Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 in October 2025. So ends a decade of a somewhat confused operating system but one we kind of grew to love. But what happens next? Should you upgrade to Windows 11? What other options are there?
In 2015, Microsoft was clearly nursing its bruises over the failure of Windows 8, with many choosing to stick with Windows 7. At the time, I was running Windows 8.1 with Start8, which made it a much more familiar and enjoyable experience, bypassing the needless MetroUI. Windows 10 was designed to refocus the UI back towards the desktop – you know, the thing 99& of us were using it for. After 10 years of maturity, it’s easy to forget that Windows 10, in it’s first incarnation was a pretty disjointed up mess itself. Mainly when trying to change settings, where you were thrown about between the control panel and the new settings UI that exists for…. reasons. God knows what Microsoft were thinking, but it felt unfinished. Over the years, it has been refined, if still not perfect, and I daresay the feel of familiarity over that time also helps get over the inconsistencies in the UI.
However, time marches on, and whilst Microsoft could maybe keep on updating Windows 10 without much issue (although breaking changes probably warrants a new version number), Microsoft also want to enforce TPM on users. That in itself isn’t a bad thing. In the modern world computers are under constant threat from ever more sophisticated attacks, especially so with the rise of ‘Artificial Intelligence’, which you can’t get away from, whenever you turn on your TV. They also want to suck ever more data out of you. So hold on for Windows 11, with even more telemetry than 10. Think you own your PC? Pah! All your computer are belong to Microsoft. I hopefully await some lawsuit that will order them to reduce/remove telemetry in the near future. With that in mind, why should you move to Windows 11? Read on for your options…
What Can You Do?
Stick With Windows 10
Just like Windows 7, there will be many people that flat out refuse to move to Windows 11 from 10. I can understand it but, honestly, don’t do this. If your hardware supports Windows 11, then upgrade before Windows 10 is officially dead. The biggest reason is that security exploits will not get patched – well not unless you’re one of those corporations paying MS large sums to do so. If you’re still on Windows 10, you will be susceptible to attacks.
In addition to this, updates to your software will no longer be guaranteed to work with Windows 10. You may find that your web browser will not update, leaving you vulnerable to any flaws found in that version of the browser. Various other apps can be left outdated. You may not be able to update your drivers for things such as your graphics card.
Unfortunately, if you’re on a machine that doesn’t support Windows 11’s requirements, then you are out of luck anyway. You are stuck with now obsolete hardware. Your options are to live with the issues above, move to Linux, or buy a new machine that supports Windows 11.
Or disconnect from the internet…
If you don’t need to access the internet on your W10 machine, then disable all it’s network connections and enjoy a blissful life. Although, in this day age, it’s getting hardware to find software that doesn’t require you to be connected to some cloud service in order to just work.
Upgrade To Windows 11
Windows 11, telemetry and AI aside, is kind of nice to use. I do feel it’s better than Windows 10, in some areas, once you get used to it, of course. The settings area has had an overhaul and feels far more cohesive than Windows 10s. I have a MiniPC that runs 11 and it’s not all that different, although it’s not my daily driver, so there may be some frustrating things that will become more apparent, once I am using it every day.
Plus, of course, all your current software should just work after the upgrade. It’s a good reason for sticking with Microsoft.
My primary concerns are with it being a privacy nightmare, which is likely only going to get worse.
Move To Linux (or another OS)
Now this won’t be for everyone, but it is my preferred option. With Microsoft getting ever creepier with increased telemetry, AI and locking down abilities to create local accounts, it feels almost inevitable that some will want to make the jump eventually. You may as well do it now. There are many computer savvy people that would be quite happy sticking in an Linux boot device, wiping the system drive and installing Linux. Plus there are many options to choose from, of which the likes of Ubuntu is one of the most well known. However, that strength is also a Linux weakness; the simple wealth of options, when it comes to distributions really isn’t for those that just want a PC that they can doom scroll Facebook on. And installing a new OS is not for those that just want a button that says ‘Click here to do The Thing’.
It’s also the case that there will be software many people use, daily, that just isn’t available on Linux. My main candidates being MS Flight Simulator and Ableton. Da Vinci Resolve also doesn’t seem to work as well on my Linux installation as it does on Windows, and is a bit of pain to get it to work with an AMD graphics card.
And yes, if you’re not the type to learn or understand the intricacies of an operating system, it can be difficult to troubleshoot when applications don’t work or install correctly.
However, for me, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I have an operating system that is free, highly customisable, isn’t spying on me, and isn’t sending all my data off to some undisclosed location.
If all the above doesn’t sound appealing, and you have lots of spare cash, then you can always move to Apple. But there’s no guarantee they also won’t start siphoning data from you. Big corporations like to be all corporationary.
My Upgrade Experience
Both my main desktop and laptop run Windows 10 – dual booting with Kubuntu. I’d be massively annoyed if the upgrade to 11 breaks all that. My plan was to do my laptop first and see how that goes. If things go wrong, I’ll be less annoyed than if the same happened to my desktop installation. I spent some time with it on my laptop before I upgraded the desktop. I’m not a fan of the start menu in Windows 11, so I’ll be sticking Start11 on both devices (my desktop already uses it, and it’s so much less intrusive)
Laptop Upgrade
I opened Windows Update and clicked on the button I’d been putting off for months (though at least those annoying ‘Upgrade to W11’ screens that pop up on boot now and then will be gone forever. My desktop is thankfully immune to these). It took just over an hour to download and install the upgrade. For reference, the other night, I upgraded a Raspberry Pi 4 from Ubuntu 20.04, to 22.04, to 24.04 in less than that time. After it had done that, the system prompted me to restart, which I did so. My OS boot screen selection screen was still there. Good good; it hadn’t messed with the bootloader. I selected to boot in to Windows. There I was greeted by a black screen and a huge mouse pointer…. and that was it. No message. No little whirly animation. No progress percentage. Just a black screen. Great feedback there, MS. I decided to leave it in case it was actually doing something, and also hoping it hadn’t gone and broken everything. Sure enough, after close to 15 minute of blackness, it rebooted again. This time I did get a progress percentage and a message about it working on updates, and after a minute or so I was greeted by a login screen. I logged in and my desktop looked close to how it did before; all my icons where there, and it looked like everything that was originally in the taskbar was still there. My desktop wallpaper was also untouched. I do also like the new default font. It make things just look that little bit more professional. It almost feels a little MacOS, with that ‘I can’t explain why it looks better, but it does’ feel.
Oh, but the start menu. Now I have no problem with the taskbar being in the centre. After all, in my previous job I used a Mac, which does the same, and one of my Linux installations has the taskbar centred as well. You can get used to that. However, when you click the start button itself, it would make sense for the menu to appear above your mouse, like most menus. Oh no… not Microsoft. The start menu is centred to the screen as it’s default setting. So you may click on a button, that is more towards the left of the screen, with the menu opening away from you. Who thought that one up?
With the taskbar being centred by default, this also means the placement of the start button will change, as more icons are added. That’s not great for muscle memory. Although I usually just hit the Windows key on the keyboard anyway. Fortunately, Microsoft have learned from at least some of their past mistakes, and they do allow you to move the taskbar to the left, and with that, the menu opens directly above the mouse. It’s a start (no pun intended) at least. There is a search box on the taskbar as well. That is another thing I instantly got rid of.
And, of course, they’ve changed behaviour once again. Now there are default pinned applications that I don’t use. Also typing an applications name often brings up a Bing search result, rather than, you know, the application installed on my machine. Ugh. What pops up, when you type is also inconsistent
Another instantly obvious change, and in my view another improvement, are the menus when you right click. In previous Windows versions these can get horribly large, and sometimes go beyond your visible screen, even on high resolutions displays. So it’s nice that this is organised a bit better.
File Explorer has also been tweaked, in positive ways, looking somewhat cleaner. There are also icons for file options (such as copy, paste, delete, and new). I’m not all that sure about the usefulness of those, when it’s a lot quicker to right click the mouse. But I guess there may be those that will find the visual cues helpful. MS have also added tabs to Explorer, so you can now have multiple folders open in one place.
Windows has also not lost my mapped network drives, and the hosts file (which I use to map internal network devices to urls) is untouched. I’m glad I don’t I don’t have to go about reconfiguring everything all over again. It seems all my devices work as before. Overall, bar the black screen of nothingness, and the default start menu, the initial impressions are overall good, and it’s mostly business as usual. I also like the UI tweaks, with a nice icon set. Windows 11 feels more polished than 10, for sure.
Desktop Upgrade
After using the laptop for a couple of weeks I decided I may as well pull the trigger on the desktop upgrade. I was slight more apprehensive about this one, as my desktop has more software, hardware and external peripherals, that have been built up over many years. Far more that can go wrong.
As it happens, the upgrade process was also just as smooth. No black screen of doom, this time round. After a couple of hours it was mostly done and I was greeted by the Windows 11 desktop. It didn’t look all that different to my Windows 10 desktop, so everything was instantly familiar. I was getting a prompt about AsIO.sys, but it seems that is something that isn’t required anyway, so I got rid of it. Naturally, I did an update to device drivers, to ensure Win 11 compatibility.
I did have a couple of hardware issues. a recurring problem was that the Intel bluetooth driver kept on failing. This then gets fixed by reinstalling the device drivers. This eventually went away, which is just as weird. I figured I must have found a driver that worked that little bit better.
I was also having issues with the desktop not loading. This was causing me a lot of grief; most of the time it loaded fine, but then would suddenly not work on later reboots. Completely removing and reinstalling the AMD graphics card drivers fixed this.
I have also experienced times where my I was getting random pops in my right speaker. This appears to have resolved itself.
The Elephant In The Room: Recall
As it turns out, Recall seems to need machines that have been specifically built to be able to use Recall. Mine aren’t, so it appears it is disabled. Sounds good to me, but there is no telling if/when Microsoft may decide this gets turned on for all devices. I just don’t want this on any of my systems.
Verdict
Ultimately, I’m mostly happy with this upgrade. I’ve not looked into just how much is being sent to Microsoft, and what they are finding out about you, so I can’t comment on that side of things (I have read that local accounts spy far less than Microsoft’s online accounts – but I can’t vouch for that). I’ll also be looking to erase all mentions on Copilot from my devices. I’m not a fan of ‘AI’ and I do worry what it could do to humans, in terms of intelligence, incorrect information, and yes, large scale unemployment. But that’s a topic for another day. Bar the start menu choices, I feel the updated UI is a huge improvement over 10 with the overhauled settings area being a massively welcome change. So yes. In my view, get upgrading.
Over time though, I noticed Windows may break on a whim. The amount of updates I noticed happening, seemingly almost daily, will fix something but break something else. Not a good experience for a user.
Fact of the matter is though, is that I am using Linux for most of my daily tasks, and I recommend moving if you are up to it. I wish Ableton was available on Linux but there is always dual booting – but it does mean I’m stuck with Windows, in some form, for the near future.