But my computer can’t *DO* Windows 11, what can I do?
On 14 October 2025, Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 and, even though the upgrade to Windows 11 was free, Windows 11 won’t run on a lot of otherwise really good computers.
Thankfully, for many people, there’s a very easy (and cheap) option called Linux. Linux is a free, open-source alternative to Windows that’s been around for decades. The differences between Linux and Windows are similar to the differences between Mac OSX / Apple and Windows and, like Mac OSX / Apple, some software just doesn’t work with Linux (yet). But, like Mac OSX / Apple, most of the software that most people use does. Things like web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, etc.) work on Linux just like they do in Windows. Some things like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) don’t work with Linux but there are really good alternatives like LibreOffice that, like Linux, are also free!
If you have an older computer running Windows 10 or even Windows 7 that can’t run Windows 11 but still has life left in it and you’d like to find a more secure way to use it than an unsupported version of Windows, I would definitely recommend giving Linux a try. I’ve included some links below where you can download various versions, or distributions, for free to try out. Most include an option to run them live, so that you can try them out without having to replace Windows.
Linux Distributions
- Linux Mint – Very nice, easy to use drop-in replacement for Windows.
- Elementary OS – This looks and feels more like Mac OSX / Apple.
- Ubuntu – This is one of the more mature desktop versions of Linux.
If you’d like to give Linux a shot but aren’t comfortable installing it yourself or if you’d like to move from Windows to Linux but you have data (pictures, documents, etc.) that you’d like to keep and aren’t quite sure how to do it (or just don’t want to), we’d be happy to help.