As probably everybody is aware of by now, we are in the month of the End of Support for Microsoft Windows 10. And I tried giving them all the chances I got (since I have a Steam library, maybe not big, but some of the games have several hundred hours of playtime).

I flinched when they required me to log in with a “Microsoft Account” (probably to have better control over me). But I did it. I hopped through all the hoops to disable OneDrive (because I don’t need it, and I don’t like Microsoft to have access to my files without my knowledge. Paranoid? Not me, they have the encryption key to my drive, not me, and that is a problem). I also removed most of the bloatware (except Dell’s update program, because that’s how I get BIOS updates for this PC).

But it seems that even though I should be eligible for the free tier of the Extended License (or whatever they called it, I’m not checking right now) the only options I have are:

• update to Windows 11
• pay a heap of money for one year of software updates
• a third thing I didn’t even remember

So, it seems this is the point in time when I have to get more into Proton gaming, even though the nvidia drivers for Linux are still not “quite there”, and even though I have all those games installed on my Windows partition already.

I will not downgrade to Windows 11 (actually, if I were to downgrade, 11 would be the last one to get considered, I was quite ok with 8.1 - not 8.0 though - and both 7 and Vista were not the worst choices for me), and I will not pay ransom money to Microsoft for this old gaming laptop.

Apropos ransom, if I were a malware developer I’d go hunting for all the bugs Microsoft is going to fix for those paying the ransom - at least if I were a state actor. As statistics show, Windows 11 is on a downward slope, and Windows 10 is still installed on a lot (and I do mean a lot) of PCs, end of support or not.

So, will this be the final death of Microsoft Windows? Maybe, maybe not. I just pity the people who have never used anything else than Windows, because last time I checked, Proton gaming on Linux is the combination of the disadvantages of both worlds. Sad as it is.