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Windows 10 end of life is coming, what to do?
Quoting: Windows 10 end of life is coming, what to do? —
The end of life of Windows 10 is not the end of the world. Far from it. One, you're less likely to be pestered by pointless and nonsense upgrade nags. Two, various enterprise versions of Windows 10 will persist and remain supported until 2031/2, perhaps even longer. With 50% of all Windows boxes still running this version, you can bet your left kidney there will be awesome software and game support for the '10 for many years to come. Three, with good hardening and smart browsing, you're not in any great danger.
If compliance is what bothers you, then you can try Linux, for free, and with minimal changes. With virtualization in place, you can merely add to your setup, lose no functionality, and even gain security. For that matter, if you need to do "risky" browsing, do it in a special Linux virtual machine. If you make a mistake there, and there's no personal data inside, no big deal. Erase it, revert to an older snapshot, whatever. For that matter, even if you use Windows 11, if you spin up Linux guests, you will gain on security!
My testing over the past three years is positive. Linux never tripped the alarm sensors doing online things and services. Browsers did, on the other hand. Since many (crappy) sites are coded for Chromium only, similar to the situation we had with Internet Explorer 6 back in the day, some online services may fail in Firefox. But not because of Linux. Because of bad programming, and the browser requirements. And since all modern browsers work fine in Linux, this shouldn't be an issue. I even tested security hardware token passthrough in VirtualBox, and that worked like magic. Personal experience.
And those are your options for October 2025. Security hardening, smart use, virtualization, up-to-date browser, and you don't need to pay a tithe to Microsoft, or use its pointless Windows 11 system. You can be compliant and secure. In fact, by mixing Linux into the equation, you can be more secure than Windows alone can ever do. So, lament not, keep your Windows 10 boxen if you want or need to, and just do some extra work and experimentation with Linux. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.