By October 2025 Windows 10 will no longer be supported, and Windows 11 is not exactly stable, neither the code, nor the user interface.
Microsoft is determined to move users to "the cloud", meaning paid use of their "cloud-based offerings" - mail, office, and eventually even the operating system itself will be subscription-based. See Article on The Verge Website (link opens in new window/tab).
I for one don't like the idea that if, for whatever reason, I miss a payment my data goes *poof*. Or that if my internet is down or I change banks and don't update my banking info with them I can't even work.
I also don't like spyware such as CoPilot.
With this in mind, I've converted the original low vision pc to MX Linux. (link opens in new window/tab).
The new windows low vision pc has a kvm (keyboard, video, mouse) switch to change one screen between the linux and windows computers.
Unfortunately, unlike 20 years ago, when setting up multiple monitors was basically point-and-click, linux doesn't like the "latest and greatest" hardware - or for that matter, the 20-year-old screens I dug out that worked back then. This means that I'm currently limited to switching on one screen. But most people won't be running multi-screen setups anyway.
For software, both for people who aren't yet ready to switch to linux, and those who are, there are plenty of non-microsoft free replacements out there. The ones I've listed have to be able to run on both Windows and linux, so people can get used to the experience without having to switch operating systems right away.
Web Browsers Firefox MX Linux also lets you install Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and many other browsers.
Office Suite LibreOffice MX Linux comes with many document editors, text editors, etc.
Development Environment Eclipse IDE for Java, PHP, C/C++ developers MX-Linux also lets you download other developer tools.
Graphics Editor The GIMP MX Linux also lets you install many other graphics tools.
Multimedia VLC Media player - windows download for those who want to give it a test drive.
Video conferencing Zoom, works on Windows, Linux, Android, IOS. Amazon Fire tablets have the Zoom app for free in the Fire app store.
If you have an iPhone or Apple computer, you can email a Facetime link that opens in the user's browser. Up to 32 users, no time limit.
MX Linux also has other video tools.
Thunderbird Email - but note that it still has problems that haven't been fixed for a decade.
Once you move to linux, there are plenty of email programs, many of them already pre-installed. For Windows, because, as the good ole Magic 8-Ball says used to say, "Outlook not good."
If you have an Amazon Fire tablet, the default email client also works great. It's actually what I use as my main email program.
Nginx web server Works great for serving web pages.
PHP web/command-line scripting language, for web pages that need to be interpreted on the server.
When the time comes (2025), I'll image the Windows system drive, and never have to update to Windows 11. Anything happens to the windows install, I'll just restore from the system image.
The windows system drive doesn't hold much (all the usual stuff that normally gets installed on your C: drive I've diverted to other drives).
You can easily change the default directories where screenshots, downloads, etc. go by right-clicking the current download location in your Windowns C: drive and changing it's properties so it uses another drive/directory.
Also makes it easy to avoid filling your C: drive - much easier to just install another drive than to re-install everything on a larger C: drive.
This is been a lifesaver, as I've had to re-install Windows 5 times in a year, including removing 2 Windows 11 installs - as of June 2022 Windows 11 still doesn't cut it.
The C: drive has less than 120 gb on it, it will be easy to install Windows 10 on a 1TB or 2TB m.2 SSD, and just make an image of the install after it's set up. This way, even after Windows 10 goes out of support, if my system drive gets munged, I'll just restore from the image.
And it's no big deal making a new drive image after installing other software, to capture any changes to dynamic link libraries, etc., that end up on the C: drive.
The sad part? I really, really tried to give Windows 11 another shot, but I have a new scanner whose software won't even install under Windows ll, and 3 webcams that had the same situation until I dug out an old Win10 installer from my backups.