Steve Gibson (the developer of the original light pen for Apple II and Atari
systems as well as numerous software programs) has been a Windows developer
for many years and developed a free 83k application called Never10 that
prevents the Windows pop-ups from upgrading to Windows 10. It will also
remove any files that Windows has automatically downloaded as well (which can
amount to over 6GB). It uses a group policy and registry edits which is the
same thing a sysadmin would have to do in an enterprise environment.
From the Never10 page "Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows
updates, including the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583.
Never10 simply employs Microsoft's documented and sanctioned configuration
settings to instruct it NOT to change the installed version of Windows."
I mention this two reasons:
1) I would rather see someone use Never10 than to turn off their security
updates because someone will almost certainly break into that device. I would
assume anyone turning off their security updates probably has no
understanding of security practices and having a vulnerable device on a
network opens up every other device on the network too (and this is excluding
the device being turned into a zombie for spam/DDOS which is also almost a
certainty).
2) If you know anyone who is struggling with this Windows' issue, this is the
PERFECT time to infer that a transition to GNU/Linux is in order. If they are
that upset at Windows, it is actually the perfect time to educate about why
GNU/Linux is better and conforms to everything they want their computer to
do. Trisquel is more than adequate for the majority of users who don't even
know what an OS is and are using their computers for document processing and
web browsing.
