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The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice

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    I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    Your business critical system will no longer be supported with security updates which will leave it vulnerable to attack.

    I guess, if it's not connected to any sort of outside network, and has no way of accepting data from media like discs or thumb drives then it's perfectly safe, but if that's the case, and it works in isolation, how "business critical" is it?

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    Why should the financial sector ever switch away from their amazing COBOL code base? Why should anyone switch away from VGA, works just fine? No need for USB, PS2 etc. work just fine.

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    What Microsoft probably expects you to do is get your management to buy new computers that support Windows 11 and/or whatever the hell their current server OS is, and in the process give them and their hardware vendor partners a lot of money.

    What you can do instead is switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC which is what I did at my workplace recently. It's supported until 2032 with security updates. Not feature updates, but I suspect that business users probably don't care about those much. In fact, most people would probably treat that as a benefit. It also comes with basically no bloatware (except goddamned Edge), which is surprising. No Copilot, no Cortana, no Recall. None of that shit.

    We have a fleet of machines that "can't" be upgraded to Win11 because of hardware shortcomings, at least without overriding the requirements with Rufus or similar. Unfortunately we also rely on a small but important spread of proprietary Windows-only applications which have no open source or Linux replacements, and at least two of them absolutely will not run in Wine. Believe me, I tried.

    The only wrinkle with this is that you cannot upgrade or license swap in place. You have to do a full reinstall, which for us is not a problem because we have a modest number of computers and I have physical access to all of them. None are bricked up behind a wall or anything.

  • Your business critical system will no longer be supported with security updates which will leave it vulnerable to attack.

    I guess, if it's not connected to any sort of outside network, and has no way of accepting data from media like discs or thumb drives then it's perfectly safe, but if that's the case, and it works in isolation, how "business critical" is it?

    You would be amazed in the industrial world. There are tons of large and incredibly expensive special purpose machines that are operated by super antiquated PC architecture computers running geriatric operating systems, sometimes still even DOS or Windows 3.x.

    Think industrial CNC mills and lathes, presses, pick-and-place machines, specialty lab testing equipment, electron microscopes, etc.

    Process control, i.e. production line automation, is usually driven by dedicated PLCs. But the user interfaces connected to them are almost invariantly some old ruggedized panel mounted PC running Windows. An absurd number of them in my experience are still on 2000 or XP. NT4 is pretty easy to find, too.

    Granted often these are not networked, and in cases where they are they're not connected to the internet, or may even talk to other workstations via RS-485 serial (!) or some other gimcrack method that is unlikely to be a vector for modern malware.

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    Their answer would probably be to run Windows Server 2022, which is supported until 2031.

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    I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?

  • You would be amazed in the industrial world. There are tons of large and incredibly expensive special purpose machines that are operated by super antiquated PC architecture computers running geriatric operating systems, sometimes still even DOS or Windows 3.x.

    Think industrial CNC mills and lathes, presses, pick-and-place machines, specialty lab testing equipment, electron microscopes, etc.

    Process control, i.e. production line automation, is usually driven by dedicated PLCs. But the user interfaces connected to them are almost invariantly some old ruggedized panel mounted PC running Windows. An absurd number of them in my experience are still on 2000 or XP. NT4 is pretty easy to find, too.

    Granted often these are not networked, and in cases where they are they're not connected to the internet, or may even talk to other workstations via RS-485 serial (!) or some other gimcrack method that is unlikely to be a vector for modern malware.

    As long as they aren't networked, there's no problem there!

  • I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?

    It's getting downvoted because it's not realistic.

  • It's getting downvoted because it's not realistic.

    I thought so too, largely on the basis of some very bad experiences with ubuntu-based distributions (they seem to hate my bog-standard RTX3060 GPU for whatever reason), but in frustration I tried one last time to install a linux distro and went with something based on fedora and it has 95% just worked, it's been great. I haven't booted up windows in almost 3 weeks, all my games work (battle.net was a bit of a pain to get working), the proprietary windows software I use for work runs great in wine, etc. I'm at the point now where I'm transferring all my files off of NTFS partitions and reformatting them to btrfs and integrating them into the linux filesystem, cause I'm done with windows forever to the greatest possible extent that I can be.

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    The problem is that Microsoft is ending Win10 support so you won't be able to get updates and such (especially security updates) for the OS anymore which will ultimately lead to things breaking or being vulnerable anyway, plus if that business-critical software ever gets updated to the point where it also doesn't support win10 anymore (I've run into this in the past with XP/Vista) then you're going to have to change anyway. But you don't have to change to win11. Companies and governments all over Europe are switching their mission-critical systems to linux and FOSS, yeah it's a pain, but it's going to save you pain down the road.

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    Because either way you’re taking a risk.

    Security flaws and aging hardware are two obvious problems.

    I’d very much question why you’d use windows 10 over something better supported— maybe not Linux but at least Windows Server OS.

  • I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?

    It's because LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX

  • I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?

    Linux spam is really annoying. Linux users seem to base their entire personality around a goddamn operating system.

    I'd rather suck off Bill Gates than be one of those people.

  • I always find it odd that posts like this get any downvotes at all. Like, are people really that in love with Windows and or Microsoft?

    It's because we've seen this post 1000 times

  • I don't understand how can critical buisness machines which work perfectly fine be switched to windows 11?

    We have a machine at work which is beefy and works as a server and backups for many many years on windows 10. Why the hell should I upgrade my buisness critical system ?? Why would I take my risk breaking stuff. I am sure there are millions of critical systems running gon windows 10 which should not be distribed at any means, what would Microsoft do about them.

    If you are running business critical applications on Windows 10 that is a problem. Windows 10 is only meant for end user machines. Other services should be running on OS's that are meant for the application such as Windows Server or server versions of Linux distros running LTS kernels.

    Not to mention, near every piece of software I've been involved with at work has required specific versions of Windows Server and whatever database it uses, if you want to upgrade the software you use, then upgrading the OS is part of the task.

  • Linux spam is really annoying. Linux users seem to base their entire personality around a goddamn operating system.

    I'd rather suck off Bill Gates than be one of those people.

    That's not the flex you think it is.

    Your preoccupation with image here hurts you more than it helps you.

  • Linux spam is really annoying. Linux users seem to base their entire personality around a goddamn operating system.

    I'd rather suck off Bill Gates than be one of those people.

    Putting Bill Gates’ dick in my mouth is far too high of a licensing fee. I’ll just play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe instead. But no judgment. You live your best life.

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    I really need to stop putting it off and install Linux on my PC and laptops

  • I thought so too, largely on the basis of some very bad experiences with ubuntu-based distributions (they seem to hate my bog-standard RTX3060 GPU for whatever reason), but in frustration I tried one last time to install a linux distro and went with something based on fedora and it has 95% just worked, it's been great. I haven't booted up windows in almost 3 weeks, all my games work (battle.net was a bit of a pain to get working), the proprietary windows software I use for work runs great in wine, etc. I'm at the point now where I'm transferring all my files off of NTFS partitions and reformatting them to btrfs and integrating them into the linux filesystem, cause I'm done with windows forever to the greatest possible extent that I can be.

    I am greatful that Ubuntu ended up bringing the Linux desktop into the general publics eye, but at the same time out of all of the popular distro's today, I firmly believe there is always a better choice than Ubuntu for any user, new or veteran. It's just a pity that they are the most well known to people who aren't familiar with Linux while not being good at anything, although basically any Linux distro feels like fresh air when compared to the Microsoft experience.

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    Hold on let me find something[image: 1b188197-bd96-49bd-8fc0-0598e75468ea.avif]
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    A fairer comparison would be Eliza vs ChatGPT.
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    If you're a developer, a startup founder, or part of a small team, you've poured countless hours into building your web application. You've perfected the UI, optimized the database, and shipped features your users love. But in the rush to build and deploy, a critical question often gets deferred: is your application secure? For many, the answer is a nervous "I hope so." The reality is that without a proper defense, your application is exposed to a barrage of automated attacks hitting the web every second. Threats like SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and Remote Code Execution are not just reserved for large enterprises; they are constant dangers for any application with a public IP address. The Security Barrier: When Cost and Complexity Get in the Way The standard recommendation is to place a Web Application Firewall (WAF) in front of your application. A WAF acts as a protective shield, inspecting incoming traffic and filtering out malicious requests before they can do any damage. It’s a foundational piece of modern web security. So, why doesn't everyone have one? Historically, robust WAFs have been complex and expensive. They required significant budgets, specialized knowledge to configure, and ongoing maintenance, putting them out of reach for students, solo developers, non-profits, and early-stage startups. This has created a dangerous security divide, leaving the most innovative and resource-constrained projects the most vulnerable. But that is changing. Democratizing Security: The Power of a Community WAF Security should be a right, not a privilege. Recognizing this, the landscape is shifting towards more accessible, community-driven tools. The goal is to provide powerful, enterprise-grade protection to everyone, for free. This is the principle behind the HaltDos Community WAF. It's a no-cost, perpetually free Web Application Firewall designed specifically for the community that has been underserved for too long. It’s not a stripped-down trial version; it’s a powerful security tool designed to give you immediate and effective protection against the OWASP Top 10 and other critical web threats. What Can You Actually Do with It? With a community WAF, you can deploy a security layer in minutes that: Blocks Malicious Payloads: Get instant, out-of-the-box protection against common attack patterns like SQLi, XSS, RCE, and more. Stops Bad Bots: Prevent malicious bots from scraping your content, attempting credential stuffing, or spamming your forms. Gives You Visibility: A real-time dashboard shows you exactly who is trying to attack your application and what methods they are using, providing invaluable security intelligence. Allows Customization: You can add your own custom security rules to tailor the protection specifically to your application's logic and technology stack. The best part? It can be deployed virtually anywhere—on-premises, in a private cloud, or with any major cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Get Started in Minutes You don't need to be a security guru to use it. The setup is straightforward, and the value is immediate. Protecting the project, you've worked so hard on is no longer a question of budget. Download: Get the free Community WAF from the HaltDos site. Deploy: Follow the simple instructions to set it up with your web server (it’s compatible with Nginx, Apache, and others). Secure: Watch the dashboard as it begins to inspect your traffic and block threats in real-time. Security is a journey, but it must start somewhere. For developers, startups, and anyone running a web application on a tight budget, a community WAF is the perfect first step. It's powerful, it's easy, and it's completely free.
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    i can this for essay writing, prior to AI people would use prompts and templates of the same exact subject and work from there. and we hear the ODD situation where someone hired another person to do all the writing for them all the way to grad school( this is just as bad as chatgpt) you will get caught in grad school or during your job interview. might be different for specific questions in stem where the answer is more abstract,
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    While I completely agree with you about the absence of one-liners and meme comments, and even more left leaning community, there's still that strong element of "gotcha" in discussions. Also tonnes of people not reading an article before commenting (at a better rate than Reddit probably), and a generally even more doomer attitude is common here.