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from the avoiding-planned-obsolescence-and-DRM dept.
The KDE community has an outreach campaign encouraging the use of the Plasma desktop by people with older, but usable, laptops. Vista10 support will come to an end and Vista11 has been designed not to run on many still viable models of computer due to several factors including Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) requirements centered around TPM-2.0. GNU/Linux can not only keep the old system working, it can improve its performance, ease of use, and general security. KDE Plasma can be part of that.
Even if you agree to this tech extortion now, in a few years time, they will do it again as they have done many times in the past.
But things don't have to be this way...
Upgrade the smart way! Keep the machine you've got and switch to Linux and Plasma.
Linux can give new life to your laptop. Combined with KDE's Plasma desktop, you get all the advantages of the safety, stability and hi tech of Linux, with all the features of a beautiful, modern and powerful graphic environment.
Their campaign page covers where and how beginners can get help, what the differences are, the benefits gained, and more.
[Editor's Comment: This is obviously a KDE/Plasma centric promotion - which doesn't mean that it is bad but there are lots of other options too. Which Linux OS and desktop would you recommend for someone wanting to make the move from Windows to Linux? Which are the best for a beginner, and which desktops provide the most intuitive interface for someone who has never sat down in front of a Linux computer before?--JR]
Previously:
(2025) Microsoft is Digging its Own Grave With Windows 11, and It Has to Stop
(2023) The Wintel Duopoly Plans to Send 240 Million PCs to the Landfill
(2023) Two Security Flaws in the TPM 2.0 Specs Put Cryptographic Keys at Risk
(2022) Report Claims Almost Half of Systems are Ineligible for Windows 11 Upgrades
(2021) Windows 11 Will Leave Millions of PCs Behind, and Microsoft is Struggling to Explain Why
(2019) Microsoft's Ongoing Tactics Against Competitors Explained, Based on its Own Documents
(2016) Windows 10 Anniversary Update to Require TPM 2.0 Module
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 07, @11:45PM (6 children)
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 is supported till 2027/2032
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021 [microsoft.com]
The disadvantages of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 are:
No Windows/Microsoft Store[1] (and thus lower compatibility with some stuff), no Cortana, less telemetry, etc.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2082821/how-to-install-microsoft-store-to-my-windows-10-io [microsoft.com]
See also:
https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol#windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021 [massgrave.dev]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08, @12:29AM (2 children)
Okay, this is interesting. So you're saying I should "upgrade" from Windows 7 now?
I've gotten quite used to a nice, calm, stable OS that doesn't need any more updates, thank you. But I will try your great idea on one of my unused machines.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by epitaxial on Sunday June 08, @02:22AM (1 child)
That was my upgrade path some years ago. Went to the LTSC build and it's great. No cortana or AI button bullshit that pops up. Only occasional security updates and no pop ups about trying to sell me a Xbox or clickbait news headlines. No web searches built into the start menu either. I still can't find a good way to permanently disable their stupid realtime virus protection.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 08, @02:55AM
"realtime virus protection"? Is that Windows Defender?
Some years ago I was using McAfee's "RealProtect". Rather than scan everything always, it watched critical system stuff and flagged any attempt at change. I'm a quite safe surfer so I rarely had it react, but a few legit things here and there, so I know it worked. And it stayed out of the way otherwise.
Sometime recently, past 9 months or so, they changed it so now it installs a pile of shinola, that is very difficult to remove. The supposed uninstaller won't even run (or it just didn't remove the crap- I forget now).
I've messed with 10, and of course have 10 and 11 at work, and I don't hate it there, but I'm not admin. I don't currently have lots of 'net data allotment. Enough to do normal stuff, but not huge updates. Anything big I need I take computer to work, library, etc., and download. But normal Windows 10 and 11 updates would destroy my monthly data allotment, so I can't run 10 or 11.
I have to wonder (dream / fantasize) about a world where an OS isn't released until it's mostly done. Not sending broken garbage out, expecting everyone to deal with garbage, huge downloads / long installs / reboots / possibly breaking things. I'd love a class action suit against Microsoft. I guess we need a govt. agency similar to NTSA or NHTSA to force them to only release correct software. Sigh.
Thank you for the tips- I will try it. I'm on borrowed time using older browsers on Win7. No problems yet, but I can tell some moronic sites are getting fussy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday June 08, @12:08PM (2 children)
This reads like the daily post on /g/ about LTSC, which is where I learned about it.
Install it in a VM
Set it up to enable rdesktop access (pretty easy, like 5 minute job)
Set up Apache Guacamole on your local VM, Docker host, K8S host, etc with a user login and profile to connect to the above.
Profit. Or at least have fun. I have not had any problems with this in "some years" at least. Every once in a while Apache Guacamole flakes out or an upgrade goes weird. But it pretty much "just works".
There are, of course, minor variations that are possible.
BTW win11 works fine too. LTSC is not just a win10 thing.
Hilariously, the main/only thing I use virtualized windows for is RSAT for those Samba-tool CLI situations that are too weird or I need ground-floor truth of whats in AD, and doing "stuff" with document scanners and printers using official mfgr software. There's not much use for a windows desktop in 2025 beyond being a web browser bootloader.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday June 09, @08:32PM (1 child)
"There's not much use for a windows desktop in 2025"
I have clients running lathes with job scheduling and management software that requires windows. Another, sells cellular phones, and the industry standard point-of-sale system they use that integrates with the carriers, requires windows. Another is a notary public... some document management software they need to use is windows only. Another makes medical imaging topographers attached to computers running windows, and the exam review, analysis, and management software is windows only. Another is an accounting firm, they aren't giving up the ability to run Quickbooks and Sage desktop, and they aren't going to switch to Calc or even web-based Excel for that matter.
It's true a lot of stuff has moved and continues to move into the browser, but the amount of stuff that still requires windows in commercial settings is enormous. And that's without addressing that stuff like IT availability - its trivial to find somewhere that can you can outsource your help desk, desktop management, and maintenance of your small / medium windows domain; or trivial to find staff if you want to in-source that if your on windows. Finding Linux admins and support is more difficult, and more expensive, so what's the payoff?
It's 2025... and none of this has changed from 2015 or 2005. Windows isn't going anywhere any time soon.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 09, @09:44PM
Hmm interesting I send my clients invoices using Quickbooks Online I wasn't aware they still sold a native desktop client. I'm a small timer, perhaps the big accounting firms are different.
But, yeah, if its not hyperspecialized with a small audience, there's not much left for Windows apps.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jelizondo on Sunday June 08, @04:36AM
I'm partial to KDE Plasma, which I'm currently running on my main driver over Fedora. It's kind of different from Windows but I think an average user can get used to it pretty quickly and the availability of apps and whatnot is good.
But, I still have a Win10 machine which I use for games (or emergencies) which is normally not connected to the Internet, point of fact the Ethernet/Bluetooth chip is disabled in BIOS just to make sure. No updates or whatever, but I mostly play old stuff for which updates are no longer available anyway.
For a long while I had to use Win because emloyer/clients demanded it, but I got out as soon as I could. Having to buy new hardware so MS can get more telemetry from you and serve you more ads is stupid; switch now and in a couple of days you'll ask yourself hwy you took so long to do it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday June 08, @07:37AM (2 children)
If your going to jump from Windows to Linux I'd go with the Trinity Desktop Environment [trinitydesktop.org] instead of KDE or Gnome.
When I switched over to TDE from Windows I found the GUI was close enough to the Windows 7 UI that the learning curve seemed to be almost flat.
TDE is a fork of KDE 3.5 and doesn't have all the blingy eyecandy animations that KDE started adding with 4.0. Just a simple clean GUI. I've been using TDE for a little over 10 years and have never thought of even trying the newer versions of KDE, TDE just works too well for me to want to switch.
But in the end all I can really suggest is take a look, give it a test run using a LiveDVD/USB (I found the Exe [exegnulinux.net] distro to be good) and make your own opinion about it.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Sunday June 08, @01:55PM (1 child)
So, Trinity is to KDE what MATE is to Gnome?
(Score: 2, Informative) by skaplon on Monday June 09, @08:17PM
Trinity was born due to the general slowness of KDE 4. But that got nothing to do with the recent 5 or 6 incantations which should be plenty fast on windows 10-era hw. These day very few run Trinity and have even less ppl to work on the old Qt versions
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday June 08, @12:01PM (1 child)
If they'll permit you to run it, most people are better off with chrome os flex because its not 1990 anymore, pretty much everything I run for the past 30 years is either already in, or moving into, a web browser.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday June 08, @07:57PM
The problem with that is that the updates end eventually. Sure a bunch of the apps are continuously updated, just not the core os. I recently flashed over it and will be installing a lightweight os when I get the chance. The Chromebook doesn't seem to like ventoy as the loader of images.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Sunday June 08, @04:34PM (11 children)
The problem with all the ads for switching to Linux on here is they focus exclusively the GUI. If your use cases are limited to clicking on icons to open e-mails, browsing the internet and other very basic tasks, sure absolutely. As soon as you need to run a specialized app or do something at the command line, the real story begins. Get ready for the learning curve involved in learning the myriad of unfamiliar command line utilities and shell scripting languages. You'll quickly become familiar with something unknown to most Windows users - "man pages". Also, get ready to spend hours or days trying to get that one piece of critical hardware, that's plug and play with Windows, to work on Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Windows as much as the next guy, but when you leave out the all the negatives of switching to Linux, it becomes more of an exercise in evangelism than helpful advice. I have a Linux server to run Proxmox for my VMs. It's incredibly reliable does and exactly what I need it to, but I'd be misleading you if I left out the part about it taking months to get everything set up and configured properly. And I literally couldn't have done it without the help of a -nix expert at one point. For some people, tackling those kind of challenges is fun. For people who just want to get things done, not so much.
Now, if you want the advantages of Linux without the headaches, get yourself a Mac. Under the covers, it's Linux, so all that is there if you ever want or need it. The difference is, set up and configuration is a breeze and hardware compatibility is almost never an issue. The best of both worlds, as it were.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday June 08, @05:45PM (1 child)
> Also, get ready to spend hours or days trying to get that one piece of critical hardware, that's plug and play with Windows, to work on Linux.
My work laptop recently upgraded to windows 11. Took me weeks to get the sound driver sorted.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, @12:33AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tbuskey on Sunday June 08, @06:08PM
It comes down to what are you trying to do?
Internet: *anything* Your phone, chromebook, iPad, Linux, Windows, Macintosh. On the fringe, I have an eBook reader that has a web browser but...
Writing: email, text, word processing. All can be on the internet. Way better than the wordstar/wordperfect got IMO. Also, who prints things?
Calculations: calculators, spreadsheets Also internet and better than what I have.
Consuming: Music, Video, streaming. It's almost all possible with a web browser. Some is app too. I can't stream Comcast on a Linux web browser because they block it, but everything else works. I can't imagine there is anything social media that can't work with a web browser.
For a college student, a phone w/ a keyboard an larger screen could do it all. A chromebook or iPad + keyboard would get you the screen & keyboard.
Lot of household things are on an app & never get a web browser interface. Smart devices, bird feeder cams, trail cams. I think there are even 3D printers that you can use entirely from a phone. Printing & scanning is everywhere, standardized (mostly). If you can't get every device in your house to use it, you bought the wrong one. I have a Brother printer/scanner that works with phones, chromebooks, Linux, Windows.
Once you get into more specialized stuff like CAD, multimedia editing, 3D printing, craft machines (paper cutting, embroidery sewing, etc), you start to want to use a computer. Though I've seen things for Inkscape to do 3D printing & both crafts I've listed.
I have a gamer and a crafter in the house that need Windows because that's where those tools are. I have 1 teleheath provider out of a few that doesn't work on my Linux browser but does on my phone or windows.
I used to use Quicken and had the Quicken credit card when it was the *only* credit card whose info got downloaded (before Linux existed). I'd love something that I could run locally that auto downloaded QIF files from every bank and credit card. Quicken is still around and there are competitors. I think there are web based things you can give your bank logins to download. Linux does have things that can import QIF files. But to get them, it's me with a browser, or I spend time learning how to automate it & maintain that.
I've been 90% Unix workstation and then Linux for myself. It's been much easier since gmail and then other internet office tools came out. My personal laptops are all > 10 years old.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aafcac on Sunday June 08, @10:25PM (3 children)
Very few software programs that typical people use don't have an alternative on Linux these days. And if somebody is in that boat, they're not considering it I've got a couple, but I'll just run them in a VM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday June 09, @11:14PM (2 children)
I'm disappointed to hear that. A few years ago I switched to Mac expecting a similar issue as you're describing and... actually it's not that bad. I kept a Windows machine around for more than a year but never fired it up because virtually all the software I have has both Mac and Windows ports. Heck, I even got an m1 machine expecting similar nonsense to the Intel transition and with only one obnoxious exception I had native binaries right away. I was hoping the story was similar for Linux today but maybe not. :/
I think the only real time I did ache for a Windows machine was when I was setting up Mame. Heh
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday June 10, @06:21AM (1 child)
Did you miss the negation there? Your comment reads like you read my post to mean the opposite of what I meant. There's very little software these days that causes me to boot back into WIndows.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday June 10, @01:05PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, @12:27AM
Windows is for those who use 2 to 20+ mouse buttons
MacOS is for those who use 1 mouse button.
Linux is for those who spend 2 to 20+ weeks to try to get half their mouse buttons etc working. 🤣
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stormreaver on Monday June 09, @12:41AM
Do you have a modern example that might affect a typical user? I ask because I haven't had a hardware compatibility issue with Linux in many years, and I would like to know what hardware to avoid. Even all the wireless hardware I've used on Linux recently worked right out of the box.
That is indeed still an issue. Most commercial software doesn't have a Linux version, which is the final obstacle that a potential Linux user would have to deal with.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday June 09, @04:25AM
The Mac OS's do NOT use linux. Apple was wary of the Gnu licences.
Instead, they are build on BSD, which involves a different kernel entirely.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday June 09, @11:03PM
This is soooooo NOT TROLL. I've been beaten over the head for years on places like Slashdot about how uncool I am because I didn't switch to Linux, yet not one person ever asked me WHAT I ACTUALLY DO WITH MY COMPUTER. It's always "Linux is better" but never "Linux is better for your use-case". That's basically what DadaDoofy is saying here and he's fucking right.
I do apologize for being salty on the topic but when I actually did try Linux (kudos for Knoppix for making it accessible to me....) I mentioned a few criticisms on the green site that cropped up while dealing with some of Linux's rougher edges and instead of being helpful and offering advice instead I got mod bombed. Oh how dare I say Linux is anything less than perfect! So sorry I wanted both monitors to work with 3d acceleration, I'm such a monster.
And this is exactly where I landed. I did leave Windows, for Apple. DadaDoofy hit the nail on the head here, the only thing I'd add is "yes.... but you need the finances to support it." Apple is expensive. In any event I could have been a Linux user today, especially since scripting and automation are things I do a lot of, but the unsupported Linux zealotry moved me away. That's usually the stereotype for Apple users but at least they're helpful when shit don't work.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Interesting) by number11 on Sunday June 08, @05:16PM
Never tried Plasma, but I've found that Linux Mint is GUI-similar enough not to freak new users. In my case XFCE, to stay close to my Win10 Open Shell that's doing its best to look like Win7. I haven't actually replaced the W10 machine yet (keeping it to run a couple of programs that I haven't got going yet under Linux), but have been running Mint for years on an (originally) Win7 netbook that's acting as a server. With a 4GB 2-core 1GHz CPU, it's a bit sluggish, but it's not like W10 would run better.
Yes, if you have exotic needs there will be a bit of a learning curve, there is some Win-only software that just won't work. But I am ancient and cut my teeth on CP/M, so command lines don't scare me, and there are few issues that someone else hasn't already experienced and written about online. The average user can use Firefox and LibraOffice, no problem.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday June 13, @09:01PM
Windows users. A Windows PeeCee makes a good doorstop combined with a room heater.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].