Microsoft has officially announced the Windows 10 21H2 feature update (build 19044.1147) and released the first preview build to Insiders for testing.
While Windows 11 is the hot topic right now, most enterprise users will likely stick with Windows 10 until the new operating system's bugs are fixed.
Microsoft will continue to release feature updates, such as Windows 10 21H2, until October 2025 to allow businesses and consumers to move to Windows 11 whenever they want.
See also: Windows 365: Access your Windows 10 cloud PC from anywhere
As most of the development for new features goes into Windows 11, Microsoft will release limited features for Windows 10.
However, for the initial testing of Windows 10 21H2, Microsoft is only making the new update available to Windows Insiders who were moved from the "Beta" channel to the "Release" channel because their PC did not meet the system requirements for Windows 11.
Even for these users, Microsoft is only making it available to “Seekers,” or those who manually check Windows Update.
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After installing the update, Windows 10 will be upgraded to version 19044.1147.
Windows 10 21H2 is a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release, meaning it will receive support for 30 months after its release.
What's coming in Windows 10 21H2
Windows 10 21H2 is not a major release compared to Windows 11, but it will include some new features.
With this release, Microsoft is adding support for the WPA3 H2E (Hash-to-Element) protocol, which provides increased security against side-channel attacks and reduces the risks of future side-channel attacks.
Windows 10 21H2 also brings GPU compute, the #1 most requested feature, to Windows Subsystem for Linux and Azure IoT Edge for Linux to Windows.
This feature allows you to use your installed graphics card to accelerate “math-heavy workloads” and uses its parallel processing to complete the required calculations faster, in many cases, than using a single CPU.
To use this feature, you will need Hyper-V and WSL2 installed.
Finally, this feature update improves Windows Hello for Business by supporting passwordless deployment models for easy deployment of new predefined machine security policies.
See also: Windows 11: You have 10 days to go back to Windows 10 if you want
Microsoft states that some of these features are not currently enabled in Windows 10 21H2 and will be available in future releases.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
