Windows 10 loses support in 2025 so not far down the road. I rarely use it except to run yearly tax software. Again this year tried tax software in WINE. It installs, it runs, the fonts even look nice. BUT it wont let me enter activation code and it wont update. So thinking, three years away, what about win11.
I found a hacked n-lited version online, download a meager 1.6GB, tiny compared to official version. Burned the iso to dvd. Booted. LOL, the installer is in Portuguese. It gives an install option of "Ingles". So off to the races. This by way on my ancient HP DC5100 with P4 processor. Well this hacked version had been hacked to where it doesnt check hardware and at the end doesnt try to force one into a Microsoft Account. And it finally boots to desktop....
Its of course in Portuguese, I imagine the hacker person to reduce size removed all language packs except for his native one. To my eyes it looks just like variation on win10 so guessing they needed an influx of cash to bring this out. Oh I did like way its organized better than win10. But not enough to ever want to use it on daily basis. I installed the tax software and no surprise it installed fast and worked well. Just to use it once a year for tax software, dont even care that its in Portuguese, the software installed is in English.
Its funny this old computer gets yet another lease on life. Maybe 30 years old when its finally retired. It originally came with XP on it though some may even had win2000. Then the tax software sniffed for XP and refused to run one year. I think it could, they just purposefully made it check and not run on XP. That year I got tax softwaer to run in WINE but it was a painful experience for a one time use. So found out win10 could be run unactivated indefinitely so installed that. Sure wasnt going to buy it. Amazingly worked ok. No sound card driver for it in win10 but who cares. Now as win10 winds down it gets chance to continue with win11. Never would have believed it. I will of course lock it so it wont try to update. That would probably not be a good thing if MS gets more um, determined to micromanage things.
I wouldnt count on win11 continuing this lax about what it installs on. I imagine Microsoft will lock it down to where it cant be installed on older computers and eliminate the workarounds, but for now, works fine for my purposes. Yep win11 on a nearly 20 year old computer. LOL With all that bloat hacked away, it really even runs fairly reasonably, not sluggish.