btw.. missed many steps in there, but, you have the picture ;)
All I needed to know was that Microsoft was forcing upgrades to Windows 10 in the middle of the night to know this was for Microsoft’s reasons, not their customers’. I came home late from work one night and there it was, switching over without my approval.
I killed the upgrade and disconnected my modem. When I rebooted, it told me the upgrade had not finished and would I like to continue. I clicked “no”. It then started a routine to uninstall the upgrade and return me to Windows 7. I sent Microsoft a sternly-worded (and likely ignored) e-mail about how this was a betrayal of customer confidence.
Someone even wrote a clever script to refuse any upgrade attempts to Win10 and I turned off the upgrade option (which I’m told is no option in Windows 10). Then I bought a CD copy of the Windows 7 operating system in case I needed it to reinstall. Haven’t needed it yet in two years despite all the warnings that my machine would go to hell once Win7 was no longer supported.
I gave Linux a try and could never get the hang of it. Besides, almost all the work-related machines I had to troubleshoot were running a version of Windows, not Linux. I don’t begrudge those who think Apple OS or Linux is better than Windows. They’re just not for me.