Microsoft support page says Windows 10 “retirement date” is 2025 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft support page says Windows 10 “retirement date” is 2025

winaero.com

117 pointsbehnamoh209 comments

I'll be honest. I kinda lost track of windows, android, iOS versions at some point. And I think that's probably ok... I use it, it works, there ya go.

Most everything I do really isn't OS dependent.

I do fondly remember the days when OS upgrades was a huge change. I'll always fondly think of the Rolling Stone's "Start Me Up" and trying out OS/2 and various Linux flavors and so on. I used to spend HOURS customizing my OS. (I am amused to see my son do this with his phone).

But now my OS is really just "set dark theme" and roll on.

Productivity wise, that's probably good.

That kind of makes sense for mobile OSs, and perhaps to a lesser extent MacOS, but Windows versions have always been pretty big shifts. 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10 are all quite different from each other.

Start me up … dah dah dah … you make a grown man cry.

Another marketing disaster.

I liked it.

So did I. Until it aged which it didn’t well.

I know you didn't mean it that way but the concept of "not aging well" and Rolling Stones gives me a music-ish allergic reaction ;)

Personally I don't think so. Every time I download and install from an Windows ISO it seems worse.

Right out of the bat there is a page where you need to uncheck all the spyware crap and there are so many it scrolls. They also make it so a normal local user is presented like a somewhat inferior experience than their web login. Then you have to fill in obligatory 3 recovery questions even if you are confident in your choice of passwords.

Nothing of this is new but I've recently had to install Windows 10 on an old computer to use some crapware and after all the questioning and cringe "we are working hang on it" messages there was some huge tray icon displaying some weather data and other unnecessary stuff. Something about Interests and it sits there with lots of unsolicited stuff like OneDrive.

The start menu is littered with squares filled with animated web page stuff and honestly its hard to find out if those are about news or ads.

Now I'm not a Windows hater. I mean... LTSC and Windows server are nice. Why does default Windows and Windows Pro must look like BonziBuddyOS?

The only thing I really notice is the settings ... app, box, thing, (not sure what to call it even) is wonky. Seems to get wonky-er all the time. But I'm hardly ever in there.

That's really the major change I notice. The little UI changes in menu or task bar I find easy enough to just adjust and so forth whenever I need to do so. Mostly I just turn them off and doing so doesn't really bother me.

That reminds me there are two control panels. One with the trendy web page style (the pretty one) and the other using the old Windows 7 style (the useful control panel).

And I suspect they know its terrible. What other reason would they reserve the the good stuff like the LTSC version to premium enterprise contracts? People who purchase and run Windows Pro and Windows Home are literally paying to feed the monstrous Microsoft telemetry machine. And that's also the reason they don't care anymore if you ever register and activate.

That's exactly what I thought when I ran into the old control panel. "Oh ... I see ... they know."

It’s obnoxious because while it seems like they keep adding features to the former that I’m used to using the latter for.

The other day, I was trying to set a static IP on a VM. Apparently the new Setting app has an option, but for whatever reason, it would change the IP settings. So I went into the classic network adapter options and set it there. That seemed to work, but the Settings app still didn’t show the adapter configured with a static IP. So I ran up config, and everything checked out thankfully.

Old one is still cooler because you can add custom items in it :^)

And even within the Control Panel (the older one), there's multiple visually distinct UIs:

1. First, there's "Windows 7 style" applets like "File History", "Power Options", and "Programs and Features". I'm not sure how to summarize these beyond that they have a resizable window and usually have some options in a sidebar on the left, but they all have a visually consistent look (which was a lot more obvious before Windows 10).

2. Next, some Windows 7 era applets use a different interface which displays in a (mock) file browser, like "Devices and Printers" or "Fonts".

3. Then there's some older applets which use a Windows XP-era interface in a small, fixed-size window with tabs at the top, like "Date and Time" or "Mouse".

4. Finally, there are a few applets which have a completely unique interface, like "Indexing Options" or "Device Manager".

5. Oh, and I forgot to mention: some of the applets in the Control Panel open up a Settings applet when clicked, like "System" and "Taskbar". But even this isn't consistent; some applets in Settings, like "Mouse" have a "additional settings" link on the right which opens the Control Panel applet when clicked.

Confused yet? Don't worry, the next version of Windows will assuredly find a way to make it worse.

1 and 2 are part of the same Vista/7 era Control Panel UI.

3 I believe is even older than that, maybe since 95

4 is the MMC. The MMC is actually great and I am disaponted to see it lose favor. You can even use the MMC to remotely admin other computers. The MMC is somethig I miss on other OSs.

Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10. Because even if they migrate all windows settings to new panels they are still stuck with 3rd party panels using the old infrastructure (Synaptics, Flash, others still use the 95 era panels). And now migration across all the versions means a complete rewrite effort. And I am not even sure it is possible in all cases. So they are stuck maintaining old infrastructure.

Mac OS fairs better because they had a clean break from 9 to X. And eventually X had pluggable 3rd party panels which proved to be a pain during the transition from 32bit to 64bit. Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels?

Linux for a long time just didn't care. I belive KDE Plasma has this capability since 5 (not sure it was there in 4).

It is the same with Windows (File) Explorer. It is incredibly plugable. Way more than alternatives on other OSs. There are namespace extensions, context menu extensions, icon overlay extensions, online storage support (since 10), etc..

Being stuck with supporting old infrastructure is a consequence of creating that infrastructure in the first place. The less you create the less you have to maintain. But, as a user, I will take more over less.

> Microsoft should have really invested time in creating template projects used to migrate from the 95 era panels to the Vista/7 era panels. And then again for Win10.

A lot of the problem just feels like they've repeatedly given up halfway through converting old settings UIs to newer ones and fallen back to bundling the old UIs into "advanced" or "additional settings" windows. The Personalization settings are a perfect example of this -- there's a Windows 10 Settings applet, which defers to a Windows 7 Control Panel applet for some options, which internally defers to a Windows XP era dialog for setting colors (which are mostly no-ops on Windows 10, but I digress). What they really need is a concerted effort to finish the job.

> Did Mac OS 9 and earlier have plugable 3rd party panels?

Ooooooh boy. Tangent time:

Control Panels and Extensions were perhaps one of the most terrifying part of Classic Mac OS from a modern development perspective. They represented modules of code which were loaded system-wide at startup, which could patch any (ANY!!) part of the operating system with their own code to add custom functionality -- for example, some common ones would add a screen saver (After Dark), add custom system-wide menus (Now Menus), or change the appearance of system controls and windows (Kaleidoscope). Conflicts between different cdevs/extensions were commonplace; System 7.5 added a first-party Extensions Manager utility that could be used to temporarily disable extensions, and a number of third-party utilities existed to diagnose startup crashes caused by conflicts.

The only difference between a Control Panel and an Extension was that a Control Panel could be launched as an application, typically to change its settings. There was no special UI framework for third-party Control Panels; they used the same UI toolkits as any other application.

That really is terrifying. It reminds me of Haxies like the ShapeShifter from Unsanity. I guess Mac Os had a tradition for such a thing.

The old style control panel is part of the Windows api, if they drop it they’ll break things like mouse drivers that often add tabs to the dialogs.

> Right out of the bat there is a page where you need to uncheck all the spyware crap and there are so many it scrolls.

This also doesn't even remotely turn off all of the spyware and phone-home, and you have to run something like WPD after install to finish the job.

Our IT has given us deployment sticks for W10 Pro which format/install/deploy the OS using one script in about 5 minutes with zero nags/prompts anything else. It also sets up a default (non-cloud) user. I think its called an 'unattended' setup. So it definitely can be done. I think MS needs to provide a "Yes, I know what I'm doing, go away" Windows ISO.

Could you please elaborate on how that usb stick was made? :-)

Time to time I need to do some Windows config/deployment – shortcuts, printers, make the damned NumLock ON, set those PDFs to open NOT in that ducked Edge;) and so on ..

But this is not my top skill and after googling for some time I’d kill for a spot on advice.

It can be a quite complex process. It also tends to break easily if not done right. Most organizations that deploy large amounts of systems will create Windows images with tools like Microsoft SCCM for example. This also works: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/96683-create-media-autom...

All that's really needed is to add a Provisioning package to any normal usb install stick. Microsoft offers a UI based editor that allows you set the options you want as well as add scripts to be run.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provi...

That stupid weather widget and the Xbox overlay randomly popping up, completely disabling input without an obvious way to get out (some random win key combo), finally drove me to dump Windows as a daily driver. It even drove me to get some real work done on my passion project so I'd never have to use a Windows VM for CAD ever again.

I lived through Micro$oft but I was too inexperienced to understand the hate directed towards Microsoft. It's ironic that I only started to feel it now that they've changed their tune on the open source/dev stuff.

To add insult to injury, shortly after, I got an email with this subject line from google:

*> akiselev, take the next step on your Linux by confirming your Google Account settings

To turn off the weather.

Right click on the task bar, news and interests, turn off.

If only that were the only step to stop the new Windows install spam.

What Xbox overlay and what weather widget? Running 21H1 and never seen any of those.

Windows Logo Key + G, the "Xbox Game Bar".

Ah, I see. Well. I disabled that the first time I installed Windows 10, back... I don't know how many years ago. It's still disabled.

Also, maybe the fact that I uninstalled all pre-installed apps I knew would never use made it so I skipped out on future weather widgets. I don't have a weather app for instance, because I'll just look out my window instead.

Xbox Game Bar is not annoying like other crap, but useful even if you don't gaming. It can be used to screen recording feature.

> cringe "we are working hang on it" messages

Ha! My favorite one is: "Leave everything to us".

You get it splattered across the screen before the desktop loads for the firs time. It always gets me thinking, is it not enough for you guys to track me around, force send diagnostics data, foist updates upon me, now you want me to leave everything you!?

There was even one release of Windows 10 Home where you couldn't create a local account, unless you tricked it by not connecting to a network. Not sure if this is still the case with current builds or if they came to their senses.

And good luck if you did create one and you also happen to use Office 365, because now you have two Microsoft accounts, possibly with the same email address, that use the same login page, and that's not confusing at all.

Yeah, that's still the case.

Oh did you say just TWO ?

Nah. I created a Microsoft account with my work mail adress. Then a Windows 10 account with this stupid installer. So I did get two accounts.

But that was before my employer decided to create « corporate » Microsoft accounts for everyone.

That’s 3 accounts. With the same mail address. Now I just avoid to log in with those accounts because I don’t even understand how it even works.

On https://account.microsoft.com/profile you can change your email address for the account, changing them to a new email account will let you "unlink" them from your work email.

> Personally I don't think so. Every time I download and install from an Windows ISO it seems worse.

I’ve just been in a dark pit while trying to get a thunderbolt to sfp+ adapter working with ESXi. I ended up updating it via Windows but also tested it in various Ubuntu versions and macOS.

Both Windows and Ubuntu install processes were great compared to my very distant memory of install processes - Windows was finicky about the state of the drive it went onto and didn’t want to be on an external drive, but that was it.

The application Microsoft has made for creating boot disks is really nice. Apple in particular could learn a thing or two.

Drivers though, my god. If the driver isn’t signed by Microsoft, it is a horror in Windows.

Never got the dongle going in Esxi, it worked perfectly out the box for Apple and nearly the same for Ubuntu (though has to be unplugged and replugged after a reboot, and required manual config of mtu and network parameters. DHCP wouldn’t stick).

I got full functionality from Windows after a series of driver updates, interspaced with firmware updates and removal of security checks.

I fully agree. Everything is version agnostic now, and my apps are cross platform.

Reminds me of a comment an FPS reviewer journalist made about keybindings. Something like "At some points I stopped rebinding my keys for every game I review, it's frustrating and time consuming. I just go with the flow now and basta. Bonus point: in game conventions/shows (e3, etcs, etc.) I can jump right in and be at ease, not relying on my 25 years old favourite bindings.".

Agreed. For most software I just want it to tell me how it thinks I should use it. Being flexible is awesome, but doing it the way they want often is faster. I can customize later.

True - however, i frequently (save the few cases that "get it right" for me) have to invert the Y-axis...

For home and cubicle use, including almost all SW development I totally agree.

On the other hand, I support a lot of production lines and test tools running Windows-based applications and there are two big conflicting drivers:

1) specialized hardware often comes with brittle SW and the defensive move is to not upgrade Windows hardly ever

vs.

2) vulnerabilities fixed in newer OS versions are often required by our IT staff, you don't want a production line to go down because of WannaCry or whatever

So often we disconnect ancient (e.g. Windows XP!) systems from the network and move files by thumb drive or even floppy

I can relate. At my first job, I spent ages customizing my Macbook. Everything from dark/light themes, shortcuts, gestures, terminal, bash aliases, etc, was meticulously personalized to be both effective and fun. Then I moved to a second job and was horrified at the thought of going through all that work a second time. Now I wget my bash aliases, tweak things as I go, and leave it at that. I wish there was a good way to make customization portable, but then you take on the work of maintaining it as programs and OSes update.

The key here is to focus on tools with portable configs. Hammerspoon is easy to install and has a text config and so is Emacs, Alfred/Launchbar config folder can be copied and advanced keyboard shortcuts, like a hyperkey, can be configured with a better keyboard directly(QMK). This way you won't spend much time reconfiguring a new machine, if you don’t switch them every week. And all the small things can sum up to a better quality of work in the end.

It's strange, I was all very for rolling releases but I have to admit it causes a certain sense of blur.. i also lost track of things.

> I kinda lost track of windows, android, iOS versions at some point.

I agree with Android but how can you loose track of Windows version when each of them last something like 10 years?

If they could roll-back to Win2k, I would be happy.

> There is little doubt that the system will be called Windows 11, but it may still not be so.

For some reason my gut says it won't be called Windows 11. I have a feeling it will be called something confusing or unappealing. Love MS products but they always fell short with branding.

Are we past the naming phase for Windows X or Windows One?

It’ll be Windows 364 or something. I’d say 365 but it spend a day a year at the update screen.

Windows X One .NET Series 10 Core Framework.

Edit: Anyone willing to give me some betting odds on it being Microsoft Bob 2.0?

Single letters are cool again, I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like W1 or M11

I think it will be just Windows. Just like Xbox is now Xbox with different flavors called either series X or series S.

Those "flavors" are still part of the name. That doesn't make it any simpler than XBox One [S/X].

Similarly I'd be surprised if the next Windows would be only named that. My guess is they'll just add something to Windows 10. After all from what I gathered it's mostly an upgraded Windows 10. Though Windows 10X is out, they already burned that one.

What do you mean? Microsoft has always been clear and unambiguous with their naming and branding. Everyone can clearly tell the difference between the Xbox, Xbox One, Xbox One X, Xbox One S, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. No possible confusion there!

No love for 360 I see...

What could be more appealing than Windows(e)xp(ee)?!

yea theyve had some interesting names alright. "windows phone 7 series" is one that comes to mind. it was a bit of a mouthful compared to "iphone", which is probably why they shortened it after but its still amazing that they announced that name in the first place

> For some reason my gut says it won't be called Windows 11. I have a feeling it will be called something confusing or unappealing. Love MS products but they always fell short with branding.

This strikes me as so odd, both because to me Microsoft products don't have a singular vibe that I could rule on, and because Windows, to me, is obviously the worst Microsoft product by a mile. Like, of things I've used recently:

• Windows Terminal is outstanding, easily the best terminal emulator available on the platform

• PowerShell is top-notch as a shell language, and has rightly revolutionized the design of shell languages to follow

• winget is kinda a sad story and can probably never really be what it ought to because of the way most software is distributed on Windows anyway

• WSL1 is crazy ambitious and cool, absolutely love it

• WSL2 is very nice to have but much less interesting as a project than WSL1

• Windows itself is horrifying— after having been away from Windows since Windows 7, just the _installer_ for Windows 10 left me shocked and repulsed

Is there a particular unifying theme or aspect of Microsoft products that draws you to them? Or do you just kinda happen to like a lot of them for very different sorts of reasons?

It will probably be called 11. They have been leaving hints all over the place that it will be. The event starts at 11 a.m. which is not when they usually do, the invite showed an animation where the light going through the window ignored the cross bar making an 11, they released an 11 minute video of slowed down Windows start up sounds on YouTube. It'll either be called 11 or they are trolling hard.

Windows 11 for Workgroups.

Or maybe going with Xbox vibe and the number: Windows X11 or X Windows System.

It will probably just be called "Windows". They've shown they wanted windows 10 to be the final release of windows that they'll just update a couple times a year and add on to. This new windows will probably be a more simplified windows that they've been trying to make with windows 10S/S mode and windows 10X. Give it a UI/UX overhaul, push the WUP and call it just Windows because its the only windows you'll ever have to worry about from now on.

for the love of all things holy, please dont call it MS Surface....

> I also find this interesting. I checked Wayback Machine to see if that date has changed and it was the same all the way back in Sept 2020.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/nx0jja/windows_1...

As noted below that comment, this EOL date was entered in 2015, by default, Microsoft commits to ten years of support for new Windows versions, and this is all that is.

People are getting excited about the news in a couple weeks, and looking for hints. And bloggers who don't know obvious things about Microsoft like the Product Lifecycle, make stupid posts that go viral.

EDIT: Also, here's the article from 2015 to prove it: https://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/20/microsoft-to-support-windo...

Microsoft should number their Windows releases by when support will end for them (eg Windows 25). That’ll make it super clear to enterprise that they’ve got to get with it and update, rather than obfuscating and delaying these dates. (Being half serious)

This is actually a brilliant idea.

Wasn't Windows 10 supposed to be the last Windows version ever? As in it was going to be evergreen? Did I imagine that?

Edit: Yeah I didn't imagine it

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...

I think you're thinking of the Edge browser

Microsoft marketing is totally schizophrenic. Never believe a fucking word of it for a second and your life will be good.

Most marketing is.

Actually I don’t think it is.

Microsoft promise way ahead of time, fail to deliver, reduce scope, kick out a broken half finished product, get the customers to beta test it, change their mind on the direction of the entire organisation in that space and generally leave everyone confused and a bit burned out. This happens every time and has done for the last 20 years. Even the latest reinvention has just increased the frequency of this incompetence.

Most marketing at least delivers an 80% product.

You've basically described every software company in history.

That’s a fair point actually

The windows hating is so boring and childish. Windows, and particularly Windows 10, is a very good OS. It's not even open source advocates that dislike it so much. I think most Linux users would admit Windows is a solid option, if just not for them. It's usually just Mac fans.

It’s really not. So far this week for me Windows Hello has just totally broken, my thunderbolt dock has decided to no longer recognise the keyboard, I’ve had a problem where the graphics driver just shats itself every hour, the taskbar disappeared and wouldn’t come back and during last weeks update cycle it got stuck and had to roll back to a restore point. Oh and docker for windows completely broke and I still can’t get it to work again with WSL2

I am literally burning hours dealing with this shit on a weekly basis. It’s a flaming shit show and to call this mire childish complaining is nothing short of insulting.

”sorry I’m late for the meeting my laptop is hosed/rebooting/fucked” is a daily occurrence. It’s not good.

They need to do a better job considering I pay them money. That’s all I’m asking.

Yes and Docker for Mac is terrible, I'm sitting with a quarter of my RAM in kernel_task with no idea what it's doing and my system stutters every few minutes while who knows what pages off of the SSD, I've had MacOS releases get stuck in a half-upgraded state which required a reinstall, I have monitor connectivity problems, and I've had MacOS get stuck at the login prompt.

And don't get me started on the issues with Linux desktops, which can hardly even get screensharing to work.

My and others' point is that there is no perfect OS. Windows is good, MacOS is good, Linux is "okay", and if you're determining good by the critera "is there zero issues" then you're going to be very sad for the rest of your life.

I use all three platforms on a daily basis and windows is 10x worse than the next contender.

As for Docker on the Mac I agree. I don’t use it. I use a Linux VM which is where I’m currently heading on windows at the moment, unpicking all the garbage.

The least troubled combination I can suggest is: use macOS on an M1 machine and keep it close to default as possible and do all your dev on a Ubuntu LTS box via SSH. And just avoid windows entirely.

Mac makes a good cloud terminal. Linux makes a good cloud server. Windows makes…err no idea.

Gotcha. I don't want to sound combative or defensive; my entire day job is just double clicking terminal icon or the web browser while connected to a couple monitors, so I don't really put the OS to its paces so to speak. If you have more issues on Windows then I believe you, I just don't see that in my day to day.

> I use all three platforms on a daily basis and windows is 10x...

Are you using Windows 10X by any chance? Sounds like the way it should be.

Windows 10 objectively has serious issues, the control panels being an obvious example. I am a Windows dev and it’s not their worst OS, but it’s at best average.

Control panels are funny. The last time I had to reinstall windows was because when I clicked anything in the new settings app, nothing happened! That was May :(

As a Linux person, learning that the only way to get Windows installed without plugging in a Microsoft account was to _never connect to the internet during the install process_ made me feel like I was from a different planet than everyone else. The thought was really

> Why do people tolerate this as the norm? How can people stand it?

Not to say that that one thing should be unbearable to everyone, but that it struck me as a hallmark of a culture with totally different expectations that I can't really imagine sharing at this point.

As for this:

> I think most Linux users would admit Windows is a solid option, if just not for them.

Idk how to hash the meaning of this out, exactly. It seems indisputable that it's a viable option in that you definitely _can_ use it for various things, as evidenced by the fact that millions and millions of people _do_ use it for various things. But that seems like a totally separate question to me from liking it, or whether it's good in this sense or that.

Is it coherent to say that it's a ‘solid option’ and also that it fucking sucks and I don't understand how anybody can put up with it? Maybe somehow that's where I'm at with it

I couldn't give a damn about macOS or the "Linux desktop". Yet I would still call Windows a disaster. Windows 10 was released almost 6 years ago now, and it's still a Frankenstein mess of 10 different UI styles dating all the way back to Win95, with no apparent drive to fix it up and make it consistent. Microsoft has extremely weak engineering culture.

They cater to business more than individual consumers. Backwards compatibility matters to them much more than ui consistency.

I tend to agree with that for my own uses. I don't care if it's pretty if it works.

That argument doesn't make sense. UI has no impact on API compatibility. The only situation in which software would break is if it's doing screen scraping and automated input, in which case that software deserves to break.

Backwards compatibility is not an excuse to allow 20 years of tech debt to accumulate anyway.

Those myriad incompatible UIs are just as annoying at work, so how does "cater to business more than individual consumers" make them any better?

If they cater to businesses, what is the point of those UI modifications?

You’re right, I guess as a Mac fan I’m biased. I’m used to having luxury features like local accounts and being allowed to disable updates. It’s not fair to expect that from Windows.

Why bother about how the windows installation process works or their policy for permanently disabling updates? If they changed those things would it really make you want to use Windows? I suspect not. Most people who use Windows are fine with having a MS account and fine with regular updates.

Apple products are so overpriced that it is indeed a luxury. Windows is for the regular people because they like candy crash and Linux is for geeks.

Half the features force you to log into an Apple/iCloud account anyways.

At this point, considering every mobile phone requires you to sigh into some account as step 1 of setting up the device I don't really care that MS asks too. As a bonus all my Windows 10 keys are associated with my account and it makes things easier.

> luxury features like local accounts

i hate it here i hate it here i hate it here i hate it here i hate it here i hate it here

Was probably true until macOS "went to 11," a la Spinal Tap.

There you have it:

"Windows Stonehenge"

Windows Odyssey

Technically both statements could be true. Doesn't seem likely though.

My personal theory is that Microsoft probably thought Apple would stay on 10 forever, but with M1 macOS moved to 11. 11 > 10...

Because I have a very low opinion of most marketing people that seems plausible to me, but Mac and Windows seem to have such wildly different markets that I think it is unlikely.

Seriously. I can't imagine anyone whose decision between a Mac and a Windows PC is a complete dead tie, except for Mac OS being 11 compared to Windows' lowly 10.

this one goes to 11

Thermally it actually does and the CPU begins to throttle.

The first version of Windows 11 with all out Arm support will be called "Large Surf"

“Windows Infinity” done.

To be followed by "Windows Infinity SP2".

We joke but these are marketing names intended to make a big deal of a large batch of features. With today's continuous delivery (ie. incremental upgrades) this is no longer needed, at least not for technical reasons. But from a marketing perspective, it provides the opportunity to generate buzz in the news with "OMG best version yet"-style announcements.

Then Apple will switch to transfinite cardinal numbers.

I thought the only reason they went from 8 to 10 was because "Windows 9" might be a match for application regexs trying to match Windows 9x.

Edit: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/191279-why-is-it-calle...

That was a big part of it. I know a lot of software did the lazy check for that versioning-wise back in the day.

On a positive note at least everyone has got over this allergy to incrementing versions. Hopefully they’ll get over the allergy of anything but rolling releases next so we can have some stability and lifecycle control back again.

They jumped from 8 to 10 for the same reasons after all

Is there a name for this phenomenon?

It happened with a lot of other software (Firefox vs Chrome is just one example).

Version number envy?

The first paragraph of the linked article discusses this.

that's why you can never trust microsoft. people seem to be starting to forget that.

I'm guessing they made the decision to make it evergreen too late in the process so they were still selling it over-the-counter as traditional shrink-wrap software. A Windows 10 license purchased directly from Microsoft lasts "forever" and can be transferred to a new computer.

They won't make that mistake with the next Windows. I'm sure they will still offer the Home edition bundled with new computers and locked to that hardware. But I would bet money that for the next version of Windows, the Pro edition and any license not locked to a specific motherboard will only be available by monthly subscription. This will allow them to make it truly evergreen because they'll have permanent recurring revenue.

At that point, if it costs more than 50 cents monthly I'm not paying. Previous versions of Enterprise costed less than this over their lifetime. Not to mention Professional.

> Edit: Yeah I didn't imagine it

Sure. You could have used the posted article itself as your source since that already covered it.

That was not very believable right from the beginning. Product branding, no matter how good, becomes stale over time and refreshes are inevitable.

That's funny, they think they'll stop supporting Windows 10 in 4 years, when 16% of Windows computers still run Windows 7. In 2025 I bet there will still be almost 10% of all Windows computers running Windows 7

It'll be XP all over again.

Possibly. For those who clung to Windows XP or 7, it was because the alternative was relatively unappealing (Vista, later 8 or 10, respectively).

For those who are on Windows 10 because they made a pragmatic choice to keep compatibility with their back catalog of Windows-only software and get the latest security but pay for it in the form of nags, schizophrenic control panels, and forced updates, Windows 11 has an opportunity to take over fast.

How? By removing one or more of the above pain points (and others I haven't listed). I'm not that hopeful that MS would reverse course on these user-hostile things, but I guess I am slightly hopeful for a scrap or two could potentially be thrown my way.

What if Windows 11 was just Windows a repackaged Windows 10 LTSC 2021? By most rumors, it's more different than WIndows 10 than that, but even if it was only a reboxed SKU that consumers would buy, it would sell like hotcakes.

When is the cut-off date for getting new machines with Windows 10 preinstalled? Push that out about 5 years to find the real date for when they can start talking about end-of-lifing Windows 10. Actually doing so can probably happen a couple of years later, but they'll still have to support it at a reduced level for a while.

"Windows 10" isn't a version in the same way "Windows 7" was, if you haven't upgraded your OS to a new one that still happens to be called "Windows 10" in 18 months you're out of support (barring LTS release, education, or enterprise versions which have their own lifecycles). I.e. just because it says "Windows 10" in the name doesn't mean you're on anything that resembles the original "Windows 10" that launched in 2015.

As such I think what is happening here isn't a "please pick to upgrade to the new version of Windows" popup that feels like a special upgrade rather just another thing that will be pushed down via standard windows update automatically to replace the old version of 10 while nobody notices - as has happened since Windows 10 released. Except this time it has more changes than a typical Windows 10 release and likely a marketing update (maybe changing the name to "Windows 11" but I think more likely they are just going to call it "Windows" because of the above changes in the way updates work and Windows 7 and 8 support ending leaving only this version).

EOL for Windows 7 meant end of support. It's not like they could force your OS to update whether you liked it or not, and Microsoft was charging money for the update as well.

The importance of license revenue has changed; Windows 10 was offered at no cost to existing W7 and W8 users. The ability to control user's computers has changed as well, with forced W10 updates.

EOL for Windows 10 can actually mean EOL for any W10 instance that connects to the internet. If you're a W10 user, Microsoft won't have to ask you nicely to update to W11.

Windows definitely needs improving. I tried the Gnome 40 desktop recently and it's much more polished, consistent and refined.

Does the file chooser show thumbnails yet?

Yep, shows thumbnails for pictures, videos, pdfs etc. More formats than Windows in fact. Windows has been standing still, the rest of the world hasn't.

EDIT: I used "Files", not the file picker.

Thumbnail preview is a _massive_ attack surface. All those RCEs in JPEGs, MP4s, PDFs etc are now potentially immediately executed upon displaying the file. No thanks.

You’re going to want to look at those pictures if you have them or do you just collect file names?

See, the nice thing about Linux is that you can always disable what you don't like. You're never just helplessly subject to the whims of the developers.

So turn it off if it worries you. Keep in mind thumbnail rendering is sandboxed[0]. It's Linux, the reason I like it is that it doesn't try to prevent you from doing whatever you want.

[0] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-desktop/-/blob/master/R...

Lol. Although, at least for open source, by the time a hacker has an exploit prepared, someone will have rewritten the code.

What do you do between opening the file manager and opening the image/video itself that verifies it doesn’t have any RCE exploits that other people aren’t doing?

I am using GNOME 40 and I just opened a file picker in Totem, the official video player. I did not find a way to switch the file picker from "Details" mode (one line per file, with size/type columns and a very very small thumbnail) to a "grid thumbnail" mode where they would be recognizable. The related bug is still open at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233, so I don't think this has been fixed.

Ah yes I used "Files" and not the file picker. I guess the file picker is part of GTK and therefore cannot use the rest of the gnome infrastructure?

The reason does not matter. It really is truly, absolutely irrelevant.

If Windows has issues with paths longer than 260 chars (only PARTIALLY fixed since Windows 10, v1607), I do not care that NTFS actually has no problem and supports 32,767 Unicode characters and the actual problem is the Windows API (and since v1607, apps that have not been updated to support the new behaviour). It is an example of a bug/limitation/lack-of-polish of Windows. The internal details are irrelevant.

Gnome has a lot more of these issues(thumbnails being one of the most visible and annoying ones) than Windows. Gnome (any ver) is not more polished than Windows.

I agree that the reason does not matter and is irrelevant to the end-user. I was just speculating as to why they have not "just fixed it". However, I disagree that Windows is more polished. Windows is made up of a mixture of UI frameworks/controls/apps, some going back decades. Much of this legacy is poorly integrated and even basic things like drag-and-drop doesn't work consistently. At least Gnome is consistent and they have a vision.

If there are issues you'd like to see fixed, the best way to get those dealt with would be to contribute.

I would very much like to see the file chooser/ open and save dialog in GTK fixed because it affects a lot of software even if one is not using Gnome. It affects Firefox on Linux on all DEs, it even affects Gimp on Windows. I am not a GTK/C/Vala programmer though.

I would like for gnome apps to behave better when opened on DEs other than Gnome.

Other than that, I don't really care about Gnome. I use Plasma on Linux.

Well, if you want some changes made, you would have to define what you mean by "fixed" and come up with some concrete steps to do that, and then implement those steps, or find a person who can do them for you.

If the app uses GtkFileChooserNative, it can likely already be configured to use an external file dialog, with some caveats: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/a5cxwk/firefox_v64_can...

You sure about that? I see the bug is still open:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233

This is not about thumbnails in the file manager but about the file chooser (open/save dialog).

I believe the following post is still relevant:

https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna...

At least KDE does this properly:

https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/04/comparison-of-file-choose...

KDE looks really good too, but I mostly prefer the minimalism/simplicity/aesthetic of Gnome.

It will until you upgrade your Ubuntu version and you open it up to find a message that "your file manager is deprecated. use this crappy fork with fewer features instead", only to have it abandoned after a few years because the devs for the fork got butthurt.

I'm so glad I ditched Linux. Got tired of losing features because of people's egos, and being told ffmpeg was deprecated when it really wasn't became the final straw.

Is that relevant to Gnome? It's used the same file manager "Nautilus" for years. Apple and Microsoft are also quite capable of killing software projects.

How long have you been using Gnome for? I'd been a while for me, but back when I was using Linux it seemed like Nautilus was frequently dropping features for things I didn't care about.

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/gnom...

Gnome may be different now, but they were part of a pattern in the GNU/Linux community that ultimately caused me to leave it. I knew I couldn't rely on either Gnome or distros themselves because they seemed to have no problem changing things out from underneath you, and more often than not it seemed like those things were done as a form of self promotion.

This wasn't a one off thing. This was the Linux world for a good number of years, in my experience. Anyone who used Ubuntu or Debian from 2008 to around 2013 might remember the forks that happened because DEs up and decided that they knew better than their own users.

Not specifically about Gnome, but I brought up FFmpeg (or rather libav) as another example of the bullshit of Linux. Some devs decided that they didn't like the architecture of FFmpeg and wanted it to be organized to their liking, so they forked it into Libav/avconv, which was inferior to FFmpeg but the people who run the Debian repositories were convinced that Libav was the future so they replaced FFmpeg with an alias to avconv that had a totally misleading deprecation message that was basically a lie.

So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Gnome one day decided to get rid of thumbnails and not provide an option to turn them back on. Yes, I am bitter from the latter years of my Linux usage. Somehow macOS can update and upgrade its versions without causing me to question whether aspects of the UI I rely upon will spontaneously disappear or gaslight me into thinking I shouldn't be using those things anymore.

I've been using i3 up until recently. I'm trying out Gnome because it works out-of-the-box and e.g. Sway does not. Yes the software churn is rather worrying. I hope they learn from the mistakes.

The thing that irks me more than churn is not providing pathways forward. It's like, if you're going to get rid of bookmarks, then either give me an add-on that brings them back or give me time to adjust to not having bookmarks. Gnome used to be one of the worst at communicating their intentions. You never knew what you were going to get if you were going to upgrade Gnome. But I come from the philosophy of frontend JavaScript development where everything is announced, has a deprecation warnings, features extracted into libraries, and so forth. The people who work on GNU/Linux related development come off as very arrogant in their decision making, even if they aren't intending to be arrogant.

Just so people are aware, I understand that things could have changed in the last 9 years. However, those kind of user experiences can permanently ruin the reputation of OSS projects.

You are perceiving arrogance where there is none. These are volunteer-driven projects, for better or worse the deal has always been "take it or leave it," or fork it if that's what you prefer. If there is something you want extracted into a library, just go and extract it and make the library. Of course if you choose to abandon it entirely then it's going to be a total crapshoot if it improves the way you want it to.

This attitude results in the only possible answer being "leave it". Nobody has time to fix it in any nontrivial way who isn't being paid to do it, and if you're being paid, it's not volunteer work and you're supposed to pull your weight.

RedHat is not a volunteer project and it ate half of Linux. Volunteer projects in fact tend to be the more stable and polished parts of it.

I'm not sure what you mean, the paid people are still volunteering. They don't really have to spend company time upstreaming anything, they could technically keep all their patches in a private fork, but the company allows them to upstream things because it makes the most sense. You also don't have to leave it, you can also make a private fork too, and work on it slowly, if it makes the most sense to you.

These complaints about Red Hat are what make no sense to me, if you believe they are "eating Linux" for the worse then I would advise you to produce a version of Linux with all of the Red Hat commits removed, and see for yourself if it's more stable and polished. It may not be, because you would likely also be removing a lot of the bug fixes they upstream.

They kept Nautilus but have absolutely gutted it over time removing things like split panes. I think it actually had more features in GNOME 3.00 than today. I was one of the weirdos that loved GNOME 3.00 at release but I felt they've taken more steps back than forward chasing who knows what.

Immediately pressed ctrl+o when I read this. Went to "Images" folder. Yes, thumbnails are there.

Do multiple displays actually work yet?

ie. Can you plug-in laptop to two displays, arrange windows, and then disconnect and reconnect and have the windows in the same place?

Multiple displays definitely work, but I had to check regarding your question about screen arrangement. That works.

Gnome version 3.38.3 Ubuntu 20.10 Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen rigged to a Dell thunderbolt dock Monitor 1 from dock via hdmi Monitor 2 from dock via displayport

This is madness!

Does it still crash every 15 minutes because that is what it did for me when I tried Fedora 34?

Well Fedora is bleeding edge, RedHat's equivalent to Windows insider builds. Try Ubuntu LTS or Debian.

Ubuntu doesn't ship with Gnome 40.

You have to choose between stability and the latest/greatest. You cannot have both. Not even Apple users get both.

Following the current trend at Microsoft, it will probably be called "Microsoft Azure for Desktops" :)

I can picture a world where they just host Windows on Azure and you get a thin-client that must be internet connected to use "your" computer. (I am pretty sure this exists in some form for actual cloud-hosted virtual machines, which some companies force their employees/contractors to use, despite the performance issues.)

"Windows into the Abyss"

With its built in abysmalware.

Microsoft can not make any meaningful changes to windows 10 without pissing off all of their users. Here's what a new OS means for the average windows user: One day, they boot up Windows and all the low-level APIs they don't care about are still the same but it looks slightly different. Five minutes later, they need to adjust some setting and they can't find it.

I wonder if this is simply a financial decision to get more money out of institutions that are using win10 and need the support... I think there is no technical reason for this move, because the Windows core code base does not seem to have changed that much since Windows 10 - or even Vista/2000 - and there are no breakthrough changes coming that I'm aware of. This also seems like a bit of a back paddling move after having announced that Win10 be essentially a rolling release. In any case I don't mind either way, because I don't use Windows, but it looks like it could again cost millions of tax payer money to our state's institutions that somehow can't wane themselves of Windows, even though alternatives exist.

Is it just me or does it feel like they've been more tightly lipped about Windows 11 than they have about previous upcoming Windows releases?

New Microsoft desperately wants to be like Apple. They're being tight lipped because they're imitating. They want their products to seem integrated, well designed, well engineered, even... exciting. But they don't have half the taste.

More important is what next version of Windows 10 LTSC gonna look like and when support for that will end.

AFAIK it's planned to be relased in second half of 2021, and will have 5 years support for LTSC, and 10 years support for IOT LTSC (whatever that means).

I believe Windows 11 will be running atop Linux.

Linux on the desktop :)

looks at calendar Is this the year yet? :D

I'm happy that abstraction has been working well for operating systems. I always think that one day, porting the OS from one device to another is as simple as copying over a VHD file.

It's VHDX files now, much cooler... Or something.

I've heard such rumors

Embrace and extend...

Fantasy: the next Windows is Windows Infinite, a unix-like operating system.

GNU Windows

Honest question - we have an old .Net web application that still uses Web Forms (I know, I know). Most of the team wants to move to better technology, but there are a few outspoken members who just love Web Forms and they don't want to migrate the site to use anything else. The business doesn't want to invest in an overhaul because of the expense and they point to these vocal team members who love Web Forms. I've been saying for some time that Microsoft will stop supporting Web Forms. Does the "retirement" of Windows 10 mean that's finally going to happen?

Not sure why you think there would be a link between the two.

Because Web Forms is tied to .Net 4.x and previous and I thought Microsoft said support for .Net 4.x ended with the support of Windows 10.

Jokes on them... I'm still happily using Windows 7!

This has to be related to the additions and changes relating to the linux subsystem MS has been developing. I suspect they have been working behind the scenes to maintain backwards compatibility for NT systems along with their .net 5 development.

Let's see if they finally will be using the Lindows trademark they bought in 2002.

https://www.linux.org/threads/lindows.11236/

Good thing I'm using Windows 7 Pro.

Cheers

You probably have a good firewall, don't you?

And not running JS on the websites.

Sadly, support is starting to slip in major applications. For example you can't install Python 3.9 on Windows 7.

I think he was joking. Windows 7 is EOL

Probably he is not.

I use Windows 7 myself. I hated Windows 10, the telemetry, ads, candy crush, random reboots, updates that erase settings and so on are just crazy, and then seemly it often goes out of it's way to break important software.

> I use Windows 7 myself. I hated Windows 10, the telemetry

https://betanews.com/2019/07/11/microsoft-adds-telemetry-win...

that's why i always disabled auto security updates until I vet all of them

there are people on this cursed earth who roll with windows 2000 on prod, you know?

Probably the last good version of Windows. I have fond memories of Windows 2000. Everything after it, not so much.

The last good version of Windows? The last good version of Windows was CP/M.

I don't trust those new-fangled operating systems.

Until recently, we had a CNC lathe at work powered by a VAXstation 3100 running (if memory serves) VAX/VMS 5.3... (Released in the late eighties)

If you have a VT420 can I buy it? DM me.

I wanted to keep my riced Windows 7 installation until software incompatibility forced me off of it.

I really believe that, UX-wise, Windows 7 was the high point.

> I really believe that, UX-wise, Windows 7 was the high point.

Yup, definitely.

I still use Windows 7 as well.

I run into this a bit - it can be a problem or not depending. I use a Linux laptop for development, and even have a Windows XP virtualbox for a workflow program that I can't get to run on newer Windows OSs - it's needed for legacy apps.

Using Windows 7 on a PC I can only use a version 3 series version of GnuCash, not the latest version 4 release, which is available to Windows 10, but my Linux distro (OpenSuse) only has the version 3 series of GnuCash. So I can gpg the GnuCash xml file and share the accounting file across my machines using github.

Cheers

I use Windows 7 on my 2012 desktop, Mac on my laptops, and Linux for some of my own personal development. At this point, my desktop is a glorified web browser but I still mainly use that because I like it the best. Since I don't play games on my computers, I've yet to find a reason to switch either my hardware or software on my Windows system.

Is there really a hard incompatibility or are the official binaries just not compiled with Windows 7 as a target?

On the Mac side, the official Python 3.9 binaries only support Mavericks and above, but MacPorts has builds for Tiger, which predates Windows Vista.

Edit: And for kicks I even just pulled out my Tiger VM to confirm. `python39` builds and runs fine.

wish I could still be using windows 7, I hate windows 10. But my motherboard died and my new motherboard isn't compatible with windows 7. Only found out after the OS install failed for the 3rd time and searching for reasons why.

...unless you're using LTSC, in which case you're good until 2029.

IE11 support was tied to Windows 10, so now we finally have an official EOL for it. (though I don't see that mentioned in the article)

Already had EOL announced

https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/05/microsoft-IE11-retired-ju...

So we all have to switch to Linux by then.

My personal longevity aspiration is to witness the great Windows-95 vs Windows-[20]95 debacle

Well, MacOS went to 11. Windows can't get left behind.

As a life long Linux fan I hold the position that the reason they started moving to Linux is all the MS engineers realized how much easier it was to use Linux when MS first started rolling out Azure and that's why they put in WSL.

My hope is the new Windows is now just the Linux kernel that runs an emulator for windows.

EDIT: For clarification this is mostly meant humorously, but there is some hope there. Because dream big right.

bingo..

I think it rather had to do with microsoft selling compute time rather than licenses with Azure, and stop caring that people run their workload on windows or linux, as long as they run them in azure.

My wet dream: MS buys Canonical and Windows + Ubuntu become one.

As a Devops / sysadmin the biggest value MS brings to the table is Azure AD/MDM/PIM. I feel like we really have stepped up our security game with those tools.

I just wanted some Linux distro that had something equivalent. Ubuntu 21 already has native AD integration.

Must be a sign right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com