The Goodbye #
Hey Windows, we’ve been together for a long time. Remember when I first got you with an old Windows 95 computer and how we upgraded you to 98 SE later? Or how we themed you under XP together? Then using cracks to upgrade you to 7 and running like that for a long time? Getting a Surface Pro for university where you became 8? I saw the vision and liked you, despite what the others said! 8.1 was a great improvement for you as well. Then, finally, Windows 10. Your “last version”, as they called you at the time.
But then you became 11. What happened to the “last version”? What happened to you?
I’m not blaming you. I’m blaming myself.
Wait, no! It was totally your fault! My laptop became sluggish. You became invasive! And sure, I changed too, because I started to care more about these things (you now, privacy, security, the “small” things).
We started seeing other people. In 2023 installed openSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop. But I couldn’t let you go. Not fully. Not yet. You were still there, as Windows 10, on my gaming PC.
But then 2025-10-14 came, and you went end of life. You offer extended support, but only with a signed in Microsoft account. See! That’s not you! That’s stuff 11 does!
I just can’t continue like that. It’s time to say goodbye. You taught me a lot. If we never met I surely would not have become the person I am today.
Therefore, thank you, Windows, and goodbye.
Respectfully yours,
Niklas
The Plan for the Future #
Yes, that “letter” was dramatic. I do not have such an emotional bond with my operating system.
With the holidays coming up, I will install Tumbleweed on my gaming PC. I originally planned to do it around the EOL date of Windows 10, but I realized that I would have to bother with Nvidia Drivers on Linux. Then I planned to slowly buy new hardware and upgrade the whole PC. I got myself a shiny, new AMD RX 9070 XT. Then I looked for the rest and was shaken to find out that memory prices have exploded.
Well, I guess I’ll stick with my old system + the new GPU from now on. I’m annoyed at myself for not upgrading earlier. But hey, the system held out for that long, what’s one more year, right?
I built my gaming system it in 2012 with an Intel Core i7 4770K and a GTX 680 and 16GB of DDR3(!) RAM from my previous PC. I eventually upgraded the GPU to an GTX 1070 (shortly before the 20-series was released).
The system will also be running openSUSE Tumbleweed. I know there “better” gaming distros out there. But I’m familiar with Tumbleweed and like what it offers.