Windows 10 bricks

With the end of Windows 10 coming up soon, I have 2 computers that are working perfectly OK but which are not upgradable to 11.

Thinking of possible uses, is there any way an old W10 box could be strapped down so that it can exist on a local network as a file server for other devices on the local net but not respond to or do anything else, so that it could be safely left unsupported.

Or I suppose I'll have to try Ubuntu on them as I have in previous obsolescences.

nib

Dead as far as Windows goes.

Nothing is completely safe when unsupported.

Debian is probably safer, as it will not contain some of the bells and whistles of Ubuntu, and it will be indefinitely supported, or at least until Net Zero is fully implemented and we have no electricity. I'm running the current Debian on a 13-year-old Atom netbook, among other things, though that will end soon as it is 32 bit. As you may know, it is Debian on which Ubuntu and several other distributions are based.

The netinstall image of the current stable distribution allows a minimal installation, and if you have Linux experience, you can do without a GUI, which reduces the attack surface. There's no real need, as a normal desktop installation can be upgraded to the next stable when the time comes, and the less baggage installed, the fewer potential problems.

The only non-default software you need is a Samba server, which you set up to share data directories. This will need a bit of tweaking as Microsoft changes its CIFS protocol between Windows versions, but that doesn't happen too often.

A possible alternative, if you have the Pro version of Win10, is to make it virtual running on a Linux host, and to firewall it to within an inch of its life, only allowing CIFS access, and then only from the local net.

Carry on using it, each iteration of Windows gets worse. I am running Win

Use RUFUS from rufus.ie to install WIn11. Sets up non-compliant hardware, bypasses Microsoft account creation, disables telemetry, sets up other tedious stuff.

I used it on a i7 Gen7 machine and it was effortless and simple including fetching the Win11 ISO.

You need a 16GB (or was it 32GB) USB memory stick.

Look into Windows 10 LTSC? You only get it officially with W10 Enterprise but I don't know if there are workarounds.

If it's going to be a server, it's probably better as Ubuntu or one of the DIY NAS distros anyway.

Theo

That's probably what I'll do. I just have this uncertainty each time that it might not work with Linux!

Apart from Red Hat many years ago I've only used Ubuntu, and though I've always succeeded somehow in the past there have been hairy moments, typically when at first boot after installation it comes up with no wireless, or even no network at all, and you're Googling like mad to find out what (proprietary?) drivers you have to explicitly install or enable.

nib

If you want it to be a storage server, look into a distro like TrueNAS or Unraid or OpenMediaVault. I don't know what hardware you have as to whether there will be any incompatibility (it's usually good nowadays, although the FreeBSD-based ones can be more picky) - if the machines are old likely many of the kinks have been ironed out. These distros will hand-hold you more in terms of setting up network shares etc, while Ubuntu is just a base OS and you need to install and configure everything else yourself.

Theo

I've installed Ubuntu, MX and Cinnamon Mint distros of Debian on various Intel PCs and found it installed and configured perfectly. It even automatically (with no intervention from me at all) discovered my LAN-connected HP laser printer and configured it.

One PC has an Ethernet connection to the network but the other has wifi; AFAIK I didn't have to connect the wifi PC by Ethernet when I was initially configuring it.

The PC which runs all three of these distros (by swapping hard drives) is Windows 10 vintage for hardware; the one that runs just MX is Windows

I don't know if you already have a server running, but if not, there are various useful things you can do with something permanently on. If you use a general-purpose distribution, these things remain options for the future.

There was a time when I'd have suggested trying Knoppix from disc or USB, and if everything works OK then the computer will work with any Debian or derivative, with maybe a bit of fiddling. Unfortunately, this isn't produced any more, and the latest version is about four years old (9.1). If the hardware at least as old as that, it's still a good test.

I'm sure you know that this is because the firmware does not have source code available, so pure Debian does not contain it. But the current Debian 12 (Bookworm) installers do contain non-free firmware, though I'm guessing that you probably need to run the installer in Expert mode to be given the option.

I've got a laptop which technically can be upgraded but doesn't have enough space. It has a 128 GB SSD which is nearly full. It doesn't have a slot for a memory card, so I can't upgrade it that way.

Windows 10 uses 20 GB; Windows 11 uses 64 GB, and needs an extra 20 GB free to do the upgrade. Why does Windows 11 need more than three times the space? Is it three times as good? What would that even mean?

I suspect that the dangers of using a machine which isn't upgradable are exaggerated.

I'm thinking of getting a mini PC, but I would like one that can run a LLM (Large Language Model) locally, if I can master the technicalities of AI. It appears to be rather a closed book. And you can't buy a PC that says it's LLM ready (with a suitable GPU); only ones that say they are suitable for gaming.

It's mainly meant as a portable boot OS (from a stick or DVD). while you can install it, that wasn't the original design intent.

And the above setup has Compiz running, which is an acquired taste.

The kernel on that one is 5.10, which is good for older equipment. That is more likely to work with the graphics cards in refugee systems.

I happened to have that one in my DVD collection. But you can put it on a USB stick, using rufus.ie tool. When the boot prompt comes up, you can enter

knoppix64

to boot it. But the boot line also accepts parameters such as "noacpi", which helps it boot on much older computers. If you do that though, at shutdown you will see a "Win98-like prompt", such as "It is safe to shut down your computer now", as that is an APM prompt :-) You only use noacpi, if it absolutely won't boot.

Paul

Whats the latest version of Knoppix and when was the last update?

Joe says that is the last one. It's also the last Knoppix in my collection.

That one is 5.10 kernel, Linux Mint 21.3 is 5.15 kernel (last OS with good graphics card support). Ubuntu 24.04 is 6.x kernel, better suited to newer equipment, and maybe an older graphics card doesn't work.

I think you are supposed to look for a kernel with "HWE" in the description, for bleeding edge hardware. If you just bought a 285-equipped laptop, that might take a HWE kernel to boot.

And remember, that the industry made a lot of these changes (like... Wayland versus Xorg) in an effort to make older equipment obsolete. This lengthens the time it takes us, to support people trying to re-purpose equipment.

Paul

The great thing about Linux Mint is that if that happens, you run the Driver manager and it tells you what drivers you need and lets you install them.

Most wifi chips are already supported these days so its usually only graphics cards you need to worry about.

If you do need to connect to the internet to get a network driver use Ethernet if you can, first. A USB Ethernet device is cheap enough if the puter has no Ethernet hardware, or in extremis a wifi dongle that *is* directly supported will get you out of trouble.

So *when* was the most recent version of Knoppix releaased?

S.

One of the reasons I moved from debian to Mint was the bundling of all the 'non free' goodies directly in the distro.

If you use a disk review utility such as SequoiaView.exe or on Linux QDirstat or Kdirstat, you can see that some softwares have two or three cached versions of their installers.

These are some examples of maintenance commands:

Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore \ Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup \___ While booted from a DVD Dism /Image:C:\test\offline /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase /

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore \ Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup \___ While the targeted Windows is running Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase /

After your OS has a bunch of Patch Tuesdays in it, you can try

Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase # Administrator terminal

and that will save, maybe, a whole gigabyte :-/

But really, the caching schemes are massively wasteful. It's perfectly reasonable to assume some of those caches NEVER get used. Not ever. There are a lot of copies of MSEdge materials. And in an emergency at Microsoft, they'll simple send out new versions, those cached versions won't get used.

Try this

powercfg /h off # Remove hiberfil.sys file hidden in root of C: powercfg /h on # Put the hiberfil.sys file back, so you can hibernate again

That is typically a quick way to get some space back, is disable hibernation.

The utility "cleanmgr.exe" can also be used. But be careful what you tick !!! I start with all the tick boxes disabled, then select one or two items for cleanup. The Delivery Optimization, for sharing updates with other computers, can be cleaned out (DoSvc). If the sharing actually worked, I would tend to leave that alone, but I no longer get any sharing here between machines, on Patch Tuesday.

If you see a C:\windows.old , do not panic. Those are deleted within ten days of their creation. The cleanmgr.exe can remove that. DO NOT try to remove that yourself, it makes a mess and you will be sorry. The automation removes it after ten days.

It's still a bloated pig, and nibbling at the edges like this is hardly satisfying, when you just want to delete whole folders of stuff :-)

Paul

Yup that would generally be ok - or at least much reduced risk unless some other device on the LAN is compromised first and could be a vector to reach the win 10 box.

You have other options... you could enable a hypervisor on the Win 10 box and then use it to create a VM that creates virtual hardware that will satisfy the win 11 requirements. The win 10 side does not at that point need to be on the same subnet, and so could be invisible to most of the local LAN.

Alternatively you could trick the old hardware into installing 11. It will work, but it is hard to say at which point it will cease to get updates... you may have to do a clean install each time to get the next "feature" update onto it if it check the hardware requirements for each one.

Knoppix is/was basically Debian unstable with extra hardware drivers, and was primarily intended for the OP's use, trying a new computer to check that everything worked before installing Linux.

It was, as Paul said, installable on hard drive, but the revisions were reasonably frequent and it wasn't upgradeable. The Unique Selling Point of Debian is that it will always be upgradeable, and a lot of work goes into making that happen. Klaus Knopper started with Debian and put the work into making drivers for new hardware.