Long live Windows 10

I got reminded again on-screen that Windows 10 reaches its entirely made-up end of life in October this year, and that I really should upgrade soon, or even right now. I spend a couple of hours looking round for alternatives.

I know that people-in-the-know will insist that all alternatives start with the word Linux but I don’t. I have a small number of applications (Scrivener and Affinity Photo, for example) that form a core part of what I laughing refer to as my workflow and will not run on Linux. That means that people-in-the-know will move swiftly on to discussing whether Wine offers the best way of running Windows programs under Linux or not. And then start talking about the problems I might face if I insist on using Affinity Photo rather than the Gimp.

Since I absolutely do insist, I opted to pursuit a less-travelled route and headed over to massgrave.dev which offers a different approach which, used this way rather than that way may skirt the borders of legality.

The site suggest that “Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 will reach the end of support on Jan 13, 2032” and offers various ways in which you can switch your Windows 10 edition to that one, and then apply the magic words to make it live on for another seven years.

Or, presumably, until the applications you use have all been upgraded to work only on Windows 11/12/13, and your Windows 10 machine can only find use as a web broswer and word processor. In which case you might think it is time to explore a Linux distribution where you can happily continue to browse with Vivaldi and write with LibreOffice.

But I have more to tell!

During my literally minutes of research I found Winhance.net, an open source project that will “enhance your Windows experience by effortlessly debloating, optimizing and customizing your system, giving you more control over how Windows performs”. It claims to actually have the power to uninstall Copilot, Edge, Onedrive, and get rid of Microsoft advertisements disguised as notifications.

It also works with Windows 11.

This might bear investigation whether or not you intend to find a way of extending your copy of Windows 10. In fact it might come to seem considerably more important if you do move from 10 to the constant upselling that seems to constitute the 11 experience.