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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Adds Another Year To Windows 10 Extended Update Program (arstechnica.com) 122

Microsoft has quietly extended free Windows 10 security updates for consumers by another year, pushing the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program's end date from October 12, 2026, to October 12, 2027. "The ESU support page was updated with that date, and Microsoft's blog post on the program has a new editor's note confirming the change," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The prevalence of Windows across so many devices and form factors has given Microsoft a massive customer base for decades, but it has also stymied the company's efforts to roll out new operating systems. Microsoft famously extended the support window for Windows XP numerous times throughout the 2010s as it became apparent that millions of PCs would never be updated. Windows 10 isn't quite as entrenched as XP was, but it has still been a slog getting people to upgrade to Windows 11 even nearly five years after release.

Unlike many past Windows updates, Windows 11 required some users to buy new PCs with specific CPU technologies and a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Microsoft was widely criticized for excluding perfectly serviceable PCs, and that's turning into a problem in 2026. The AI-driven shortage of storage and memory has made system upgrades vastly more expensive, potentially slowing upgrades. Some have also avoided Windows 11 due to Microsoft's intense focus on AI features.

The result is that Windows 10 remains stubbornly popular. According to StatCounter data, Windows 10 is still running on about 26 percent of PCs, while Windows 11 sits at 72 percent. That means there are still hundreds of millions of active Windows 10 installs, but those machines will be up to date for at least an additional year.

Microsoft Adds Another Year To Windows 10 Extended Update Program

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  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @04:29PM (#66212362)
    The unemployment crisis plus ram prices means that people are stuck on old computers for longer than they would like, and yes we would all like the penguin to come to the rescue but modern Linux distros are getting bloated too with Wayland and Flatpaks. So we are kind of stuck with Windows 10 until computers become cheaper again. It's basically an unfortunate situation. Apple will have a similar problem coming up with their Intel Mac users.
    • If you hear "if you can't afford a Macbook Neo you're too poor to be an Apple customer," don't be surprised.

      I definitely heard that related to iMessage a decade ago. The 666 304's had some thing about bubble colors.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 )
      My father-in-law in this mid-70's installed Linux Lite, which doesn't use Wayland, and is small, fast, and just works. It's fine to not like Wayland, or Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, System D, KDE, Gnome, etc... but with Linux, you get the choice of what you run, so it's also a non-starter.

      Windows is so unstable that rebooting or updating could cause the entire OS to corrupt itself, and then you can quickly become screwed, especially if it was doing a UEFI update and failed part way. There have been other re
      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        I have relatives in their 70s and 80s who have converted to Linux Mint for 100% of their daily driving. They didn't install it, but once it's set up, they can use it as easily and competently as they did Windows. Not that they were particularly competent at Windows, but that means no penalty moving to Linux.

        BitLocker likes to activate at the drop of a hat, and I suppose it should, but when you combine that with all the fuckups surrounding Windows with Secure Boot, the TPM stuff, and online account requireme

        • I've had that same thing happen with a UEFI update + no internet, and that broke sign-in, and it broke BitLocker. BitLocker should not be tied into SecureBoot settings, and it should never self-activate, or, store the keys / passphrase off the machine.
          • The Microsoft website is supposed to give you your BitLocker key. (Under Account Settings -> My Devices). And, most of the time it does. But there's a persistent bug over at least the last couple years I've been supporting it, where about 10% of the Bitlocker keys just refuse to pull up. The device is listed, complete with the hex Bitlocker ID, and the box to display the recovery key opens when you click it, but it's empty. No key.

            What makes this worse is BIOS/firmware updates are pushed through Windows

    • by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @05:18PM (#66212392)

      That's not how linux works. Distros having extra stuff isn't bloat unless you install it all.

      You're stuck with windoze because you can't stop yourself from switching an installer to an advanced mode and clicking every single checkbox?!

      That's getting into "maybe you don't need a desktop computer" territory.

      Anyways, I thought Wayland was supposed to fix the problem of X11 having too many features?! Of course, my response was "I can afford a few megs of storage for X."

      Plus, even if you do install "everything" on Linux, the whole thing fits on the cheapest HDs on the market using only a tiny fraction of the space. So what's the "bloat," even at the extreme of installing junk? Just too much stuff in the menu, and you don't know which of the 10 applications for Foo to click on?

    • Bloat in Windows is in a whole different league that Linux "bloat". If a machine was able to run Windows 10 - heck, even if it ran Windows 7 or probably even XP - it should be able to handle a user-friendly distro like Linux Mint [linuxmint.com] just fine.

    • I bought a laptop for grad school 10 years ago. It replaced a then-10 year old laptop I bought at the end of college. I'm still using the 10 yo laptop as my daily driver for the little I need a full keyboard for. Recently maxed out the ram on. Might put in a new ssd at some point. Unless something physically breaks I expect I'll be using it for another half a decade with some kind of Linux and a win10 vm for tax filing sw.

      Ewaste is just wastefulness. That is to say a personal choice.

      Throw out your socks or

    • RAM yes, but there is no "unemployment crisis". Unemployment has crept up slightly. Whoop de fucking do, it's within a percent of where it's been since COVID and is still lower than where it was for most of the 2010s.

      If you're in a "crisis" now, you've been in a "crisis" for 2 decades with the exception of only a couple of years.

      • If you're in a "crisis" now, you've been in a "crisis" for 2 decades with the exception of only a couple of years.

        The rates are bad, we don't focus on using the least bad estimate we produce, and we stave off crisis to a degree with mediocre public assistance programs which struggle to cover needs for lack of funding but which really amount to can-kicking. That's better than nothing, but still leaves us poised for disaster. If Cheeto Benito successfully terminates these programs (as he has been trying to do, and he has successfully been interfering with them) then the looming crises become immediate not quite overnight

    • Probably not. My Intel Mac from 2016 is dead. Keyboard is shot and I'm being told the only way to replace it is to basically replace the whole machine. Meanwhile I'm using ThinkPads from 2010 just fine.
    • Unemployment crisis?

      The current US unemployment rate is 4.3%.
      The current US *tech* unemployment rate is 3.8%.

      I don't think we've quite reached crisis levels yet.

  • by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @05:03PM (#66212380)
    And admit their mistake by releasing "Windows 10 Classic'"
    • "Windows 7 Classic" - FTFY

    • My favourite part about your comment is it shows that people will eventually come around to calling the current mistake "classic" and demand it. Your post would not have been out of place back in 2015 lamenting about the loss of Windows 7 and lambasting Windows 10.

      • My favourite part about your comment is it shows that people will eventually come around to calling the current mistake "classic" and demand it. Your post would not have been out of place back in 2015 lamenting about the loss of Windows 7 and lambasting Windows 10.

        Why would anyone give two shits about unnecessarily disruptive change when there is little to no commensurate value to show for it in return? This isn't the 90s. PCs and operating systems are a mature technology. For many there is more value in continuity.

        These days the value proposition is often negative given Microsoft's malware oriented business model depends upon increasing aggression towards its own customers. Endless ads, spying, embarrassing UX regressions and unwanted dependencies rather than us

    • And admit their mistake by releasing "Windows 10 Classic'"

      If they release a Windows 10 Classic Zero Ads, I'd be really interested.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Funny, but the Apple approach would be "Vintage Windows 10".

  • by HnT ( 306652 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @05:36PM (#66212412)

    They allegedly offered certain customers options to extend the updates freely, but this absolutely never worked not even shortly before the first EOL last year. And in the last weeks leading up to the EOL they kept closing more and more options to freely and/or conveniently extend the EOL, to force everyone to win11.

    Seriously, just F M$ and finally make the switch to Linux. There are many great and rock solid distros out there, and many options to easil run legacy windos software like wine and proton.
    Absolutely nobody really needs win for anything anymore.

  • "Up to date" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @05:56PM (#66212428)

    >"That means there are still hundreds of millions of active Windows 10 installs, but those machines will be up to date for at least an additional year."

    And they could be up to date for many, many, many years if Linux was installed on those, instead. Then updates would be fast, easy, free, installed when and how you want, not suddenly change things you don't want changed, not slow your machine down, and not require any "subscription" service or even a login. And then after those years shift from a "update" path to an "upgrade" path and have many years more.

    I regularly use 10+ year old machines (some even much older) that work just as fine now under Linux as they did when first purchased. RAM use has increased a little, which is to be expected, but overall performance is just as good. The days of needing to upgrade hardware every few years to have a good experience are long gone.

    • I spent 6 months installing Pop!OS, Mint, and Garuda-Gaming on "obsolete" office systems and giving them away to people that needed PCs.

      MS e-waste fault is a fucking travesty.

    • And they could be up to date for many, many, many years if Linux was installed on those, instead.

      And a lot of them are. There seems to be a quite healthy market for used/refurbed PCs of the Windows 10 generation with people scooping them up to run Jellyfin, Home Assistant, LLMs/agents, and the like. I doubt as many of these are going to the landfill as some may think. It is likely significant boon for Linux usage overall.

      I regularly use 10+ year old machines (some even much older) that work just as fine now under Linux as they did when first purchased.

      Likewise. I just grabbed an 8th gen i7 box to run Frigate and it works great. I expect that machine to have many years of useful life in it yet.

    • by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      There are essentially no versions of Linux that I would trust the "general" population to use. These people/businesses clinging to Windows 10 are the type of people who would be in actively worse shape on Linux.

    • And they could be up to date for many, many, many years if Linux was installed on those, instead.

      Well, if by "many, many, many" you mean "about five". Red Hat provides longer support terms, but not for free.

      And then after those years shift from a "update" path to an "upgrade" path and have many years more.

      True, sort of. Assuming the upgrade works, which it often does... but not always.

      I'm no Windows fanboy, in fact the last version of Windows I used was Windows 2000. I switched to Linux completely by mid-2001 and I've never looked back. But it's really not as rosy as you paint it. The commercial OSes (Windows and OS X) actually do a much better job of delivering long-term support and (in the c

      • >"Well, if by "many, many, many" you mean "about five". Red Hat provides longer support terms, but not for free."

        Yes. Maybe I put too many "many's" in there :) But then you can do in-place upgrades. I have done that multiple times with Mint on different systems and it has worked perfectly every time. Although I am not waiting the full X years before doing so.

        >"True, sort of. Assuming the upgrade works, which it often does... but not always."

        Probably better than MS-Windows does in-place upgrades, t

        • Probably better than MS-Windows does in-place upgrades, though

          I have no knowledge of that, for which I'm happy. But... Windows 10 was released in 2015 and will apparently be supported through late 2027. Outside of RHEL no Linux distro comes close.

  • by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Friday June 26, 2026 @06:41PM (#66212474)

    for screwing your OS so badly and making me move to Linux, I'm far happier and I miss nothing, thanks to all the awesome software that is either native (Kate) or cross-platform (JetBrains) or is used as a bridge to windows software (Wine et al). The only thing you're extending is your pointless hopes for recovery from this unparalled idiotic move to force people to 11.

  • Microsoft: You really need to protect yourself from our hot garbage!

  • Too late! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kevin108 ( 760520 )

    That PC has already been converted to Linux.

  • Seems like Microsoft needs to bifurcate windows os. One version with legacy support, and a second with a completely new code based that ditches legacy technologies completely, improves security/stability, etc. If it predates 2010 or 2020, then itâ(TM)s out.

  • Windows 10 has being slowly enshittified, but Windows 11 is a turd on fire since the beginning.
    So even being a die hard Windows user, I'm very tempted in switching to Linux.
    But there are some reasons that stops me. Many games I play that can't run on Linux. And I have a NVidia GPU (RTX 3060), which has poor support on Linux (AFAIK).
    Another reason is analysis paralysis. I just can't make my mind on what distro I get. See, people here on /. and some other places says things like Wayland sucks, SystemD is canc

    • The whole Wayland thing is a shitpile. They made it so secure there is no way to access the desktop remotely even today. I just switched back to X11 and now I hear my distro of choice (Manjaro) is switching to all Wayland!

      If you are going to switch to Linux, be diligent to make sure all your data is saved on a remote machine you don't use that often that is on the network. Then you can switch your working machine at will, because you probably will anyway.
  • When they tried to upgrade it, the equipment wouldn't run and was vital to keep running. Maybe programmer issues, maybe equipment just isn't capable !
  • Wayland was explicitly created to reduce bloat and complexity compared to X11. MX Linux [mxlinux.org] or Lubuntu [lubuntu.me] will provide a full functional desktop. Without the Microsoft bloat or forced upgrades that bork your system.
    --

    xack [slashdot.org]: “The unemployment crisis plus ram prices means that people are stuck on old computers for longer than they would like, and yes we would all like the penguin to come to the rescue but modern Linux distros are getting bloated too with Wayland and Flatpaks. So we are kind of stuck with Wi

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