[tbelldesignco]

I'm in the same boat as @sagher.  I did try an upgrade to Windows 10 with an old laptop Thinkpad with decent specs (4GB RAM), but soon learned that Windows 10 can only work optimally on a computer of which the motherboard has been designed for Windows 10.  The initial upgrade was awesome, but when those updates started to rain down it completely froze my computer.  Kudos to Microsoft for the really efficient upgrade system, but if they could have fixed it so that the updates could be managed more optimally for an older computer system, then it could have worked much better. That part killed it for me as the packages were just too large, and the sad thing is too that not all of those updates are really necessary.  If Microsoft could have created a "lite" version of updates it could have made all of the difference.

But then maybe I'm also a bit cynical as Microsoft has been in cahoots with hardware manufacturers from the very start of Microsoft from the 1980s.  So possibly the intention is to get us to throw out our old and perfectly working hardware and replace it with a new more compatible system.  I'm not ready to do that yet.  So am keeping fingers crossed for a little longer life on my Windows 7 computer.

So far I haven't had any issues yet, but I do anticipate that as time marches on that there will be new applications created with no support for Windows 7.  I haven't felt that pinch yet, but if it does affect me, then I'll have to think of doing something different.  Who knows, maybe Linux - maybe Arch Linux?

In the meanwhile I agree with you.  Businesses obviously don't have any choice but to upgrade to Windows 10 and what a lovely lucrative business is created for the hardware companies as I guess the upgrade to Windows 10 would also include upgrade to more up to date hardware.

Microsoft and Apple are very similar in that regard, they tend to work with their hardware manufactures (HP, Dell, Lenovo and the likes) that way more people flock to the new OS and the latest hardware is compatible with it. When hardware begins to depreciate, they build that into their plans and start to drop support for machines or throttle hardware in the code so users will have to buy new machines. Apple did this from the transition of PowerPC to Intel and will begin this from Intel to Apple Silicone (M1/M1X).

Arch Linux does look very promising, I think it is a high contender with Ubuntu and some of the more renown GUI Based Distros. I've also had an eye on ElementaryOS, but for Windows users it may be too much of a depart from what they are use too, as it is heavily modified and designed to look like macOS.