Over Half A Million Home windows Customers Are Switching To Linux

Home windows 10 is on its final legs: The predecessor to Home windows 11 has already reached its official end of support in October 2025, and can proceed to limp together with free Prolonged Safety Updates (ESU) till October thirteenth, 2026 (paid ESU lasts till 2028). In different phrases, Microsoft is trying to responsibly finish assist for Home windows 10 as quickly as it will possibly, even if Home windows 10 was purported to be “the final model of Home windows” ever made.

Clearly, this has not held true. Microsoft has additionally made it troublesome to maneuver outdated {hardware} to Home windows 11, because of its inflexible TPM 2.0 safety chip requirement, which many older desktops and laptops lack. This has left fairly a couple of Home windows 10 customers with out an improve path to Microsoft’s newest OS on their {hardware}, and Linux is choosing up the slack, with distros like Zorin showing the numbers to show it.

Among the many many Linux distributions, from Fedora to Ubuntu, Zorin (based mostly on Ubuntu) very a lot goals to be a substitute for Home windows, and has been for a lot of, a few years. From its Home windows 11-like taskbar to its very familiar-looking begin menu, Zorin is constructed to make the transition from Home windows to Linux as painless as attainable.

In a world the place many Home windows 10 customers wish to bounce ship to an OS that respects their privateness, to not point out their {hardware} (irrespective of its age), Zorin is probably going one of many first distros a Linux-curious Home windows person will take a look at. On condition that Zorin has already crossed 1,000,000 downloads, with 78% of those on Windows machines, one can assume {that a} good portion of these are customers who’ve completely switched from Microsoft to Linux. It will seem that the yr of the mainstream Linux desktop could also be upon us, and poetically, it is Microsoft’s doing.

Some customers argue that Microsoft restricted Home windows 11 by requiring TPM 2.0 to make more hardware sales, moderately than for person security. Certain, the safety advantages of TPM, like Safe Boot, are good for stopping malicious software program from loading at startup. Nonetheless, when the selection is to both substitute your completely functioning {hardware} so you’ll be able to run Home windows 11, or change to a Linux distro; for a lot of, the selection was seemingly fairly simple. That is very true when no OS is truly secure to start with.

Due to Valve’s push with the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming machine that runs on Linux moderately than Home windows, Linux has change into that rather more viable. Not solely has GPU driver assist come a good distance, because of Valve’s push into Linux gaming (simply look at AMD as a perfect example), however even AAA video games like “Cyberpunk 2077” and “Baldur’s Gate 3” have been developed with the Steam Deck and Linux in thoughts. Gaming on Linux is now that rather more corresponding to gaming on Home windows, rounding out the OS as a full-time various. Not can one declare there’s a lack of video games on Linux to carry them again from switching.

That is all because of WINE, a Home windows emulator Valve forked into Proton, which is the meat of how Home windows video games run so properly on Linux. In fact, WINE has its personal usefulness, particularly in distros like Zorin that goal to shut the hole between Linux and Home windows. So, for a similar cause video games work so properly on Linux today, it is also why you’ll be able to run a lot of your favourite Home windows apps immediately in Linux. Zorin even takes this to the acute with a user-friendly app referred to as “Home windows App Help” that may easily install .exe or .msi files as if they’re native purposes.

Linux distros like Zorin have grown exponentially in reputation by concentrating on Home windows customers, and internet apps have simply stuffed the gaps the place native and WINE apps fall brief. Linux is known for not providing native purposes like Photoshop, which comes right down to Adobe refusing to make a Linux model, possible because of its low person rely. The identical goes for apps like Microsoft Workplace. The excellent news is that plenty of these job-dependent purposes now supply internet apps, which is why distros like Zorin embrace the flexibility to put in progressive internet apps out of the field, moderately than counting on Chrome’s built-in performance. 

This manner, you’ll be able to run Zorin, which seems quite a bit like Home windows, and add apps like Microsoft Workplace, Google Drive, Grammarly, and some other on-line services as a web app. That is the fantastic thing about Linux (because of a characteristic from ChromeOS, which is constructed on high of Linux), moderately than a company and its software program controlling you. You as an alternative management the OS, from what apps it makes use of, to what video games it will possibly play, all whereas mimicking a well-recognized person interface.

On the finish of the day, it is easy to see why so many Home windows customers are trying out Linux distros like Zorin. When the selection is between spending a bunch of cash to exchange completely useful {hardware}, or just transferring to a brand new OS, many will go for the latter. Now that Linux has lastly caught as much as the massive boys by way of drivers, video games, and apps, there’s little cause to not make the change.