By installing Linux on it

No windows 10 left in the house.

Mint, Debian. Dual Boots are now all off. Couldn’t be happier. It was a pain getting everything setup correctly, but wow. I love having an OS that only does what I tell it.

Same way you’d use a phone that’s EOL. Even my old ass EOL router still held up because it accepted no incoming calls as if it wasn’t even there. Any other more involved attack vectors would probably fall outside of scope for the people potentially targeting an average person. Where the real danger lies with outdated systems, especially W10 while it’s still fairly fresh, is user error - visit the wrong link or download a wrong file and you are in the world of pain.

By turning it on.

What am I saying, it never gets turned off.

I also have both XP and Win7 VMs for running software that won’t run under 10/11.

Google and Apple have done a great job making people believe that an “unpatched” system is somehow dangerous.

Nearly all of my system failures/OS problems since about 2010 have been from updates breaking things - both Windows and Android

I haven’t seen a virus since Win2k and running a decent AV became standard.

And I’m in Enterprise IT - our biggest concern is social engineering, not direct attacks.

Security/stability is about layering protections/mitigations to prevent alignment of “risk holes”, like stacking Swiss cheese.

There’s multiple good answers in the comments but context can help.

Why do you need to stay on Win10?

Can’t update? Don’t want to update?

Personally I moved to Linux Mint about 2 years ago. My laptop I just switched to Fedora (I think the UI is great on laptops but not a fan on desktops).

Anything Windows exclusive I need to keep around (and there are many reasons but they are highly subjective) I run Windows in a VM.

On top of that, I use ameliorated.io to reclaim the OS as my own and have little issues as far as privacy or security. As such, I didn’t mind updating to Win11. The way the ameliorated version runs is essentially the same as 10. So I get a clean interface (no asinine menu system), secured with admin and user accounts, no telemetry, no bloat. I’m very happy with this setup. If I had to stay 100% on windows for some reason this is how I’d run it.

I did the free extended update. Will probably swap to the iot version later this year.

we still have some win10 here. not too worried given who is using them and for what purposes. we’ve retired from some of our work so we don’t have or access any sensitive data (medical records mostly) anymore.

if you need it, try to score the extra update time for ‘free’ (check settings-windows update for the offer). i’ve done that for a few people and it didn’t even mess up their ‘backup’ status… but do check to make sure it’s off if you do that method. there are other ‘methods’ but idk if LW lets you discuss them.

By telling win 11 to constantly to fuck off.

You can still safely browse the internet with an adblocker and don’t download unofficial software. Only idiots and security people raw dog a windows machine online without a firewall and a NAT gateway.

What is your real question?

All my laptops are running Linux. Daily driver is currently on Manjaro with a dual boot to a very stripped down Win11 for some professional software with no Linux version.

Main PC is on Mint.

HTPC is on Win10 and I do not give a single shit what happens to that installation. Its purpose is to run Steam and VLC. If it gets a virus, it gets a virus. If it steals my info and sends it to China, then someone in China will know I play Jackbox games and watch weird arthouse Japanese movies. I could not care less. And if a virus ruins the OS, I’ll flatten, reinsrall Win10, and go back to not giving a shit 2 hours later.

I’m not

We still need Windows 10 to run things. So I switched those systems to LTSC.

just install ltsc its easy

I couldn’t find a Tiny10 ISO anymore to share with you… Let me upload next week and I’ll paste it here. :)

Meanwhile, just nuke a normal ISO with:
https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

I’m running 10 with no security features as my main gaming system. I turned off as much of Windows defender as I could because it was slowing down texture downloads in Second Life + was trying to say my fan control software was malware.

I hope I get a virus because it’ll be the final tug I need to fully cover to linux. I just converted a 10 year old laptop to linux mint to run as a server since everything is getting enshittified and requiring monthly fees, like Mint the budgeting app, so I’m dipping my toe into self-hosting.

I have nothing to lose.

I’m also still running Android 9 on my phone because I refuse to buy a new one due to planned obsolescence.

I’ve been slowly transitioning everything to Linux. I’ve been using Kubuntu so far, but have been encountering enough issues that I might have to go back and redo it with a new distro at some point.