Windows 10 version 21H2, the latest version of the OS released back in November 2021 is now available for all users. The company announced on Friday on its Windows Health dashboard (via Neowin) that the update was now ready for “broad deployment,” meaning that all users can now get it via Windows Update.
Just like Windows 10 versions 21H1 and 20H2, the 21H2 update is a pretty minor one. New features include support for the WPA3 H2E Wi-Fi security standard, Windows Hello for Business improvements, as well as GPU compute support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
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Windows 10 version 21H2 will be supported until June 13, 2023, and Microsoft announced last year that the OS will only get one major update per going forward until it reaches end of support in 2025. This means that we should get Windows 10 version 22H2 later this year for users that can’t upgrade to Windows 11.
Microsoft usually automatically installs new Windows 10 updates on PCs that are approaching end of support, and that will soon be the case for Windows 10 version 20H2. The end of servicing will happen on May 10, 2022 for Home and Pro users, but the Education, Enterprise, and IoT Enterprise editions of Windows 10 version 20H2 will reach end of servicing next year on May 9, 2023.
dftf
<p>I’m genuinely curious: when you say you’re "…still going into <em>Control Panel </em>all too often…" may I ask: to do <em>what</em>, exactly? People <em>always </em>bring-up the issue with having <em>Setting</em>s and <em>Control Panel</em> and while I agree just one would be nice, I also find myself rarely having to use it. Once you’ve setup your <em>Windows</em> profile with the settings you want, what is it you need to keep going back in for?</p><p><br></p><p>Oh and there being two versions of <em>Teams</em> wouldn’t be the first time <em>Microsoft</em> have offered two similar products that do the same thing: <em>Windows Messenger</em> was a thing alongside <em>MSN Messenger</em>; <em>Frontpage Express</em> existed alongside <em>Frontpage</em>; <em>Outlook Express</em>, despite the name, is nothing-like <em>Outlook</em>; and at one point, there was a <em>OneNote</em> in the <em>Microsoft Store</em> that wasn’t quite-the-same as the one in the <em>Office </em>suite.</p>
dftf
<p>Both valid examples… but <em>how often </em>do you need to do either on an individual PC or server? You can’t be altering both multiple times a day surely?</p><p><br></p><p>(<em>"Turn Windows Features on or off" </em>is due to get fully-migrated into <em>Settings </em>in Windows 11, by the way. It won’t change on Windows 10 though.)</p>
dftf
<p>For most versions of <em>Windows 10</em> you have until at-least October 2025 to get security-updates; possibly longer, if many are still using it at-that-time and an <em>XP</em>-style extension comes-in.</p><p><br></p><p>And for businesses, they could consider using the <em>2019 LTSC</em> edition, which extends updates up-to January of 2029. (The <em>IoT</em> editions also have longer… I think one ends in 2032?)</p>