I know there was a limitation somewhere from Pro to a higher variant, that does need a reinstall.
But good to hear it is not the company LTS.

It's ultimately up to you, but being forced to upgrade Windows all the time is a con job.

Even though I have a Windows 11 laptop, I still mostly use Windows 7 for browsing the web, doing downloads etc.

The vulnerabilities they are always sprucing, are rarely a threat to the great majority of us, if ever, and Windows 10 is certainly good for quite a while yet ... probably 10 years at least.

Keep using Windows 10 while you can, and just be sensible about your web browsing and what you download.

Unfortunately too many devs jump on the bandwagon with MS, and stop supporting older versions of Windows with their programs and games, so you will eventually have to upgrade, unless you are savvy enough to use work-a-rounds.

4. Or Upgrade to Windows 7 SP1.

Option 4: pay $30 a year for extended support from Microsoft.
option 5: use offline/locally.
option 6 use in VM - may need to buy pro edition. don't know if supported or allowed

Some may want a non OEM license. You may need a license for either pro or home. If installing on a new PC. you will need an install media such as a USB stick.

If doing an an install on a PC with no os.
You will want to download offline installer assistant to create install media for future use. Making sure the PC meets the hardware requirements.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Looks like Microsoft will keep updating Win 10 for another year. The catch? Mandatory account link.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/microsoft-extends-free-windows-10-security-updates-into-2026-with-strings-attached/


No thanks.

Same.

I will probably use that option at least on my son's laptop which is now running Windows 10 and Win11 doesn't want to install to it due to some missing requirement. In fact I guess it is already all set up because I did the original Windows 10 installation on it with my Outlook account (I am the admin), and then just created a normal local user for my son so that he can't break Windows by installing all kinds of malware shit he finds online.

So I presume that will keep receiving security updates for another year. Good, fine, with any luck that laptop will die anyway within a year.

I would have otherwise installed Linux for him but he plays Roblox and it doesn't apparently work on Linux because the Roblox developers are actively trying to prevent it, accusing Linux users of being cheaters.

Oh yeah and I will possibly use this option on another laptop too that could run Win11, but I am still running Windows 10 on it because Windows 11 24H2 update broke some games, like Demonicon. That is not a must though because that game can also be run on Linux with WINE.

When you define luck like that you are guaranteed to be lucky eventually :)

On my home PCs (laptops mainly), so far I've been mostly using Linux Mint (XFCE), which is still quite nice and a good option. Sometimes dabbling with e.g. Rocky Linux 9 (which, unlike Mint, is RHEL-based, not Debian/Ubuntu-based).

I wanted to try a rolling release so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed beside Windows 11 Pro on my probably most actively used laptop. It is neither Debian nor RHEL family so it is a Linux family of its own.

Frankly, OpenSUSE is much better than I dared to hope, and is becoming my favorite Linux distro. Comparing to Linux Mint, as a rolling release it is more recent. On OpenSUSE, my current Linux kernet according to "uname -a" is 6.15.3-1-default, while with the latest and up-to-date Linux Mint 22.1 LTS it is 6.8.0-62-default. Quite a big gap there between the kernels of Linux Mint and OpenSUSE, I think.

While this is a non-gaming 2021 laptop with no discrete GPU (Intel HD Graphics), I tried installing a few games, mostly GOG, on it, and it was easy as a breeze: I would say it was even easier than in Linux Mint, I recall there being more steps when installing e.g. Demonicon on Linux Mint, at first it didn't work.

1. Team Fortress 2: Installing and playing with Steam is just as easy as in Windows (and Linux Mint).

2. Portal: Installing and playing with Steam is just as easy as in Windows (and Linux Mint).

3. Divine Divinity: no issues whatsoever installing it with Lutris and playing it. It even downloaded the offline installers from my GOG account directly, and installed the game. Installing Lutris itself was also very easy, basically just installing it from OpenSUSE's "Discover Software Center".

4. Gothic 2 Gold: No issues whatsoever installing it with Lutris, and playing it.

5. Demonicon: No issues whatsoever installing it with Lutris. This is the infamous game that does not work on Windows 11 anymore, with the latest 24H2 update. So at least you can play it fine on Linux (tested now on Linux Mint and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).

6. Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate: In Lutris, the user-created install script is apparently out of date, it apparently wants to use some earlier version of the GOG installer because it asks for a separate hotfix patch from the GOG library that doesn't exist anymore.

However, selecting the generic install option in Lutris for Dragon Age worked just ifne, no issues at all. The only little nitpick is that Lutris seemed to create a desktop shortcut icon to the Dragon Age configuration application, not the actual game, but no matter, I run the game from the Lutris menu instead if needed.

It also runs great and smooth, and what is also very interesting is that while in Windows the GOG version apparently still has the issue that it runs only on one CPU core which causes it to run on a lower framerate and you have to manually change the CPU affinity every time you run the GOG version on Windows... in Linux, this doesn't seem to be an issue. All the CPU cores seemed to be used evenly in Linux, and the game runs smooth.


So there you have it, some GOG games (Windows versions) run even better on Linux than in Windows. :)
(Demonicon doesn't run at all in Windows 11 anymore, and Dragon Age has that CPU affinitity problem (still?)).

I had a similar experience several years ago when running Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 1-2 both in Windows and Linux. In Linux they ran smoother than in Windows even with dxwind-fixes and whatnot.

I've just switched to Linux Mint (still have Win10 on a separate disk for offline use) and tried Lutris (not working for me - probably user error), and Gamehub (also not working for me) and just now tried Heroic Game Launcher.

HGL works great for me (download, install and play games from gog, all without having to do anything technical beyond logging in and downloading GE_Proton through the HGL interface ;) ) - I've got an NVidia GPU (RTX 3080).
Thanks to whoever brought up HGL :)
Obviously I haven't had time to try all my games (got over 150 on gog) but so far so great!


I've also got Steam (and that works nicely out of the box with proton for what I tried).


There's only one program left that would keep me on Win (Daz Studio) and even that can be made to run with Wine and some effort.
If you use Rufus USB to install Mint (or other distro) to a Live USB, you can set a partition and then have consistency/continuation between sessions - helps get more of a feel for using it over a few days without having to download programs every time.

This won't be an issue until the DX13 shows up on a new OS and all the games start adopting it as a standard.

I tried all of those (plus Play On Linux). Heroic worked the best so far.
For your information, the closest thing I have seen on Linux is called "Make Human". But like most free software efforts, it is many levels behind its closed source paid counterparts.
Oh, it sets up the remainder of the storage for user storage? Neat! Thank you for letting me know. Too bad Rufus only works on Windows.

I would suggest using Windows 10 IoT as a stopgap solution.

Yeah - rufus can set a partition for user storage (but you need to slide the slider to tell it to). It's Win only so more of an idea for those on Windows who aren't sure about Linux but want to try it out for a few days (though I ran mine for a couple of weeks without issue before deciding to install it fully - but then, without shenanigans, it's starting from scratch with installing programs and setting it up).

For Make Human - yeah, I'm familiar with it, but I was making money selling models for Daz Studio through their website. That needs me to have DS installed for setting things up in their format. Still, the market's been going down for that, so I might be packing it in anyway. I'd still like to have the program for my own use though.

In other news - Heroic Game Launcher has been great for Windows games on Linux. For Linux native games, where gog provides the installer, it's better to just install it myself as HGL insists on thinking it's a Windows game and tries to launch it with Proton (probably something I'm missing in the settings).