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Windows 10 End of Support

Your Windows® 10 PC Stopped Getting Security Updates
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Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. This isn’t a deadline approaching. It already passed.

If you haven’t done anything since then, your computer hasn’t received a security patch since that date. It still boots and still runs your programs, so it’s easy to assume nothing changed. What changed is that when someone finds a new way to attack Windows 10, nobody is going to fix it, and those holes accumulate.

You’ve probably seen the full-screen notices about it. Microsoft has been running those on Windows 10 machines, including ones that can’t run Windows 11 at all, where the recommendation is to buy a new PC. A “Remind me later,” a “Learn more,” and no way to dismiss them for good. There’s a decent chance one of them is why you’re reading this.

What they don’t mention is that buying a new PC isn’t the only way out.

How do I check where I stand? Go to Settings, then Update & Security, then Windows Update. That’s where your Extended Security Updates status shows, and where the “Enroll now” link appears if your PC qualifies and you haven’t signed up yet. Enrollment is what decides whether you’re still getting patches. The full-screen prompts tell you support ended; they don’t tell you whether you’re covered.

The Bridge: Extended Security Updates
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Microsoft offers Extended Security Updates for personal devices, and in June 2026 quietly extended the program by a second year. Enrolled machines get critical and important security patches through October 12, 2027.

Enrollment takes one of three routes:

RouteWhat it costs
Turn on PC Settings syncNothing, plus your settings synced to Microsoft
Microsoft Rewards points1,000 points
One-time payment$30 USD

One condition applies to all three: enrolling requires a Microsoft account, and the ESU license is tied to that account. If you’re signed in with a local account, you’ll be prompted to switch before you can enroll. Paying the $30 avoids the settings sync. It does not avoid the account.

So if the Microsoft account is the part you were hoping to get away from, ESU has no version that lets you, at any price. Worth knowing before you decide, because it’s the same requirement waiting for you in Windows 11.

You’ll also need Windows 10 version 22H2, and your account has to be an administrator.

For businesses and schools it’s a paid subscription starting at $61 per device for year one, doubling annually, for a maximum of three years.

ESU is a bridge, not a destination. You get security patches and nothing else: no new features, no fixes for ordinary bugs, no technical support. And there is no third year for personal devices. On October 12, 2027 it stops, and you’re back to the same decision with two years less time to make it.

Why Not Just Upgrade to Windows 11?
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Two separate reasons, and they need separating because the answers are different.

Reason One: Microsoft Won’t Let You
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Windows 11 requires a TPM 2.0 chip. That one requirement is pushing an enormous number of perfectly capable computers toward e-waste, not because anything about them failed, but because they’re missing a single component.

What’s a TPM? A small security chip on your motherboard. Windows 11 won’t install without TPM 2.0, which is why a computer that runs Windows 10 smoothly gets told it “isn’t supported.” It’s a rule about a chip, not a judgment about whether your computer is fast enough. Plenty of rejected machines are faster than the new ones being sold to replace them.

Reason Two: You’ve Seen Windows 11 and Don’t Want It
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Windows 11 requires an online Microsoft account to complete setup. Copilot is built into the operating system and is there by default; removing it outright is only possible on managed devices under administrator policy, which is not most people. On Copilot+ hardware, Recall periodically screenshots your screen, runs text recognition over it, and builds a searchable index of what you were doing.

Each of these has a defensible explanation. Taken together they describe an operating system that watches more, asks more, and asks permission less than the one it replaced. Wanting to get away from that is a legitimate reason to look elsewhere, not just an inability to run it.

What Is Linux® Actually Like Now?
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Mention Linux and you’ll usually hear one of the same few things. That it’s command line only. That it’s for servers. That it can’t run games. That nobody really uses it.

The trouble with all of them is that Linux moves quickly, and that there are many different distributions of it. It isn’t what it was fifteen years ago, or ten, or even a couple of years ago. Whichever picture you’re carrying around is from the last time you looked, and it has almost certainly changed since. Here’s where things actually stand.

What’s a Linux distribution? Linux on its own is only the core of a system. A distribution, usually shortened to “distro,” is the finished product built around that core: a desktop, a set of apps, an installer, and a team keeping it all updated. Ubuntu®, Fedora and Bazzite are distributions. It works much like Android phones, where Samsung, Google and OnePlus all ship the same underlying system arranged differently. So you don’t install “Linux” by itself, you pick a distribution. They mostly run the same software, so the choice matters less than the number of options suggests.

Isn’t Linux All Command Line?
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No. A modern Linux desktop is a full graphical system: a menu, a settings app, a software store, windows you drag around. You can install it, update it, browse, work, and play for years without ever opening a terminal.

The terminal is still there, and it’s worth knowing what it’s actually for. When something does go wrong, the fix is usually a line someone has already worked out: you search the error, find a forum or wiki post, and paste in the command they give you. That’s a very different situation from a Windows problem that ends with “try reinstalling.” You won’t need it day to day, but it’s the reason a broken Linux system is usually recoverable rather than a dead end.

It also explains why the myth sticks. The people who talk about Linux publicly are the ones doing the interesting things with it, scripting their setups and automating their workflows, so that’s the Linux everyone else ends up seeing.

Where does this idea come from? Two places. Linux genuinely was terminal-heavy in the 1990s, and it still runs the servers behind most of the internet, where nobody needs a desktop at all. That server reputation gets applied to the desktop version, which is a completely different experience.

Isn’t Linux Just for Servers?
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Linux does run the machines behind most of the internet. That much is true, and it’s invisible work, which is probably why the reputation stops there. But serving websites is only one of the things it does.

The same foundation is all around you. Android is built on the Linux kernel, and there are more Android devices in the world than Windows PCs. Chromebooks run on it. Valve’s Steam Deck and Steam Machine both run SteamOS, which is a Linux desktop. Your router is almost certainly Linux, and so is your smart TV.

Then there’s everything outside the house. The screen on the fuel pump. The self-checkout at the supermarket. The departure boards at the airport, the entertainment system in the back of an airline seat, the infotainment in a lot of new cars. All of it Linux, quietly getting on with the job.

Add all of that together and Linux is the most widely installed operating system on the planet. Most of those things don’t look like a computer, so nobody thinks of them as one, and the scale of it goes unnoticed.

Desktop Linux is that same foundation with an ordinary desktop on top, and it’s growing. Valve putting SteamOS in front of millions of gamers has pulled hardware makers and game developers along with it, and the number of people running Linux as their main system has been climbing steadily.

Do Games Actually Work?
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This is the one that surprises people most. As of January 2026, roughly 90% of Windows titles on Steam run on Linux, about 106,000 games out of 117,881. You install Steam, enable Proton, and your library largely just works.

The exception is competitive multiplayer games with kernel-level anti-cheat. Those often still refuse, deliberately. If your main game is one of them, check first.

Why did this change? Valve built Proton on top of Wine, a long-running project that translates what a Windows program asks for into something Linux understands, and then shipped the Steam Deck running Linux. Suddenly there was a commercial reason for games to work on Linux, and they increasingly do. You can check any specific game at ProtonDB before you commit.

Is the Software I Use Available?
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Firefox, Chrome, Steam, Spotify, Discord, Slack, Zoom®, VS Code, OBS, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, LibreOffice and Thunderbird all have native Linux versions. Microsoft 365 works in a browser, the same as it does on Windows. For most people the daily routine transfers without anything being missing.

What About the One App That Isn’t?
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If you depend on something Windows-only, like Adobe apps or a CAD package or a line-of-business tool, it can still run. Wine, a long-running free project that translates Windows programs into something Linux understands, handles many applications outright. It’s the same technology Proton is built on, just aimed at software rather than games. For anything else you can run a real copy of Windows inside Linux in a virtual machine, and because a virtual machine supplies its own virtual TPM, that works even on the hardware Windows 11 rejected.

The difficulty with virtual machines is graphics: by default they hand Windows an emulated graphics card, which is fine for office software and useless for CAD or 3D. Hyperpane exists to solve that, giving the virtual machine your real graphics card so demanding software runs at close to native speed, without the configuration that normally requires.

See how to run Windows apps on Linux for which approach suits which app.

Will My Hardware Work?
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Wi-Fi, graphics, printers, and peripherals overwhelmingly work out of the box on current hardware. The reliable way to find out is to run Linux from a USB stick before installing anything, which takes ten minutes and touches nothing on your disk.

Do Linux Updates Break Things?
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Here’s where modern Linux has genuinely overtaken Windows rather than caught up.

Ask a Windows user how they feel about updates and you’ll hear some version of dread. Updates that arrive unannounced, restart the machine mid-task, take forty minutes, and occasionally break something.

Ordinary Linux distributions already handle this better. On Ubuntu® or Fedora, updates install while you carry on working, and the reboot afterwards takes seconds rather than a coffee break.

Immutable systems go even further. The whole system updates in one piece and applies on the next reboot, and if an update actually breaks something you can put it back the way it was from the boot menu. These are called atomic updates: either the update fully applies or it doesn’t happen at all.

Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite all work this way, and it’s why we recommend them. The practical difference is that the system stops being something you maintain. It updates in the background, applies when you reboot anyway, and cannot leave you with a machine that won’t start. Our own defenestraOS is being built on the same foundation.

What’s an immutable system? The operating system is a single image rather than thousands of loose files you can accidentally damage. An update swaps in a whole new image and keeps the old one. It applies on your next reboot in seconds, and if anything is wrong you pick the previous version from the boot menu and you’re back. Your apps update separately and don’t touch the system at all. There is no half-finished update state to get stuck in.

What to Do, Realistically
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First, work out how long you’ll be on Windows 10. ESU is the only route to continued security patches, and it requires a Microsoft account. Both of those are laid out above. Whether that trade is worth making, and for how long, is your call to make.

Then pick a direction:

  • Your PC passes the Windows 11 check and you’re happy with Windows: upgrade. It’s free.
  • Your PC is refused over TPM but works fine: this is the case Linux fits best. The hardware isn’t the problem, and immutable systems ask almost nothing of you.
  • You could upgrade but don’t want Windows 11: you don’t have to. That’s a real reason, and Linux is a real answer today in a way it wasn’t in 2016.
  • You depend on one specific Windows program: find out how it will run before you move anything. Check your app first.
  • You manage machines for an organization: ESU buys up to three years, with the per-device price doubling each year you renew. It ends after the third year regardless, so that window is the time you have to plan and carry out a migration.

Before committing to anything: run Linux from a USB stick for an evening. Nothing is installed, nothing is erased, and you’ll know within ten minutes whether your hardware is happy. Our Getting Linux guide covers how.

Work out what fits your machine
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See Your Linux Options Ask Us About Your Setup

Sources
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