At that point, the OS will be 10 years old, and was a free upgrade for anyone running Windows 7 or later. It’s plausible to not have paid a cent for your OS for 15+ years by 2025.
If you’ve bought a new computer with Windows since 2021, you’ll have v11 anyway and won’t be affected.
Frankly I have to hand it to Microsoft - they’ve been generous with OS support. The pessimist/pragmatist part of me puts it down to upgrading old OS’s to combat their reputation as being the cause of worms/viruses going mental on the Internet over the past decade or so. So it isn’t like they haven’t had ulterior motives.
But yeah, I can’t really fault them for this one.
Microsoft outdoes every other (paid) OS including Chrome, Android*, iOS, and Mac in terms of their longterm support, as far as I am concerned.
But Win10 is still the end of the line for me, I suspect. All the MS Account stuff deeply integrated into 11 is a bridge too far.
*(which is free, but also doesn’t get properly supported on older devices)
Proton has done wonders I hear. Wonder how bad it’ll be dealing with my 3080.