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Google Enables OS Upgrades For Older PCs Post-Windows 10 Support Cutoff 73

Posted by BeauHD from the clever-moves dept.
Google said it will allow businesses to install ChromeOS Flex on their Windows devices, "potentially preventing millions of PCs from hitting landfills after Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 next year," reports Reuters. The Chrome operating system will ultimately allow users to keep using their Windows 10 systems, while also providing regular security updates and features like data encryption. From the report: ChromeOS is significantly less popular than other operating systems. In January 2024, it held a 1.8% share of the worldwide desktop OS market, far behind Windows' share of about 73%, according to data from research firm Statcounter. ChromeOS has struggled with wider adaptability due to its incompatibility with legacy Windows applications and productivity suites used by businesses. Google said that ChromeOS would allow users to stream legacy Windows and productivity applications, which will help deliver them to devices by running the apps on a data center.
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Google Enables OS Upgrades For Older PCs Post-Windows 10 Support Cutoff More

Google Enables OS Upgrades For Older PCs Post-Windows 10 Support Cutoff

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  • ChromeOS Flex does not let you install drivers so (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @05:12PM (#64243148)

    ChromeOS Flex does not let you install drivers so if something does not work you can't fix it.

    • Re:ChromeOS Flex does not let you install drivers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @07:00PM (#64243412)

      You can fix it. Just upgrade ChromeOS to Debian.

      • Sad to say -- currently -- most casual home lusrz cannot easily use Linux Debian/Ubuntu/etc . Both bigdogs, RedHat and Canonical have mostly dropped support for home users. Screw U they hiss . New non-pro users are SOL. When I first switched to Ubuntu a decade+ ago installing either Linux version thru DSL was easy and straight-forward ... everybody picked up a bit of CLI , formatting and driver download action. No showstoppers and ready-to-run versions ... say again ... plug & pl

        • Both bigdogs, RedHat and Canonical have mostly dropped support for home users.

          Nonsense, or at least half nonsense. Redhat doesn't care about home users, true, but Canonical certainly does, and is currently the choice of roughly 27% of Linux desktop users. There are a few diehard Fedora desktop users out there, but straight up Debian (on which Ubuntu is based) is a far more popular choice.

      • Does Debian provide an upgrade tool or would you have to do a fresh installation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by piojo ( 995934 )

      Well it's made by Google, the company that won't currently won't allow me to take screenshots of my own phone when I most need to (bank transfer info), and tattles to all apps about the current state of my OS (is the bootloader unlocked, is any root application installed, etc.)

      It's as though Google owns my phone, though I paid for it. I'm not quite ready to try SailfishOS, and I'm a little too cautious to install a bunch of binary root modules that hide the current state of my OS from Google's digital surve

      • I'm rooted since Android 2.2 (Froyo) and never looked back, only benefits to be had. No need for a custom rom, Magisk is open source, LSPosed is open source, Play Integrity Fix is open source, want to update? Just remove the "wipe" flag from the factory image, flash it, flash the Magisk-patched boot image back in place, done: if you're feeling lazy you can write a simple script to automate the thing so you'll just need to plug your smartphone in et voilÃ!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by piojo ( 995934 )

          I appreciate that, but on my last phone I could never get SafetyNet to pass when rooted, despite everything I read about how to do it. But Play Integrity Fix is a new thing, so I may try again. Probably if I'm unable to install an ad blocker from twrp.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      That's what makes it good. Most people don't want to muck about with drivers, they just want their computer to work.

      While it may be a shame that ChromeOS Flex doesn't support every machine, it supports a lot of them and is far, far, far easier to use and maintain than Linux. As a solution for Windows 10 machines that would otherwise end up in landfill, it's great.

      I'm a fan of ChromeOS because since I upgraded family members to it, my tech support issues have been reduced dramatically.

  • Linux better and you can run windows apps locally (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @05:13PM (#64243152)

    Linux better and you can run windows apps locally

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by aergern ( 127031 )

      You know they won't. People don't like learning new things. You're pissing into the wind with this.

      • Re: Linux better and you can run windows apps loca (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kenh ( 9056 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @06:00PM (#64243274) Homepage Journal

        ChromeOS is a new thing, Linux is just a different new thing.

        In truth, countless Win 10 machines will just keep running Win 10 after EOL - folks outside of IT aren't as worried about support issues (Once they hear there won't be any more updates they'll be over-joyed!)

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by eneville ( 745111 )

          Linux isn't new, exactly. ChromeOS is new.

          • ChromeOS is basically a stripped down Linux desktop with everything being done as web apps in the Chrome Browser. Most people know how to use Chrome already, so the learning curve is minimal. If you figured out how to use your Android phone, you can figure out this just as easily.

        • ChromeOS is a new thing

          Lots of people know ChromeOS because they use it at school.

          Lots more people (including me) learned ChromeOS by helping their kids with their homework.

          In truth, countless Win 10 machines will just keep running Win 10 after EOL

          Very true.

        • ChromeOS is a new thing if it's 2011.

        • In truth, countless Win 10 machines will just keep running Win 10 after EOL - folks outside of IT aren't as worried about support issues

          Pretty much.

          It is just a tool to most people. As long as it works... who cares if it is "out of support"?
          When things stop working, they will buy a new model with the latest Windows on it.

          • Being out of support would be the ideal state -- except that we expect computer programs to be dangerously defective and easily fixable, hence an expectation of fixing some of the defects as they're discovered.

        • Re: Linux better and you can run windows apps loca (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @07:06PM (#64243422) Homepage

          Especially since the Win11 requirements are all about TPM 2.0, and have nothing to do with whether the machine is actually powerful enough to run the OS otherwise.
          There are likely countless machines that are plenty powerful for everyday use, but have CPUs that pre-date the cutoff.

        • Indeed, many users will be delighted at the lack of constant prompting to update and forced restarts. These EOL Win10 machines might even fetch a premium in the used market.

        • Re: Linux better and you can run windows apps loca (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @11:15PM (#64243738)

          The question is whether any software will run on Win 10 after EOL. Today's tech culture isn't satisfied with letting old dogs lie -- it loves to reach for the shotgun at any opportunity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I've spoken to a few people who were quite scared by the big full screen warnings that Windows 7 and Windows 8 showed them when those went EOL. They all either accepted the free Windows 10 upgrade, or bought a new computer.

          I expect much the same will happen with Windows 10.

        • In truth, countless Win 10 machines will just keep running Win 10 after EOL - folks outside of IT aren't as worried about support issues (Once they hear there won't be any more updates they'll be over-joyed!)

          That's only a half truth. The reality is no one will be overjoyed. Outside of tech circles people just don't give a shit about their OS or updates. That's a double edged sword by the way. Those people are opening themselves up to all manner of security issues.

          You shouldn't be overjoyed at the prospect of no automatic updates. That is precisely what lead us to a world where you could install a fresh copy of Windows XP and have it 0wn3d before it was even able to apply the first security update. You should no

    • However, if they must go through a ChromeOS phase on their way to a proper Linux distribution then so be it.

    • Linux better and you can run windows apps locally

      ^this, if they are willing to switch then why the fuck would you put ChromeOS on it. But realistically if the machines are so old they can't support win 11 and they can't afford replacements (switching OS's is going to cost them just as much as a new machine) then this is a business you want to avoid anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stikves ( 127823 )

      But... Chrome OS is Linux, and it even has a usable Linux subsystem (essentially Debian running in a container) that integrates well with the rest of the UI.

      Yes, it is centered around a web browser. But if you ignore that layer, it is essentially an "immutable" minimalistic Linux distribution, with container/vm support to run more software. Anything from VS Code to Steam runs more or less without issues (for the latter I think hardware needs some support for graphics acceleration forwarding).

      (Technical deta

  • just FYI (Score:3)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Thursday February 15, 2024 @05:15PM (#64243164)
    Before everyone gets up in arms over "forced obsolescence and my 7th gen i7 has an m.2 SSD and 32GB damn it, what are they doing rawwwwrr" the upcoming Windows 11 version 24H1 or whatever absolutely requires SSE4.2 and SSR4A to operate, specifically because of the PopCnt instruction. I dunno what it does. Probably something with process load balancing between performance and crap cores or something.

    But initially, yeah, that TPM 2.0 requirement to run 11 just to shove bitlocker down our throats crap was bullshit!!!
    • POPCNT is a really simple instruction, I think it just counts the number of binary 1 digits in a register. It's hard to believe anything important hinges on being able to use this instruction.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        It's mostly all beyond me, but I am finding references that state POPCNT is being used to detect supported instruction sets. In the cases I found, it'll fall back to older instruction sets if not supported.

      • It's hard to believe anything important hinges on being able to use this instruction.

        The simplest instructions are usually the most important ones. It's a relatively straight forward math instruction that has all manner of applications, so common in fact that every compiler has a detection for it and an optimised code to run it (or if you're compiling for SSE4A it just uses the CPU instruction).

        Your post is like saying it's hard to believe anything important hinges on the ability to add. Optimising basic operations is the foundation of improving efficiency which is precisely why it gets a d

        • My point was that I was surprised it was a requirement and not merely an optimization.

          • My point was that I was surprised it was a requirement and not merely an optimization.

            My point was that optimisations are most effective at the hardware level. At some point every architecture should be abandoned for something more optimal. Be that not allowing CPUs that don't support POPCNT or CPUs that don't support CMPXCHG16b or LAHF (did you know that was a thing? It was introduced in a Windows 10 update), or CPUs that don't support the NX bit, or CPUs that don't support the X64 instruction set.

            The reality is Windows (and Linux too) have gone through many depreciation cases where CPUs ha

      • You'd be surprised. Being able to efficiently count the number of 1 bits is important for encryption, compression and error correction algorithms. Lack of this on x86 hurt performance compared to e.g. PowerPC. Microsoft has disabled the fallback code for x86 CPUs that lack this instruction in Windows 11.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
          Are they using the 1's vs 0's count from a 120GB/s memory cache location as a reliable random seed or something? Someone should tell them that TPMs are a thing...and that they require them for Win11.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
        I'm a programmer and even I don't know why you'd want to know the total number of 1's in the register memory. Most of that's not even your code. WTF. What would that total even give you? That is actually insane.

    • My Zen+ has both, so I guess I'm not going to find out what happens when you try to upgrade to 24H2 (AFAIK this is the affected update) without the necessary instructions. I have a VM for testing... I have a Windows 10 VM too, which just updated itself to a fairly recent version and then promptly broke Windows Update for me again.

    • The processors which support SSE4.2 and SSE4A are a decade older than the minimum requirements for systems with TPM2.0. Literally no one is affected by the POPCNT requirement. Heck the first CPU to support this instruction was an IBM CPU from the 1960s and Cray's CPUs in the 70s. This is a mathematical function which can be used to optimise all manner of things and it has been part of x86 CPUs since 2007.

      Throw Linux on it to do some bare minimum work. Don't expect hardware to last forever.

    • Are there chips with that instruction without the advanced DRM?

      It's always about how they can maximize revenue - don't fall for their other excuses.

    • Sure would be nice if Microsoft actually had viable competition. But if you do anything more complicated with your computer then browse the web or write web apps you're pretty much stuck on Windows 10. I guess there is a reverse where a certain class of high-end engineer can run off Mac or Linux too that if I don't mention everyone will chime in about.

      • But if you do anything more complicated with your computer then browse the web or write web apps you're pretty much stuck on Windows 10.

        Nice troll.

    • Back in my day, you didn't even need the floating point coprocessor for stuff to work. Coprocessors were accelerators, not a base requirement.

      Seriously, does anybody actually understand how computers work at the metal anymore?

      • Yeah. All the people who understand how computers work understand that on CPU optimisations and software that utilise them is by far the fastest and most efficient way to execute a workload.

        Back in your day your CPU would struggle to just load Slashdot's homepage, it's not a shining example of where we want to be in 2024.

  • ... stream legacy Windows and productivity applications ...

    What does this mean? Do they mean web-apps? In that case, a quick-install Linux distribution offers the same functionality. Plus, there will be more support for legacy drivers and common (freeware) applications, such as LibreOffice, will run natively.

    With most business services becoming a web-app, IT departments should be making an effort to move away from Windows. Firstly, to avoid forced obsolescence of still-useful computing-power, secondly, to avoid the rent-seeking that Microsoft is pushing into

  • Just installing any major distro of Linux?

    Most Win 10 machines that can't run Win 11 are good for lots of things.

    • Because Google's marketing team is smarter than Linux vendor's

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Google just wants more users to spy and show ads to

    • Obviously it's not, but you can view this as an upgrade path from Windows to a proper Linux distribution.

  • Why not old Chromebooks? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Thursday February 15, 2024 @06:31PM (#64243358) Homepage Journal

    I mean, if you're that concerned about landfills that you're going to save other company's windows boxes, why can't you go back and restore support to my perfectly fine Hisense-11 from almost a decade ago?

    • My 2013 Chromebook Pixel runs just fine (except for the 1 hour battery) and I easily installed Linux Mint.

  • ChromeOS Flex is fabulous...until it's your only choice and you have to actually use it.

  • If you know American history, lets call this what it is: "A Google Carpet Bagging". Google could easily release Chrome OS as open source to be installed today, but they reserve it for Chromebook "partners"!?. So they have decided to release it to "Windows 10" in order to skim a few users in the process. The problem with this is going to be that this "older hardware" is going run chrome os faster than most new anemic Chromebooks.

  • ... and there you don't even have an alternative!

    The whole Windows 10 hoopla is a nothingburger. Never mind that being PCs you have tons and tons of alternatives they aren't really needed, never mind that there are Windows 10 editions supported into the 2030s, Microsoft has officially documented under support.microsoft.com the registry setting literally containing: "AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      https://support.google.com/chr... [google.com]

      ChromeOS devices receive 10 years of updates.**

      ** For devices prior to 2021 that will receive extended updates, some features and services might not be supported.

      Sorry, but if you buy "unofficial" Chromebooks, then yes. But I've watched the support life of official devices (not just Google, but HP, Lenovo, Acer, etc.) increase from 5 to 7 to 10 years in the last decade or so. I ran a school entirely on them (even staff). That wasn't through choice, it's because they could

  • I find the wording confusing "keep using their Windows 10 systems", no they won't keep Windows 10 systems, those will become ChromeOS systems, why not just say "keep using their old hardware"?

  • Just because supports ends for Windows 10, doesn't mean people can't use their PC. Google said "potentially preventing millions of PCs from hitting landfills.... They so full of it, scare tactics to install ChromeOS and they may be worse off. My old company was still using plenty of PC's / PC run equipment that were no longer getting Windows updates ! Hogwash !!
    • The issue isn't that Windows 10 itself will stop working. It's that people's critical apps will stop supporting Windows 10 and stop working. For example: Steam stopped supporting Win7-8.1 [slashdot.org] after Google killed support for CEF in those same versions. Gaben: Oh, you want to play your Win7 games on still working Win7 hardware like you always have? Well too damn bad son! You'll need to pay to upgrade that hardware / OS if you want to keep playing the games. Hahahahahahaha!

      It's only a matter of time before we s
  • Throwing away perfectly good hardware due to artificial requirements is a disgrace. The only silver lining will be the abundance of cheap, fast hardware to run linux on.
  • I still use Windows 7 one my Gaming Tower-PC. Now quiet and less energy consuming than before. i7 no longer OC to 4.5 GHz. Palit KalmX Nvidia 1650 passive cooled graphics.

    What does nag on every start, but still runs
    * Chrome Browser (no more updates)
    * Spotify
    * One MS Browser, can't remember IE11 or Edge

    What stopped running lately
    * Steam client, I used to play COD till one year ago
    * Google Drive (still accessible via Browser)

    Windows 7 is great. I still got the initial Windows 7 installation from ~2014. That I

  • No (Score:2)

    by allo ( 1728082 )

    > The Chrome operating system will ultimately allow users to keep using their Windows 10 systems
    That's just wrong. They can keep using the computer, but not Windows 10. ChromeOS is Linux-based.

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