Nine months after Windows 10 support ended: how has it actually gone for you?

[Panda54]

October 2025 was the deadline everyone spent years dreading, Windows 10 end of support, and we are now most of the way to a year past it. Time for an honest census of where everyone actually landed rather than where the think pieces said we would

The options as I see them, you moved to Windows 11 willingly or at gunpoint, you paid for or wrangled your way into extended security updates, you jumped to Linux like every fourth YouTube video suggested, you bought new hardware because your old machine failed the requirements, or you are running an unsupported system and living dangerously

I am especially interested in the Linux switchers six months on. The install weekend stories were everywhere, the honest follow ups about printer drivers and that one Windows only program are rarer. Did it stick?

And for those on unsupported Windows 10, genuine question, what is the actual plan? No judgement, half my family is in the same boat and I need arguments

[Fox50]

Linux switcher here, eight months on Mint and it stuck. The honest cost was two weekends of fiddling and giving up one game. Worth it

[Cached Stephen]

Counter report, tried the same and went back in three weeks. Everything worked except the two things I use for my actual job, which is a 100 percent failure rate in practice

[Beth3.0]

Windows 11 at gunpoint. It is fine. It is always just fine. The start menu still annoys me daily in ways I cannot articulate

[Rebecca86]

The unsupported 10 crowd is bigger than anyone admits. My parents machine is fine behind a router and decent habits, fight me

[Fam28]

Decent habits are doing incredible heavy lifting in that sentence. One bad PDF and it is not fine

[Louise]

ESU was genuinely cheap for what it buys, a year of not thinking about it. Surprised more home users did not take it

[Elliot_30]

The real scandal remains the hardware requirements sending perfectly good machines to landfill. My 2017 laptop runs 11 beautifully via the unofficial route

[KaiHeck]

Unofficial installs are grand until an update decides your machine does not exist. Ask me how I know

[Priya_39]

Bought a mini PC in the end and honestly the forced upgrade improved my life, old tower heated the room like a radiator

[Sequence19]

The quiet winners of the whole transition are Chromebooks and iPads. Half the people who dreaded this just realised they never needed Windows at all