You know, like generic drug. Eh, thought it was funny 
To make the very long story short. I am on windows 8.1 on a very old computer. All is fine but more and more programs aren’t supported anymore. I plan to buy a new computer in about a year or 2 and move to windows 11 or hopefuly 12. But for those 2 more years i want to move to windows 10 since i have a legit cd key (not saying i dont for windows 8.1, but not saying i do either).
So my question is this: can i just use the “get new windows for new features” button in my computer to upgrade to windows 10 and hopefuly keep most of my programs and tweaks i made over the years ? Now, im in this game long enough to know clean install is the way to go but clean install is a few full days game for me with a few weeks of research. Now i just need something for 1 year that will run the latest Topaz things. Since i never before upgraded like that, what can i expect. What happens to programs i got installed when i move from 8.1 to 10 ? What about custom shell ? Custom shell extensions ? I will make full disk clone and all backups just incase.