Windows 10 to be retired in 2025, as new OS unveils

Microsoft says it will stop supporting Windows 10 in 2025, as it prepares to unveil a major revamp of its Windows operating system later this month.

When Windows 10 was launched, Microsoft said it was intended to be the final version of the operating system.

But from 14 October 2025, there will be no new updates or security fixes for either the Home or Pro versions.

And Microsoft says its successor will represent one of the “most significant updates” to the OS in the past decade.

Its predecessor, Windows 7, was retired in 2020, although businesses could pay Microsoft to continue receiving updates for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise.

From October 2025, there will be no new updates or security fixes for Windows 10.

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I use Windows 10 for work, as long as you learn how to disable the annoying parts (telemetry and forced updates) it is quite a good OS. Looking forward to test Windows 11 in a VM (no way I will install it on a production machine for at least a few months after the release.

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Got to be brave and just go for it @iPaul :joy:

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So much for the supposed “last Windows OS”. ^.^;

I guess it wasn’t well made enough to be extensible enough into the future like they planned.

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We were joking about that at work as well. But 2025 is super aggressive for companies. It’s a high expectation for companies to update their OS in 4 years.

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I’m looking forward to see what they announce next Thursday. I’m hoping that WSL is more fully integrated by that point. Hopefully it doesn’t end up to be another disaster like Windows 8 though…

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Saw a snarky report on this, saying that Windows has finally fully transformed into a KDE theme. :wink:

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So what is new in Windows 11? New kernel? :slight_smile:

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I’m really curious as to how will they spin the “why” part. Win10 is okay-ish UI-wise and very stable. Not sure why is Win11 necessary.

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Yeah @dimitarvp, I’m wondering the same thing. But then again, a lot of people thought the same things about Windows 7 and hung onto it for WAY too long. But then again, Windows 8 was a train wreck…

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Wondering about the Windows 11 price and licensing options (subscribe model or perceptual).

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Well to be fair, to me Windows is just a game launcher anyway so I don’t care much.

As a techie, I am well-aware of the lifecycles of all software, OS-es included, and I know we have to upgrade periodically or else we’ll be left in the dust to deal with a half-broken piece of software.

But you do get tired of it. Once things stabilize a little more in my life I’ll definitely make it a task to learn modern Linux desktop environments and window managers properly – including how to play most Windows games under Linux – and will leave Windows behind forever.

It’s just too much churn and the OS never was more than a toy anyway, at least to me and most people I knew.

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When you get time, try i3:

When I ran Linux more in a desktop mode, I loved it. Super fast, keyboard navigation and app launching, etc.

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I hear it’s very manual and requires tinkering, is that true?

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It is definitely NOT a point-and-click interface like gnome, kde, etc. but for those that are already used to keyboard navigation, it was quite nice. The only challenge that I really found was knowing the true name for some of the programs I wanted to run. Since you don’t have a “start menu” or anything of the sort, you really have to know the name of the Linux command to run your program. For some programs like Firefox, Chrome, etc., this is not a big deal but there are others that took me a while to actually figure out.

As far as config changes go, I only made one small change in the config file to use a different “mod” key. By default, i3 uses the “Alt” key and I changed it to use the “Win” key instead. Now there are a LOT of options that you can tweak, and a lot of people do, but I just never went down that road.

To make it easier for me, I installed i3 on top of the existing Ubuntu desktop. Then at login, you can choose which “desktop” you want to use: stick with Ubuntu’s default or select i3. That way you can switch back and forth if you want to. I found this easy so when I needed to jump into things like the Settings app (which kind of requires the rest of gnome), I could just logout from i3 and then log back in using the standard Ubuntu desktop.

Hope this helps a little.

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Yep, it does help. :+1:

I don’t mind tinkering, with one condition – I want to have one brainless and JustWorks™ desktop environment + window manager combo which I can come back to at any time if I get tired of tinkering.

I admit I didn’t remember this detail that you shared:

But now that I did it makes sense, plus I remembered doing something very similar long time ago, so that’s giving me a peace of mind that I can screw around and do the famous “Linux rices” and if/when I get fed up I can just re-auth the user and go to XFCE. Very helpful, thanks!

I agree that this will likely be off-putting at first but meh – I plan to make Linux a long-term, if not lifetime, home for my computing so I am sure in just a few weeks I’ll get used to all the specifics.

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