With the release of the May 2021 cumulative updates, Microsoft stopped supporting several Windows 10 versions. To be precise, three releases reached the end of life today, but if you are a regular consumer, you should only care about one.
Today, Windows 10 1909 received its final cumulative updates for consumer-based editions: Home, Pro, Pro Education, and Pro for Workstations. If you own a computer that runs one of those Windows SKUs, it is time to upgrade to something more recent. It is worth mentioning, though, that Microsoft has already upgraded lots of Windows 10 1909 users to versions 2004 and 20H2. Nowadays, Microsoft does not force upgrades for Windows 10 users unless their preferred OS versions reach the end of life. During the last few months, Microsoft has been migrating users from the aging release. Thus, at the end of April 2021, Windows 10 had only 11.1%. You can expect this number to plunge in the a few months.
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As for business consumers, they have nothing to worry about just yet. Microsoft will keep shipping updates and patches for Windows 10 1909 Enterprise, Education, and IoT Education SKU until May 2022. Being the second update of the year, Windows 10 1909 gets full 30 months of support for business consumers. Versions, released in the first half of a year, get 18 months of support.
The other two releases that will no longer get updates include Windows 10 1803 and 1809. The former is done for all types of users, including business customers, while the latter will remain supported in the LTSC channel.
If you follow the Windows 10 lifecycle, you probably know that Microsoft traditionally ends support for one version at a time. Today we have quite a different situation because, in 2020, Microsoft extended the lifecycle of Windows 10 1809 due to the ongoing pandemic, hence the overlap.
With Windows 10 1909 reaching the end of life, there are only two supported versions left. Microsoft will keep updating Windows 10 2004 until December 14, 2021, and Windows 10 20H2 until May 10, 2022.
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