five more years of critical updates they’re ready for the unnecessary end of support from Microsoft.
The problem with 0patch is that they patch the code in-memory, so I would never feel comfortable using it. Sure, if you want security above all else, that’s good, but if you want reliability above all else, not so much.
I am also looking to extend the life of Windows 10 for as long as possible. I have some Nvidia 3D Vision laptops that I want to maintain (note: the Kepler architecture was the last architecture that supported Nvidia 3D Vision on the mobile variants, and of course the laptops have period-matching 4th-gen Core i7 CPUs, and Nvidia 3D Vision isn’t officially supported on Windows 11 – although reported to work) so I want to stay with Windows 10 before taking the leap of faith to Windows 11. But having an “agent” patch OS code in-memory? Nope.
My only problem with this timeline is the “on supported hardware” requirement.
I have users on relatively new hardware that has build and purchase dates well after Win 11 was launched, hardware that arrived with Win 10 Pro pre-installed and cannot be upgraded to Win 11, Most are at least i5 and some are even relatively expensive i7 CAD workstations. This is why I see the “on supported hardware” requirement as being too arbitrary.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it as if Microsoft would really drop support for Windows 10 then that would likely be the beginning of the end of Windows. Even Microsoft is not that stupid. But yeah, Windows 10 users get prepared to a lot of adds in therms of Copilot thingy and buy a new PC pamphlets for years to come.
I checked the ‘desktop’ versions market share of Windows (so 100% is all Windows machines) by statcounter.
Amazing that Windows 10 (60.95%) market share is still almost 2x as large as Windows 11 (35.58%).
Windows 10 came from 69.31% in a year. So it’s really, really slow progress.