So Microsoft is ending all support for Windows 10 in October...

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Pay for the support after October 14 or upgrade your systems.

Best believe that cyber threat actors will be targeting legacy systems after this date.

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Get a Mac.

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The Mac mini is actually a decent little desktop compared to its windows competitors in the form factor, but there are a few qualifiers that are important.


1) what software is required?
2) desktops or laptops?
3) what amount of central management is important to you?


We are purely web-based at this point. The only ‘central’ thing I have is a few hundred generic helpful documents that are well-organized. Users don’t do anything on their local computer that contains protected/important information. All computers are backed up daily (symbology).
My printer has poor OSX support (only works on one tray, we have to print on special paper a significant portion of the time. Yes, there are workarounds including just adding a new, cheap-enough printer for such things).
I do use the synology directory server to join computers to a domain and run a login script to map drives, push install packages when needed, but it’s rare.


I’ve debated testing a few select users on a live Linux distro for a few weeks. I have too many devices (20 or so) to use RHEL for free. But I could use a clone (Rocky, Alma) or upstream (fedora, CentOS stream (I understand the disappointment of the deprecation of ‘classic’ CentOS but am not concerned in my simplistic setup for the problems created by using either distro, though CentOS as ‘less stable’ upstream would likely make me prefer Fedora) vs a Mint or more ‘windows friendly’ version.



Any reason you can’t try a live Linux USB on your savviest user for 2 weeks and ask them for their most brutally honest feedback?



If starting from day 1, building around Mac Mini and MacBook Air base models is actually a strategy I’d consider in my use case (i find the sub-$800 laptop game for my office to be a big drag, and they tend to be replaced twice as often or more than the couple of $800-1200 ones we have just in terms of actual build quality and how rough going in/out of patient rooms is when actually typing on laps. I’ve started buying Lenovo Thinkpad T14 refurbished models and they tend to do great in comparison. They’re about in line with base model MacBook Air computers with comparable battery life (long enough for a whole day). We do, though, have a few pieces of software that work better on windows. And our users generally hate Apple, so they’re unlikely to go willingly. And there are very few advantages of using OSX that we can’t make up for in other ways. Staged/partial migrations just suck in general, so if there’s any holdups, OSX is usually the first thing to be tossed out because it just sort of does its own thing. They do have some free business software that helps with configurations, but they required 3rd party MDM if you’re going that route.

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I have 8 Windows boxes at my office that run 10 just fine, but only one is upgraded capable to Windows 11. F that.

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There are ways around the hardware checks

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There are ways around the hardware checks

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unless you have an unsupported CPU. You can still get it installed but it won't take updates leaving you in the same place.

I would bet that almost all of those computers that can't go to Windows 11 would run Linux nicely. Microsoft may screw up here and chase a lot of people to Linux. Those people may find that they like Linux and don't come back.

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its bullshite.

i cant even update several of my PCs to 11.

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This right here

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hardly. If you can create the live USB Linux then you can handle modern Linux.

Just like windows, you don't need to know anything about Linux to use it. There are guides for absolutely everything you would want to do.

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1) end users ain’t making live USB.
2) end users ain’t reading guides.



I’m not talking about those interested enough to save their hardware. I’m talking about those trying to save company/business hardware and attempting to get regular joe using it.

Using chrome/Firefox/openoffice will be fine, and plenty of folks would but fine with it. But if they ever, say, needed to configure the firewall to let an app through or attempt to make setting changes that don’t have a GUI (mounting network drives comes to mind quickly), a lot won’t RTFM. And some that do will give up because it’s foreign and not as ‘easy’ as it’s been made with windows.

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Using chrome/Firefox/openoffice will be fine, and plenty of folks would but fine with it. But if they ever, say, needed to configure the firewall to let an app through or attempt to make setting changes that don’t have a GUI (mounting network drives comes to mind quickly), a lot won’t RTFM. And some that do will give up because it’s foreign and not as ‘easy’ as it’s been made with windows.

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Some of that isn't even an issue with Linux. many distros dont even enable the firewall as it is generally agreed to be unnecessary.

And again, if they even know what "mounting a network drive" is, it takes 2 minutes to find a completely detailed step by step guide but even that has a very simple GUI process if it is SMB. NFS is probably the only thing not fully GUI supported (depending on distros).

Linux would be fine in a corporate environment. Many companies in Germany run their own in house distribution and have found it very efficient. The modern company doesn't let anyone have admin privileges anyway. So if everything has to be done by IT regardless, your IT guys are going to know Linux just fine. It doesn't complicate anything for the user at their desk.

There just needs to be better software support for Linux before it can really work in the corporate world. But at the rate people are getting tired of Windows AND with gaming really making a push into Linux, it might happen sooner rather than later.