Everyone is saying this: ‘MS sucks!’. For the most part, they are correct. People went into a panic because their computers would stop working in 14th October 2025. However the issue here is a bit more complex than just that, in my opinion.

Backstory: Windows 10, the previous flagship OS from Microsoft is entering End-of-Support on 14th of October, 2025. This means that the system will not stop working but I’ll quote Microsoft here:

After October 14, 2025, PCs running Windows 10 will continue to function, however it will no longer receive software and feature updates, security updates and fixes, or technical support.

While your Windows 10 PC will continue to function, it will no longer receive regular security updates, making the device more vulnerable and susceptible to viruses and malware. Windows 10 PCs may also experience slower performance and functionality across the device and applications.

Any with Windows 10 will notautomatically stop working, which gives you some leeway to continue using it as long as you want. However, the big concern I have isn’t with how Microsoft is treating people using Windows 11, locking down the install to have ONLY a Microsoft account (which you can still bypass, but they are trying to remove those). As I said in my own post, The Windows Talk, you can install programs to tell it to shut up and let you work, or game.

No, my concern is the artificial requirements that MS put in for Windows 11. The higher CPU requirements are annoying but understandable. But TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot aren’t.

Secure Boot had a massive security flaw called ‘laziness’ and thus can be bypassed easily. Don’t believe me? Check this out: Secure Boot is completely broken on 200+ models from 5 big device makers by Arstechnica.

On the 23th of July 2024,

researchers from security firm Binarly revealed that Secure Boot is completely compromised on more than 200 device models sold by Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, Intel, and Supermicro. The cause: a cryptographic key underpinning Secure Boot on those models that was compromised in 2022.

The link has more info but this means that a lot of devices were compromised and could be bypassed easily. Not every single device, yes but a lot of them.

TPM 2.0 is a hardware module you can buy and install in your motherboard. Newer motherboards have it installed by default, but it can be bypassed with ease, at least regarding the Windows 11 install, but of course, MS is trying to take it down. Hell, if you search up ‘tpm 2.0 bypass’, pretty much all results will be about to how to bypass the requirement to install Windows 11. That’s not good.

With these two requirements, MS is saying that computers that were completely usable and serviceable about 8 years ago need to be put in a landfill. Sure, you can bypass it, but the fearmongering that the implication created managed to reach the mainstream. Youtubers (eh…) and media pieces are now trying to figure out what to do with older, completely fine and working computers that won’t update to Windows 11 unless you do some changes to make it install. Some of these aren’t people that do tech, so they don’t know what they need to do, but the fact that it isn’t plug-and-play managed to get them annoyed to that point. They are looking into alternatives, which is not a good thing for Microsoft.

The Alternatives

What are these alternatives? Well, there’s a few.

Windows 10 ESU

Microsoft offers an “Extended Security Updates” for Windows 10 users. End-users can pay 30 USD, organizations have pay 61 USD the first year. The key takeaway is that end-users can have it for free as long you keep a MS account and synced up but the cut off date is 13th October 2026. This means you have essentially a year of delaying the inevitable.

Linux

You could do a free install of a Linux distribution. For gamers, I recommend Bazzite, assuming you don’t play the latest games (cough Battlefield 6). Or Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora… The options are plentiful. Maybe UNIX based systems if you’re feeling… Brave.

MacOS

You could move to Apple’s MacOS. No links because uh… That’s gonna be a purchase. Assuming you wanna go to another fully locked down (for updates) system or whatever.

Modified Windows 11 install

You could modify a Windows 11 install ISO with Rufus and bypass Secure Boot, TPM2.0, 4GB+ RAM and CPU requirements.

Buy a new PC

Or if all fails, get a new PC, I guess? It is an option but I guess it’s not the best. And if we go by that, you could get a Mini-PC with AMD hardware and install Linux on it.

Closing Words

As I said in my own post, The Windows Talk, Microsoft lost their way with Windows, and this stupidity shows it. People are terrified of going to Windows 11 (it’s fine once you tell it to shut up) because the company is clamping it down even more. And some feel they have no way out, but as I said, my issue is making perfectly usable computers go ‘out-of-date’. That didn’t happen with Windows Vista to 7, or 7 to 8, or 8.1 to 10. Sure, naturally you’d buy new hardware but it was never forced, just implied, because of regular slowdowns.

This is what I think that we should be focusing at, Microsoft considering computers that are working fine with Windows 10 ‘out-of-date’ and not capable of running Windows 11 for arbitrary reasons. I dunno about you, but I dislike when people what I can and what I can’t do my devices over ads served to me (although I hate ads).