Microsoft ends free upgrade from Windows 7 to 11

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 233 points –
Microsoft ends free upgrade from Windows 7 to 11
mashable.com

Microsoft ends free upgrade from Windows 7 to 11::undefined

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Upgrading from windows 7 to Linux is still free

Linux, the only thing Lemmy loves more than beans and the proletariat.

God I love beans

and Linux and proles too I suppose

That's what's awesome about Linux and in my opinion there are more options for what you can do with Linux.

You can run Linux in Windows now, so actually false.

I wish I had the expertise to use Linux.

It really doesn't take a lot of expertise to use linux, depending on what you're doing (and what distro you're using) it might not even take opening a terminal

My parents use Linux without knowing it. They pretty much only need the internet browser...

Is there like a set and forget thing for Linux?

Like with windows and Mac, I just kinda boot up my laptop and then that’s it.

I'm not sure I understand the question tbth, on my computer I usually just leave it on all the time, with occasional restarts when I decide I want to do updates

No settings change or anything when I turn it on if that's what you mean, I just turn it on, and use it like a normal computer

Yeah, often on linux the setup process is even faster and easier than on windows, and there isn't much you have to do after that to get things to work. You just boot it up, log in, and then do whatever you want to.

If I'm honest a lot of what I learned about computers was as a result of switching to Linux. As a Windows user, breaking Windows is such a problem that you don't dare try to learn by doing. Linux is comparably easy to fix or restore.

The biggest problem with breaking windows is nobody really knows how to fix anything, it's just a shit load of random "did you try this?" Until you either find it's working again (after trying something that didn't work, then backing out that change, or it just randomly starts working again without really doing anything) or you learn to live with it.

With Linux, if you can break it, you can be pretty sure someone somewhere has broken it the same way before, and analyzed the shit out of it including reading the source, and figured out how to fix it.

I don’t see how that’s true. Windows is a more widely used Desktop OS, and Linux has way more variation in running software be it package managers, desktop experiences, etc. Even things like what version you started with may influence the version of a package you have. The odds of finding an identical setup is a lot lower.

I'm just speaking from experience - which of course is influenced by how much I am willing to pay for a solution, which is nothing. For the most part, people offering solutions for windows expect to be paid, while Linux gurus are more likely to do it for free

Software wise that’s absolutely true for MacOS, but Windows has plenty of free and open source software.

If you lack the bare minimum of knowledge to install a new operating system, there are plenty Youtube tutorials around which take your hand step by step.

Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ua-d9OeUOg

We get plenty of new users these days, primarily because of the gaming boom thanks to Valve. Don't be shy, it's easy if you've done it once

learning linux is a process, but it's way easier now than it used to be. It's more of an easy to learn hard to master situation today as compared to the old "heres a box of source, compile it and hope it works, lmao" in the days of yore.

Use Debian or a Debian fork like Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Popos! And it should be a pretty easy transition. I recommend Debian because it's not as configured for you out of gate, but it's still easily configurable.

You don't need much knowledge to do the basics. Picking one to start with is likely a harder choice lol

It really isn't that hard these days. Installation isnt harder than installing Windows and most Linux distros have a built-in store now to install apps from. Definitely takes a bit of a learning curve but it isn't as intimidating as it once was.

I bet more people would try Linux if Linux users wouldn't start slapping their dicks in everybody's faces the second they read Windows or Microsoft

Honestly, why do they care at this point? Do they really think someone's going to buy an upgrade to Windows 11?

Probably Grey Market keys being taken from old Business Win7 machines that are getting wasted in bulk if I had to guess.

I enjoyed my time with Windows 7. I even remember the Windows 7 launch party marketing. Never upgraded to 10, certainly not upgrading to 11. Happy with my adventures in Linux.

10 is way better for games than 7. I’m never touching 11, it’s awful. 10 is great when you debloat, use OOSU10, and use ClassicShell (or the updated version I cannot remember the name of) to bring back the 7-style start menu.

I’m excited to make Linux my daily driver for most things, but for a heavy game-player, a backup Win10 install is a must. Especially for VR.

I loved Windows 7. The reason I ended up switching to Linux is (ironically) that I felt like the KDE desktop was closer to Windows 7 than the tiled start menu that Windows 8.0 had.

10 LTSC is the last tolerable version of Windows.

Does LTSC have NVidia drivers for RTX cards? My LTSB partition doesn’t and now I can’t use it for games. I’m using… 10… home. ugh

I’m going to get a new SSD and dual-boot something like Mint for a daily driver, and 10 pro or LTSC for games that run better (and VR games.)

Not who you replied to but I haven't had any issues with a 3000 series card and LTSC, but I only used it for a whooping 12 hours since I got the card (I do 99% of gaming directly on Linux) so take my answer with a grain of salt.

I might be missing something but can't you just manually download the drivers from the Nvidia website on LTSB?

Thank you so much, good to know!

Alas, on LTSB now, the DCH drivers do not work. The last standard game ready driver that works with even GTX was back in 2021. Nothing works with RTX :c

You mean 2000 was the last tolerable version of Windows.

Everything since has been just the irritating pile of trash anyone doing anything decent with has had to put up with. Linux is nice to play around with but I sure the fuck have a long list of shit that isn't going to magically work on it.

Just updated a Windows 7 box to Windows 10 the other day. So apparently this only applies to Windows 11. No idea if it lets you use Windows 10 as a stepping stone between 7 and 11 but don't care. I have no plans to use Windows 11 anywhere anytime soon, so as far as I'm concerned if this means it will stop nagging me to upgrade, so much the better.

Last version of Windows I used was XP, Switched to Linux in 2005.

Boy it was a cool period to buy premium 2nd hand hardware when Vista came out. Because the hardware wasn't supported on Vista.

Who cares when you have the github script.

And Linux..

What github script?

This absolutely magical one.

HWID or whatever is dead, but KMS lives on. I used this script for the first time recently and it’s magical. Best of all, you can just access it via powershell!

HWID is temporarily dead.

I am completely confident they'll get it working again.

I mean, it's completely up to Microsoft. It was based on the free upgrade from win 7 to 10 that Microsoft still provided (and now has stopped)

It's the year of the Linux desktop boisss!

I want to run win 10 (or 11 if supports) on a VM with a GNU/Linux host. I have heard about ltsc and ltsb, and now this post has mentioned oo shutup 10. So which one is better to make my win machine lightweight and privacy friendly? I am planning to run only certain specific program like SPSS. No heavy gaming. Thanks.

SPSS has a Linux version and is Java, so no Windows required.