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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Hot take from an IT guy: save your important data, make a plain vanilla W11 boot USB (nothing fancy, no Rufus tricks), wipe your hard drive to zeroes, and install W11 like normal. I've reimaged a ton of older PCs and literally never seen it not work. My 10 year old Optiplex, supposedly ineligible for W11, runs W11 just fine.
Microsoft might someday break it, sure. That's not new. Microsoft products were always, in practice, available to us at Microsoft's pleasure. This is the same company that allows massgrave to exist on github because they'd rather we pirate MS Office than allow LibreOffice any oxygen. We'll probably be fine.
Also IT guy. Hot take indeed. I've done this but won't support this. I will almost guarantee some update will break shit at the most inconvenient time humanly possible and the people you've done this for will need your help, all at the same time.
I'm using this opportunity to expand Linux market share.
Most people only use a browser these days. People that ask me about Windows 10 eol get pushed towards Linux. There is really no need to spend money to replace a machine mainly used to browse the web.
Only if they need stuff that won't work on Linux or they really really want Windows to use Chrome or Firefox on for some reason I'll recommend complying with Microsoft's hubris.
But not before suggesting Apple sells pretty and user friendly computers as well. Because I really want this to hurt Windows's market share and by golly I'll do everything in my power to help.
I'm imagining me doing this to my building of elderly, it dies and then opening my eyes to 40 work orders. Lmao
Why not install Linux for them once Windows 10 is dead?
They are a prime candidate for a dead simple Linux distro with the "Web", "Mail" and "Documents" shortcuts on the desktop and nothing else. Can't get a virus, can't get scammed by fake Microsoft support and most won't even notice.
I have installed Fedora Kinoite for my mom and have had zero complaints.
It's on the to do list for sure. Currently getting them off their external antivirus' is a challenge. They have to come to the conclusion themselves (most of the time)
Most are in their 80s. Think it'll be next generation honestly. Some dont even have phones or email addresses.
Had one who got a Chromebook and was just at a loss. Tbf that was an ass Chromebook but that was still too much for her.
Most have ollllld computers that are hitting the hardware failure stage. I've seen a god damn Vista machine at work.
I'm gonna convert someone. Just finding someone who is aware of what a tab in a browser is a rare occurrence currently lol
Well, yeah. That's life as an admin under the best circumstances. There's a running list of Windows ticking time bombs over on r/sysadmin. There are lots of good reasons to ditch Windows, but I wouldn't say the risk of MS shutting down technically unsupported hardware is one of them (because I don't agree it's a substantial risk).
I don't disagree, but I don't see the reason in tempting/inviting work to spawn. Especially in the cases where windows itself is optional.
I also think it's interesting you're not convinced it's a reasonable risk. I've had updates break things on clients under my control on several occasions, particularly post Windows 7 with the bigger feature releases.
It's definitely a "when", and not an "if" to me.
It's also worth pointing out Microsoft has already actively been working against allowing you to bypass the requirements. It's very clear to me they want to go towards some kind of hardware lifecycle management and I would definately not put it past them they deliberately make windows stop working on unsupported platforms at some point.