Until the release of Windows 11, the upgrade proposition for Windows operating systems was rather straightforward: you considered whether the current version of Windows on your system still fulfilled your needs and if the answer was ‘no’, you’d buy an upgrade disc. Although system requirements slowly crept up over time, it was likely that your PC could still run the newest-and-greatest Windows version. Even Windows 7 had a graphical fallback mode, just in case your PC’s video card was a potato incapable of handling the GPU-accelerated Aero Glass UI.
This makes a lot of sense, as the most demanding software on a PC are the applications, not the OS. Yet with Windows 11 a new ‘hard’ requirement was added that would flip this on its head: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a security feature that has been around for many years, but never saw much use outside of certain business and government applications. In addition to this, Windows 11 only officially supports a limited number of CPUs, which risks turning many still very capable PCs into expensive paperweights.
Although the TPM and CPU requirements can be circumvented with some effort, this is not supported by Microsoft and raises the specter of a wave of capable PCs being trashed when Windows 10 reaches EOL starting this year.
Not That Kind Of Trusted
Although ‘Trusted Platform’ and ‘security’ may sound like a positive thing for users, the opposite is really the case. The idea behind Trusted Computing (TC) is about consistent, verified behavior enforced by the hardware (and software). This means a computer system that’s not unlike a modern gaming console with a locked-down bootloader, with the TPM providing a unique key and secure means to validate that the hardware and software in the entire boot chain is the same as it was the last time. Effectively it’s an anti-tamper system in this use case that will just as happily lock out an intruder as the purported owner.
In the case of Windows 11, the TPM is used for this boot validation (Secure Boot), as well as storing the (highly controversial) Windows Hello’s biometric data and Bitlocker whole-disk encryption keys. Important to note here is that a TPM is not an essential feature for this kind of functionality, but rather a potentially more secure way to prevent tampering, while also making data recovery more complicated for the owner. This makes Trusted Computing effectively more a kind of Paranoid Computing, where the assumption is made that beyond the TPM you cannot trust anything about the hardware or software on the system until verified, with the user not being a part of the validation chain.
Theoretically, validating the boot process can help detect boot viruses, but this comes with a range of complications, not the least of which is that this would at most allow you to boot into Windows safe mode, if at all. You’d still need a virus scanner to detect and remove the infection, so using TPM-enforced Secure Boot does not help you here and can even complicate troubleshooting.
Outside of a corporate or government environment where highly sensitive data is handled, the benefits of a TPM are questionable, and there have been cases of Windows users who got locked out of their own data by Bitlocker failing to decrypt the drive, for whatever reason. Expect support calls from family members on Windows 11 to become trickier as a result, also because firmware TPM (fTPM) bugs can cause big system issues like persistent stuttering.
Breaking The Rules
As much as Microsoft keeps trying to ram^Wgently convince us consumers to follow its ‘hard’ requirements, there are always ways to get around these. After all, software is just software, and thus Windows 11 can be installed on unsupported CPUs without a TPM or even an ‘unsupported’ version 1.2 TPM. Similarly, the ‘online Microsoft account’ requirement can be dodged with a few skillful tweaks and commands. The real question here is whether it makes sense to jump through these hoops to install Windows 11 on that first generation AMD Ryzen or Intel Core 2 Duo system from a support perspective.
Fortunately, one does not have to worry about losing access to Microsoft customer support here, because we all know that us computer peasants do not get that included with our Windows Home or Pro license. The worry is more about Windows Updates, especially security updates and updates that may break the OS installation by using CPU instructions unsupported by the local hardware.
Although Microsoft published a list of Windows 11 CPU requirements, it’s not immediately obvious what they are based on. Clearly it’s not about actual missing CPU instructions, or you wouldn’t even be able to install and run the OS. The only true hard limit in Windows 11 (for now) appears to be the UEFI BIOS requirement, but dodging the TPM 2.0 & CPU requirements is as easy as a quick dive into the Windows Registry by adding the AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU key to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup. You still need a TPM 1.2 module in this case.
When you use a tool like Rufus to write the Windows 11 installer to a USB stick you can even toggle a few boxes to automatically have all of this done for you. This even includes the option to completely disable TPM as well as the Secure Boot and 8 GB of RAM requirements. Congratulations, your 4 GB RAM, TPM-less Core 2 Duo system now runs Windows 11.
Risk Management
It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will truly enforce the TPM and CPU requirements in the future, that is requiring Secure Boot with Bitlocker. Over on the Apple side of the fence, the hardware has been performing system drive encryption along with other ‘security’ features since the appearance of the Apple T2 chip. It might be that Microsoft envisions a similar future for PCs, one in which even something as sacrilegious as dual-booting another OS becomes impossible.
Naturally, this raises the spectre of increasing hostility between users and their computer systems. Can you truly trust that Bitlocker won’t suddenly decide that it doesn’t want to unlock the boot drive any more? What if an fTPM issue bricks the system, or that a sneaky Windows 11 update a few months or years from now prevents a 10th generation Intel CPU from running the OS without crashing due to missing instructions? Do you really trust Microsoft that far?
It does seem like there are only bad options if you want to stay in the Windows ecosystem.
Strategizing
Clearly, there are no good responses to what Microsoft is attempting here with its absolutely user-hostile actions that try to push a closed, ‘AI’-infused ecosystem on its victi^Wusers. As someone who uses Windows 10 on a daily basis, this came only after running Windows 7 for as long as application support remained in place, which was years after Windows 7 support officially ended.
Perhaps for Windows users, sticking to Windows 10 is the best strategy here, while pushing software and hardware developers to keep supporting it (and maybe Windows 7 again too…). Windows 11 came preinstalled on the system that I write this on, but I erased it with a Windows 10 installation and reused the same, BIOS embedded, license key. I also disabled fTPM in the BIOS to prevent ‘accidental upgrades’, as Microsoft was so fond of doing back with Windows 7 when everyone absolutely had to use Windows 10.
I can hear the ‘just use Linux/BSD/etc.’ crowd already clamoring in the comments, and will preface this by saying that although I use Linux and BSD on a nearly daily basis, I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here. I’m still holding out some hope for ReactOS hitting its stride Any Day Now™, but it’s tough to see a path forward beyond running Windows 10 into the ground, while holding only faint hope for Windows 12 becoming Microsoft’s gigantic Mea Culpa.
After having used PCs and Windows since the Windows 3.x days, I can say that the situation for personal computers today is unprecedented, not unlike that for the World Wide Web. It seems increasingly less like customer demand is appealed to by companies, and more an inverse where customers have become merely consumers: receptacles for the AI and marketing-induced slop of the day, whose purchases serve to make stock investors happy because Line Goes Up©.
“What if an fTPM issue bricks the system, or that a sneaky Windows 11 update a few months or years from now prevents a 10th generation Intel CPU from running the OS without crashing due to missing instructions? Do you really trust Microsoft that far?”
Don’t need Microsoft for that. Had a game I had to refund (EA game no less) because the DRM required a particular instruction from the CPU to work. That’s just the nature of progress.
I’m an old fart. My first computer experience was over a Teletype ASR-33 link to BBN in Cambridge, MA. An operating system is all I want. Not a content delivery platform run by a megacorp, just an OS and some basic apps to do what I want/need to do. Windows used to offer this basic functionality, but you can improve an OS only so much, before you end up changing things for change’s sake (this would have been when The Ribbon” was introduced). After all, you need to keep growing that revenue stream to keep those KPIs up.
Well, Microsoft has long passed that point, now they’re not even being subtle about wanting to control your “computing experience” (in the guise, of course, of making your life easier). That’s it for me. Nice while it lasted, but I’ve long ago decided on using another OS (you can probably guess which one) that does what I want it to do without any interference from a megacorp who only wants to help (yeah, right, pull the other one).
But sheeple continue to support Windows and seem to just ‘conform’ to the M$ way of doing things and even advocate/support the changes. Actually ‘happy’ to run Windows… I am glad I am Windows free and support an OS that does what I want, a GUI that fits my use case, and runs the apps I need on the hardware platforms I prefer… Love it… Ie. Computing on my terms. All the ‘headaches’ mentioned in article just go away…
Not just Windon’t either, the cult of Apple users is just as if not more conforming, though in Apple’s case the OS they offer actually seems like it would be good, and convenient as the user if you really buy into the ecosystem for all your hardware once you got used to it rather than Windoze ever growing obnoxiousness while still just being a PC OS.
Sheeple don’t do it deliberatley, try going to a shop (or online) and buying a computer you can use almost straight out the box. Your preinstalled OS choices are extremley limited, and if your budget is too then guess what crap you end up with. Until they finally launch a proper anti-trust or monoploly lawsuit that forces manufactures not to bundle in MS crapware or at least always offer an alternative then Windows will sadly remain dominant.
You are right. Hard to fault them. Walk into wally world or go to NewEgg online and … Windows installed on all presented laptops…. No problem here, as I just wipe and install Linux. Also, I build my own desktop/server machines… But for others …. Tough nut to crack for the general user.
It’s only gotten easier to crack that nut over the past 30 years, and the users who continue to not only refuse to learn, but also refuse to ATTEMPT to learn continue to confound and astound. It should not be the case that the only way to get someone to do something that’s good for them is to either do it for them or hold a gun to their head. It is not unreasonable to expect people to take some personal responsibility and agency over something that impacts every single aspect of their lives.
People who want to write emails and watch YouTube don’t want to spend two hundred hours making their OS usable. Linux fails to be a compelling option because every distro is for “computing on your own terms” i.e. wasting a bunch of time tweaking the system. That’s not a bad thing, it’s what makes Linux good, but it’s ridiculous to ask somebody who mainly interfaces with a smartphone to learn how to use Linux. Even as a partial Linux user I don’t want to consult the council of elders every time I install a new program, I just want it to work (oh well if you set Wine up this very specific way it will work most of the time with only minor performance issues….). Or I could use a half-finished Linux alternative with a CLI and a novella-length manual.
IMO the onus is on people in the know to inform and protect normal people, a la the movements against internet censorship in the 2010s. Seething about “sheeple” is literally loser behaviour, as Microsoft’s continued dominance proves.
Remember when the slogan was “Where do you want to go today?”
Well, now it’s “We’re taking you here today”.
OMG, Microsoft deviated from being an OS vendor when they shipped Windows 95 and blocked all ISVs and hardware vendors from putting anything in front of users on first boot. That’s when they started embedding whatever they wanted you to have onto their OS. They were more focused on protecting their position all progress was stalled while they controlled the market.
Lots of lovely capable machines that can’t run ‘doze will show up on ebay for not much money. Guess what OS they WILL run.
Microsoft may have finally ushered in the Year of the Linux Desktop.
https://endof10.org/
Nice initiative!
But…. https://endof10.org/install/
With those instructions, no boomer will be able to install Linux.
It already goes wrong at step 1: “Download the operating system you want to install.”.
How the hll should someone who never used Linux *know which operating system they want to install???
I understand the problem: Linux distributions are competing with each other, and nobody wants the other to be promoted because that means that they themselves will loose out on installed user-base.
But really, if a boomer has to choose between “Buy a new computer with Windows 11 preinstalled” or “Download the operating system you want to install”, which do you think would be the easier and more-chance-of-succes option for them?
Not even mentioning how they are supposed to save their old data and migrate it to the new OS. When they buy a new computer, they can copy everything over. When they want to install Linux on their old machine, they will first have to make a backup, then say a prayer that they did not forget anything, wipe everything, install the operating system, and copy their data back. But where should they copy that data? Lots of it cannot even be used on their new Linux OS because the corresponding software was never ported to Linux.
If Linux wants to use this opportunity to go to war with Microsoft, they first have to understand what made Microsoft so popular in the first place. It is: “give the user minimal choices and just work out of the box for everyone, lead the user by the hand in every step.”.
Linux users seem to think that more choice is always a better thing. But it’s not. Choosing is a chore, it makes people’s heads hurt. People want to avoid making choices. So, IF choices are necessary, only introduce them WHEN they are necessary, and do it piece-meal, maybe even gamify the whole experience.
Apple understands that even better than Microsoft. But you know who knows it best? Nintendo!
Don’t get me started on font rendering in Linux distros. It’s either:
find an old CRT and raster fonts (preferred option for working with text – like terminal and coding)
use
freetypein “libre” mode where everything is blurry, bold and kerning is horribly brokendownload source code of
freetype(and some other libs), build them with patent-infringing code enabled, install them in your OS, try fixing everything that broke during installation, reinstall OS from scratch because it got broken so bad, it’s not worth spending another 50+ hours trying to fix it.After you waste quite a bit of your free time fighting with broken font rendering, tweaking and optimizing what’s available, you realize that plenty of apps simply ignore the so-called “system-wide” settings (🤡) because muh freedum.
Nothing comes anywhere close to ClearType. Segoe UI and Consolas are the best things ever to happen for people who actually use their computers to get the job done instead of just whanking over to systemd logs for 8 hours straight.
Anyone capable of using a PC can Google for advice. Mine is Linux Mint. I will admit that it helps to have an unused PC on which to do a test install. Failing that, there’s always the “swap Windows HDD for a blank one” approach. Install and test on the new HDD and if you find you prefer Windows, swap the original disk back in. This exercise will cost you a couple of hours and around $50.
If you’re smart enough to install Windows, you’ll figure out Linux pretty quickly, or find a friend who can.
I thought the TTF patents have expired and FreeType just did all the good font rendering by default now.
Re:Antron Argaiv
“Anyone capable of using a PC can Google for advice.”
That is not quite as straight forward as is sounds.
My experience doing that is that none of the solutions you find work, but a careful blend of three or four solutions might.
There is a lack of consistency due to the simply too many distributions and versions of Linux.
You mean that next year may finally be The Year of Linux on the Desktop? 8-)
I will drink to that
…and the Laptop, and the All-in-One, and the NUC, and… 🙂
Why not go into your reasoning for your primary desktop? I switched permanently to linux, when a brother gave me an (almost) new PC, and it had windoze with some blue screen with lots of tiles and I could not even find a start menu, so I gave up after 5 minutes and installed Linux Mint (Which is a good choice for beginners).
Linux as an OS is just fine, but because it’s still quite niche on the desktop, lots of program manufacturers don’t bother to port their software to linux, which further hampers linux adoption and closes the circle. Some windows programs run under wine, and you can also use Linux as a base to run VM’s.
On EEVblog, there are some current threads of getting KiCad V8 and V9 to install on windows 7. And I guess most people who do that use the same PC to browse the internet. Just Yuck!
And concerning TPM. Why dodge or circumvent? TPM modules have standardized connectors. In (I assume) a lot of cases you can just buy a TPM module (prices starting at EUR15) and stick it into your PC.
re: reasons to circumvent TPM requirement
If your motherboard has a TPM header but was released before the TPM 2.0 standard, you can’t just plug a TPM 2.0 module in and expect it to work – you also need a BIOS update that supports TPM 2.0. Not all manufacturers bothered to create one.
and of course there are plenty of older notebook / tablet motherboards that don’t have a method to add a TPM or upgrade beyond TPM 1.2.
“And concerning TPM. Why dodge or circumvent? TPM modules have standardized connectors. In (I assume) a lot of cases you can just buy a TPM module (prices starting at EUR15) and stick it into your PC.”
The problem is that the motherboard needs to have a TPM header (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tpm-trusted-platform-module-header,5766.html). My old Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5 (https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z270N-Gaming-5-rev-10) did not, so it and the 7700k that were in it were effectively useless for W11 (W11 support officially starts with 8th gen Intel) even though hardware-wise they were still more than capable.
I upgraded from that with a 1080 to a 13900k with a 3080.
7700k has built in TPM, it is a CPU issue alone
I have had a thought since I first read about circumventing the TPM and CPU limitations. Because you risk a Microsoft update reversing these registry entries. Would this mena users might have to utilize 3rd party update hosts, or even create local WSUS servers that their PCs would connect to get filtered updates? While this is beyond the average PC user, this is a solution that a mild knowledgeable IT pro could setup for users.
I’m not specifically advocating to have users connect to random or unvetted servers just to keep Win11 on older officials unsupported hardware. This is just a means I could see things going.
I would suggest ignoring any Windows 10/11 tricks that require registry edits which you do not understand. There is a potential the tutorial is suggesting something which might compromise your system.
Theres also the big issue you mention, will future W11 updates break registry edited installations?
Pay better attention please. There registry edits necessary are simple and well understood. The problem is that they may be reverted or invalidated at any time by a forced high priority update. Such an update could automatically rename bitlocker and depending on uefi support could even re-enable that automatically. Updates can even migrate your account to a Microsoft one of you have ever used Microsoft credentials in pinned of the built in applications.
TLDR; we are back to sharecropping, only even the end users can be ejected at any time.
It’s also about companies/schools/etc making sure that their computers haven’t been tampered with by (potentially) untrustworthy employees – which is good for consumers, and (potentially) helps prevent those massive ransomware scenarios like we’ve seen with a few UK retailers recently.
It’s also I think protecting users against their computers being tampered with whilst out of their sight, by malicious devices, or malware attempting a deep permanent infection?
So this is a two-edged sword to a degree, not just a negative?
I guess this would be a nice feature if you could choose wether you want it or not. At least for some people.
No it’s not, it really isn’t. TPM isn’t necessary for that, all you need is a secure enclave. Instead they have a Microsoft managed security gateway intended to be managed through your online Microsoft account or an enterprise domain, ideally managed through Azure. An actual attempt at improving security would give you control of the keys.
I’m no Windows expert and I don’t really understand which scenarios the whole-disk encryption with a key stored in TPM is trying to address, but couldn’t you just store the Bitlocker recovery key somewhere safe?
Yep. In a notebook or sticky note on your desk.
You’re clearly not a security professional. “On your desk”? Pfft! Laughable lack of security!
As a true professional I keep mine under my keyboard, where no-one will think to look. I even encrypted it twice with the ROT13 algorithm just to make sure :)
You might forget that you hid it there. Better
stick it on the edge of your monitor to be safe.
No, you need layers of security.
I maintain an extra degree of seperation by putting a note on my monitor to remind me that the password is under my keyboard.
Or use “1 2 3 4 5….1 2 3 4 5 ? … That’s amazing… I’ve got the same combination on my luggage” – President Screw (Spaceballs the Movie)
it is in many ways much safer than on anything connected to the internet
Exactly. Plus if you just write one part of the pass, enough to remind you of the rest. Much more secure than any electronic storage.
You absolutely can. The trouble is very few end users understand the requirement. And even for the ones who do it’s easy to forget where they decided “somewhere safe” was 3 years ago.
“Windows 11 is the best thing to ever happen to Linux!” –Some YouTube commenter.
Lol in their dreams. I’m sure it’ll tip over and reach beyond 5% market share for consumer desktops eventually… A little more abuse from Microsoft should finally break through people’s Stockholm syndrome, any day now
When it becomes impossible to move the taskbar to the top of the screen in windows, I´ll migrate to another OS. Q4OS is ranking high.
I posted exactly that just few days ago.
TDE (kde 3.x) is the best desktop environment available, and Q4OS and its slightly customized TDE is superb.
Light, fast, easy to use even for a person used to Windows, but that doesn’t come at the expense of a power user, like on bloatbuntu and derivatives like Mint.
I find it absolutely hilarious that they’ll require users to toss good hardware, but put a license for win 11 on a barely functional 4 gb ram asus laptop out of the box. I put arch on that thing as soon as I could and it ran a million times smoother. I only hope I can convert my friends and family to the dark side (linux) before october.
Shit rolls downhill. Hardware vendors are leaving on Microsoft to assist them in selling new PC’s.
Sadly I updated a PC to newest Ubuntu. Only to find out that the Linux Kernel version had dropped support for the Nvidia driver for ky GPU. I had to go right back in reinstall Windows 10. I will be getting a refurb with Win 11 before Oct. This whole notion of security belies some dishonesty, Microsoft and Nvidia have always played a part in subsidising and controlling PC, OS and hardware prices.
There are plenty of Linux distros that support Nvidia drivers now.
For beginners I suggest Universal Blue’s Aurora (or Bazzite if you are gaming).
It supports secure boot, it has military grade security, and just works out of the box.
Unless you have specific proprietary software you need to use, Aurora will work really well.
My GT1030 (old yes, good price and is better speced than most Integrated Graphics) uses an older and therefore unsupported driver due the Linux kernel version 6 no longer being compatible. I used the open source neauveau drivers, which had atrocious performance. The solution is for me to install a Linux OS with a 5.0 kernel, where the driver support still exists. Long story short, for gamers this great migration to W11 and bricking of old computers is an expensive inconvenience. It reeks of the market pushing out affordable options, it is a dishonest monopoly.
Just use the Nvidia drivers. I have a server running Debian with a GTX 1080 in it. Runs just fine.
Nvidia page says that GT1030 uses Pascal architecture, which should be supported by the latest Nvidia driver (G06).
The tpm and CPU family requirement is super trivial to bypass, especially for people like us (literally just checkboxes when building a USB install disk via Rufus).
However, I do understand that only a tiny fraction of people doing a win11 install are going to know how do this, and a bunch of machines will not get win11 that otherwise could run it just fine. I think the idea of people throwing them away might be a little overstated; most likely they’ll click through any warnings Microsoft puts out. Win10 is still the most used version of windows, and I think the driving factor is/will be hardware attrition.
I think the more interesting story will be what people do when their current w10 machine goes down – with win12 being rumored to be subscription / ad based we may finally see people taking the plunge and moving to a libre OS. Most people are almost exclusively using web apps these days, so software support is less important than many people believe.
The year of Linux is always next year lol
“Most people are almost exclusively using web apps these days, so software support is less important than many people believe.” I moved my dad to KUbuntu a few years ago now. Doesn’t use ‘web apps’ but does use the Chrome browser (can’t get ’em to change to Firefox) on the box. When on the computer, most time spent in the ‘browser’. (So agree with you in that sense). Occasionally he’ll play some card games locally, and use LibreOffice. He loves it. And for me, my maintenance of his boxes has went to virtually zero since the change-over. So I love it too.
“I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here”
There is only one reason not to use Linux, and that is if some piece of software you need (a particular CAD package or something like that) is Windows only and cannot be made to run well under Wine. Even then, a Windows VM running on a Linux host system (and as long as the Windows-only software in question isn’t massively resource hungry this can work even on a laptop from the Intel 3rd Gen era) is a usually reliable answer. Very happy on the second latest Linux Mint version on a circa-2012 laptop. Please do write an article about exactly why you can’t make Linux your primary, especially as you mention you are already familiar with Linux, listing each issue separately, and in no time you’ll find a comments section full of people telling you how to set up a fresh Linux install so as to solve each and every issue which is thus far keeping you away from going fully Linux.
Linux is not user friendly, its clunky, bass ackward in many aspects, the smaller distros dont work properly and you cant fix it unless you start typing commands. I certainly lose patience quickly when something cant be fixed using a gui and installers.
Every OS will feel clunky and weird when you migrate to it from another (ask the OSX people trying Windows or Linux).
On the point of not being able to fix things the gui way:
Try Linux Mint.
There is a reason why Arch and derivatives don’t get recommended to new users. So don’t ignore the help from others, think you’re better “since you install Windows Pro and not Home” and then complain.
Says someone who doesn’t realise Windows is just as clunky because they’ve gotten used to it. The truth is that modern Linux distros are not harder or more awkward to use than Windows on average, but there are differences. Different things are difficult, different things are super easy.
If hardware is supported you often don’t need to worry about drivers or support software at all. Meanwhile Nvidia can be either easy to deal with or a huge pain depending on what you need.
You don’t have to worry about automatic updates being forced on you, plenty of games work, most productivity workflows can be done. Depending on what you do it can be simpler than using a Mac and more flexible.
“its clunky, bass ackward in many aspects, the smaller distros dont work properly and you cant fix it unless you start typing commands.”
Because the registry is so much more intuitive, right?
I got a refurb laptop for a song specifically to break the chain and start migrating to Linux Mint. Other than some small annoyances (trackpad isn’t very great, the Open Office suite is good but not perfect for me…) the show-stopper was exactly as you mentioned: Inability to run some ham radio specific software that is Windows Only. After a few days of figuring out Wine it seems I cannot (it cannot?) access or control USB devices or something. I’m sure a power user could figure it out and I’m certainly no power user, and no amount of google could answer the question. Instead of dedicating another year to being a programmer (itself a worthwhile goal) or being super annoying and making a knowledgeable friend do it for me, which I wouldn’t understand anyway and that’s not learning.. I just wanted it to work already and was kinda over it.
.
For my time, and my time is worth $$$, sadly the best “answer” was to buy another $200 refurb laptop with Windows and just run the darn software already. Opportunity cost blah blah
What I find amusing is the reversal of how difficult to install each OS has become: Linux is now a breeze, fast and simple; Windows 11, good luck… For my personal use, I switched to Linux since Windows 10 shenanigans started, never went back. I found every application for it that I use daily, One exception is my soon to be retired Logitec Harmony remote which I use a Windows 10 VM when I need to make changes. Hell, even Bambu has a Linux version for their 3D printers which they keep updated. So yeah, Microsoft is helping users switch away from their platform because of their wish to more control more.
Depending on the distro and the device. I remember more than 25 years ago being able to install a desktop oriented distro on my desktop by doing little more than booting the CD and mostly just clicking next to the default options.
As far as I was concerned Linux had been as easy as Windows to install since Mandrake and easier than windows since shudder Caldera.
But when I tried to argue with others that it was easy… I found out that they all had laptops with cheap proprietary accessories built in that probably never had any documentation for driver authors outside of whatever was shared in the China-shop where they originated.
“But when I tried to argue with others that it was easy… I found out that they all had laptops with cheap proprietary accessories built in that probably never had any documentation for driver authors outside of whatever was shared in the China-shop where they originated.”
To be fair, though, it’s not as if Windows generally has drivers for such corner-case hardware, out-of-the-box. All that’s happened is that the OEM has gone to the trouble of rounding up Windows drivers for the hardware when building their master image.
So it’s not easier per se with Windows (actually, it’s harder in my experience… the hours I’ve had to spend delving around sketchy driver sites when rebuilding PCs) it’s just that the complexity and poor native driver support of Windows has been hidden from the end-user.
Just try upgrading an EoL HP tablet from Windows 8 to 10 where HP and Intel have dropped the old drivers off their websites, and you’ll see what I mean! (shudder)
As one having recently installed a fresh windows 11, no problems at all. Gaming is what sustains the private user base of windows. Good luck getting any modern game to run on a linux with a simple installer.
That’s been being solved since nine generations of Proton now.
Proton 9 (soon to be 10) has become a situation of it just works and the obvious culprits of “I don’t like switching a lever to make non-proprietary solutions work”.
I think that Valve’s Steam Deck is going to (slowly) change that
It already did. The majority of games that don’t work use anti-cheat that is designed to prevent sandboxes. Even in those cases there are usually native Linux versions but the developer simply isn’t providing that.
An interesting example is that all Unity games would work natively under Linux if you swap out the correct version of the runtime with the Linux one, but there are Unity plugins (mostly anti-cheat or UI) that are arbitrarily Windows only, forcing you to run the entire thing in Proton/Wine. Luckily that’s simple. The same can be dated for Unreal by the way, but you can’t just swap out the runtime to test it.
I’ve literally had zero problems running new games on Linux with Steam’s Proton. I don’t even have to configure anything, it just works. Update your talking points beyond the year 2000.
I don’t think a corporation with assets larger then the GDP of most nations needs standing up for as a retail computer repair technician, I can tell you I see both sides of the coin so speak here.
Yes, Bitlocker shouldn’t be on by default for 95% of customers. Yes for say Lenovo or Dell’s more business centric line maybe, but gaming notebooks and units for grandma not so much. It just makes repair and data recovery that much harder and annoying.
On the other hand, if you have a computer that doesn’t meet the security requirements due to either CPU or TPM missing, your computer is at least 7+ years old. And you should really replace it. Due to manufacturing tolerances, they are ticking time bombs just waiting to fail. The cpu requirement is just making you do something you should already be doing. If the relative cost of computers were what they were 30 years ago, there might be sympathy there, but that is not the case.
Clueless shill much?
Moore’s law is dead, so why upgrade? Computers from 2018 are not “waiting to fail”. If a component fails, you replace the component; this can happen at any time. My laptop is from 2009 and still works fine.
Do not shill for planned obsolescence here.
Replace component and laptop are not jiving for me, and I use hot air to solder surface packages. Successfully swapping a 1,000 BGA CPU/GPU or a RAM package is a bit harder.
I highly doubt you are talking a socketed CPU laptop with a removable GPU card (of which I also have several). But they are great, one I picked up cheaply because the GPU is short circuited. Being replaceable it was simple to repair.
” Due to manufacturing tolerances, they are ticking time bombs just waiting to fail.” This.
Here’s the problem – a “PC” is mostly a tool for me, and not an end in itself; it allows writing, calculations/computations of various sorts , illustrating etc. Replacing the physical device will take far less time than replicating the operating environment that is now so productive for me. If I could simply lift my years-old Windows 10 desktop/file system/”user experience” out in toto, and install it into a new box without further annoyance it would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately even with lots of upgrade ease that doesn’t happen for a lot of reasons (remember when your document scanner software was intentionally not operable in Windows 10?).
On a planet dominated by the Windows architecture I can’t imagine that I’m alone in this , and enough people are savvy enough to recognize the Windows 11 sleight of hand as a cack-handed corporate “me-too” approach to force people into something closer to Google and Apple’s information-snaffling consumer-surveillance systems.
TL;DR Make it painless, useful, and private and people are happy to buy new boxes every so often.
my desktop is from 2012, works just fine with win 10. Can do anything i want with it, except play the newer games, which i do on my new rig. Absolutely no reason to stop using my old rig.
Please tell me again how my old 7700k was a “ticking time bomb” when it did everything I needed and much more flawlessly since the day I bought it?
I will use windows 10 as long as I can. I dislike 11. I don’t want AI. I don’t want the extra clicks on windows 11 start menu. I don’t want the start menu search only showing web results and never finding local programs. I don’t want the Adobe and one drive cloud to be broken on the device.
10 works superior to 11. I like what it has and does not have.
What really pissed me off with win11 is locking the taskbar to the bottom of the screen. A major no no for me. There are work arounds but MS sure try to make life hard for those of us wanting the taskbar somewhere else than edicted.
Not e-waste… just plain good PC for Linux!
I’m really surprised that the EU hasn’t stuck it’s nose into this issue of e-waste caused by Microsoft Windows. I forsee a giant lawsuit being filed.
Skill issue.
What I have not been able to find documented anywhere; but which seems fairly critical given the ‘trusted’ role of the TPM in various remote attestation scenarios(eg. verifying that there is an actual TPM involved when a ‘Hello’ credential is being created; and, if my memory of ‘autopilot’ machine IDs is correct in the process of an AAD join) is, very precisely, which TPMs MS is willing to cooperate with.
Hacking a TPM into a motherboard whose firmware never supported it is unlikely to exactly be a weekend project; but a TPM is fundamentally a combination of ‘fairly modest microcontroller(albeit usually built with more tamper resistance features than others of similar performance and cost) programmed for industry standard behavior’ and “vendor-loaded cryptographic key that is not supposed to be extractable”.
I’m not sure if anyone has been interested enough to knock together a TPM implementation for a microcontroller to slap on the LPC or appropriate bus; but basically all hypervisors have virtual TPMs available for OSes that expect them. However, those vTPMs get keys that are backed by the cert you configure; so their endorsement keys won’t chain to anything externally trusted.
Microsoft provides a package of common industry TPM certificate roots for the convenience of HGS/guarded fabric administrators; but I have not seen anything in the documentation about whether they will only trust interactions with endorsement keys that chain to vendor roots they view as ‘legitimate’ or if they will accept anything that behaves to spec. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/security/guarded-fabric-shielded-vm/guarded-fabric-install-trusted-tpm-root-certificates) for reference.
It’s the cryptographic side where TPMs really get dodgy; much as with many contemporary uses of signing to lock hardware down. Using cryptographic signatures to verify your software is a pretty sensible security measure. A system that accepts only cryptographic signatures that specific, not owner controllable, keyholders can generate is a totally different matter in terms of its implications.
Supposedly they will accept side loaded credentials in both secure boot and tpm…. But they are definitely moving in the direction of making that harder to actually do, and that’s where I demark that line of trust. They don’t get to dictate what is trusted on an end user machine. What’s especially risky about their gambit is the tie-in with Microsoft accounts, which allows for a remote drive decryption based on their keys, regardless of yours.
Honestly it’s surprising the EU and US military haven’t weighed in on this yet, it violates far too many security concepts.
I recently had to override a password on a Windows 7 PC at work. I forgot how much I liked it and XP and without all the asinine news feed garbage that’s hard to remove. This is why I like Linux Mint.
However, it’s a shame vendors like Intuit for taxes, Quikbooks, and such won’t make Linux versions of their software. Neither will lab instrumentation vendors like Agilent, Shimadzu, or Thermo Fisher and such will have Linux versions.
What a shame!
Keysight does have a Linux version of their IO Libraries Suite now: https://www.keysight.com/us/en/lib/software-detail/computer-software/io-libraries-suite-downloads-2175637.html
It is more limited though, and for no clear reason. It’s possible this support may not be necessary though, I’m not sure what’s available in the kernel.
I used to think this was a terrible thing. Well. I still do. But.. maybe I’m a little less sure.
Look at how power consumption has gone down on new hardware. Maybe… Just maybe the environmental hit from throwing all those PCs in the e-waste bin might be less than the hit from continuing to use them. Perhaps as power consumption milestones are hit one-time obsoletion of old hardware could be a good thing. Or not.. it’s just a thought.
Except the users are being moved onto ‘AI’ software which, because of the compute required, increases the remote power consumption more than efficient hardware reduces local power consumption.
It’s not a good thing, and no, it doesn’t at all make up for the loss of rare earths and precious metals.
Frankly, stop yourself for a moment and consider why you started defending this practice really.
If it was people using AM3 I might almost believe it. But even 4th gen Intel and 2nd gen Ryzen are OK ish power wise (depending what you are doing). 12th gen and newer Intel and 5000 series Ryzen are another level of power efficiency. I have a 12500t and 4060 low profile running off a 240w laptop power brick.
2 years ago when I put it together it cost ~$600 with 32gb of RAM and a 1TB NVMe. (Including a boutique 2L Aluminum case to put it in).
These days you could beat that with a Ryzen 8400F or Intel 14100-13400, and possibly the new 50xx series low profile GPU?
Just wanted to drop by and say that Joe Kim’s art for this one got a chuckle out of me.
I’m a fan of encrypted disks with remote recovery keys (Bitlocker). Not really sure why people are opposed to more secure systems.
Microsoft made it possible to bypass the TPM requirement. The discussion about being able to ignore the TPM requirement is straightforward because Microsoft lets it be simple.
IMO the only two argument against the TPM is the resulting e-waste and the original DRM complaints.
“Not really sure why people are opposed to more secure systems.”
Why not for the simple reason that in the context of use, it is NOT needed. Encrypted disks for home use just aren’t needed (unless you ‘really’ have something to hide). All the important key files are encrypted already. Users don’t need more layers added to the systems. I use straight ext4 file format on all my systems. Done. Move on to more important things like making sure one has current backups of the data (on-site and off-site).
I had a friend who has lost access to all of the files on his 1TB Dell HDD with Win 10. Dell locks the drive and does not back the key up. Dell and Microsoft sat there pointing fingers at each other and did nothing. It is their defualt move to encrypt.
Also have a friend who lost her dead husband’s files. The children took his cellphone so the 2FA won’t allow unlocking the SSD. I gave her a new SSD and zip tied her NVMe inside in case they ever want to unlock it in future (It unlocks, but into a Microsoft account recovery.)
To clarify, he did not know or ask for the encryption, and I had never heard of it being the default setting at the time. I was trying to help him after the laptop was dropped. When I moved his drive to a loaner laptop it locked, and would not unlock when moved back to the Dell.
If you are going to make bit locker standard, maybe invest in a sticker on the drive that says as much? Even a lock logo for your Boot splash screen? That costs basically nothing.
Bitlocker is pretty much useless anyhow, as soon as the powers that be wants to access your hard drive, MS rolls over and hands them the master key. Sit, MS, sit, good dog.
It was probably an update that re-enabled the policy, which then encrypted the drive and didn’t break up the keys because it was a headless operation. Great, right? This is why I’m not going to have tpm accessible to Windows.
You are a fan of Microsoft holding onto master keys for your drive encryption? Because that is what happens if a Microsoft saving is involved.
As for being able to disable it? Half the early discussion is about what happens when an update forces it back on, and drive encryption, and migrates your account for you? Because that can already happen.
The ewaste is enough of a complaint on its own, screw that. You should be able to replace the keys, but Microsoft has been removing that functionality on their branded laptops.
Lastly, bitlocker sucks.
You have to jump through hoops up to Intel “Core i” 7th gen (supported processors start at 8th gen).
Also Ryzen+ AKA Ryzen 2400G is also not supported.
Also many hardware TPM support being updated from 1.2 to 2.0 (especially corporate models like Thinkpad.
Meanwhile my 2400G based data server just hums along on KUbuntu LTS just fine for the foreseeable future. Serving files out from SSDs on the home 2.5Gbit network.
I see this M$ security thing (and AI for the record) as more of a ‘marketing’ tool more than anything to push sales for Win11. Why? Because modern systems (really ever since AMD Ryzen 1600s rolled out the gate) run 99% of the applications out there very quickly. All my AM4 based systems feel ‘very’ fast for what I do (I am sure people with latest (being 5 years or less) Intel CPUs feel the same way). From running VMs, to playing video, to compilers, cad, browsers, etc. Soooo, why upgrade? I feel ‘no’ pressure on that front as all my systems all run Linux — quickly.
ram^Wgently?
This. Had he edited in vim? I not understand what “ram-control-w-gently” means…
Linux mint and never looked back. 😁
I’m a non-government, non-commercial system user with just one Windows computer, a Win10 system that’s used primarily to run games. My daily driver and other systems migrated to Linux years ago; the systems are solid and you don’t have to play the patch lottery all the time (as in “what’s been broken this week?”). Its currently a stable system but the moment Windows gives any significant trouble it will just get replaced. Windows is now firmly in the secondary category — nothing sensitive or important is held on it so it doesn’t matter if the system is ‘trusted’ or not.
Computers are cheap so continually trying to make individual systems ‘one size fits all’ is futile. I don’t believe in putting all my eggs in one basket, its asking for you to spend your life coming up with imaginative solutions to innumerable ‘what if’ scenarios (but invariably missing the one that gets you). I’m also a firm believer in turning systems off when they’re not being used; you needed to keep mainframes powered on 24/7 for engineering reasons but just leaving a laptop idling (for example) is just inviting someone to tinker with it.
I have lots of computers and they are all e waste. I dread when the generation of computers after this last one starts coming down the pike. WIll they be normally de milled (no hdd, possibly no ram, and on some that have hard to open cases, drastic damage to the plastics) but they generally all boot once fed with a disk and some memory. Right now it is just apple hardware that is dubious. Out of one lot of ipads I got three were not apple locked. It was nice of them to free them up before dumping them. But I fear there being gaylords full of stuff that looks good and usable but it locked. Just stupid waste. It ought to be illegal. Sure, fine, make the data safe, but there ought to be a law that if you add a new disk, you can reset everything and re-use the hardware. For years I have been pissed off over software limited hardware, bue it a vpn router that only lets you create so many connections before shelling out more money, or other hardware that you pay for and then they try to get you to pay again to unlock the potential of, but now we are getting to software rendering hardware as almost a total loss. Nice going.
i have computers i built 15 years ago and they all work fine. sometimes i find a job for one to do. i have never had them all on the most recent windows or linux distro. running old stuff is kind of the point of having all your old clunkers laying around.
look on the bright side, there will be a lot of free ewaste to salvage. nothing wrong with it, its just been disowned by the tech giants. it doesn’t make it not a computer anymore.
Is “gaylord” an SI unit that previously escaped my notice?
You can erase a bitlocked hard drive (SSD).
The e-waste was Intel Atom with a eMCC and half-baked BIOS (I had one that needed a 32-bit bootloader to launch a 64-bit OS, sheee madness)
It will cost more for people to upgrade their hardware for windows 11 then many of the worst natural disasters in modern history
if i use windows 11 at all it will be an ltsc edition with as much crap shut off as possible.
I loved my Apple //e. I ran a chat system on it called Diversi-Dial.
If you look up “ddial” on google, you’ll find the chat system I’m currently on.
No drm, no TCM, no encryption just plain chat with a little text email system.
magviz.ca will also work. These days I run an AMD 7950x. I’m mostly on the
chat system I described, and don’t do a lot of much else on the internet.
Email, that’s about it. I had to upgrade to Windows 10 because Star Trek Online
and Steam required it. I’m not a fan of 10 and I do miss 7.
Most people use their machines for browsing the net anyway and interact
very little with the operating system itself other than the browser.
This is part of the ongoing horror show of Windows. Remember that search where there was an animated dog before there was any place to type search text? How about those windows in Windows 10 WITH NO BORDERS running into each other! How about that taskbar in WIndows 11 with huge icons that cannot be resized? Who are they even making this OS for?
You may want to find your scaling setting in display options. I notice on a 14″ laptop the setting 150% gets applied, whereas 125% or 100% may be what you would like.
Symbiotic relationship (mutualism):
Hardware manufacturers must $ell hardware and Software publishers must $ell software. Microsoft has essentially written the playbook on how to succeed in the OS quasi-monopoly business.
Linux OS does not fit into the mass consumer market; Microsoft has made certain of it through years of successful marketing and some behind-the-scenes private API’s.
And while Linux provides the capability to work-around most Win-x software compatibility, Joe and Jill users are simply not going to endure digging into configuration files to make a new software title work.
Most readers responding on this thread have the technical ability to utilize Linux and be very pleased; but we are not representative of most PC users: those who just want stuff to work immediately.
Most of it does work immediately, please stop pushing this narrative. If there’s something specific to to her fix it.
No matter how nicely one talks about Linux, someone is going to flip-out when reality is mentioned. Fact: Joe/Jill user DOES NOT WANT to learn to use Linux because it looks and feels different from Win-OS. In this case, “similar” and “equally capable” are not going to prevail.
AI Overview:
In the global desktop/laptop market, Windows significantly outsizes Linux. While Windows holds a dominant 73.41% market share, Linux has a 4.31% share.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Windows: 73.41%
macOS: 15.49%
Linux: 4.31%
It’s important to note that Linux has seen a notable increase in its market share recently, reaching an all-time high of 4.31%. However, it’s still a small fraction compared to the dominance of Windows.
“However, it’s still a small fraction compared to the dominance of Windows.” Sure … but doesn’t have to stay that way! Just because it is dominant, isn’t a good reason a person should say “I’ll stick with it”. That’s the lemming way of thinking.
‘Just because it is dominant, isn’t a good reason a person should say “I’ll stick with it”.’
I could not agree more; but I’m fluent in UNIX (Admin) and Linux and I am NOT the problem; IF there is a problem at all.
In the CONSUMER PC MARKETPLACE, the end-user is comfortable with Windows-OS and the GUI or if they have never used Windows they surely know someone who thinks they are an expert and available to help out in a jam.
Massive change in human buying patterns simply does not happen quickly even when the product is “free”. Microsoft would have to fall from its current throne by doing something unforgivable in users’ mind before more than a trickle of users migrate quickly to Linux. This is NOT a technology issue; rather, it is a human preference.
AI Overview:
The human trait of not changing from a preferred product, or resisting new or alternative products, is often linked to low openness to experience, a personality trait described in the Big Five personality model. Individuals low in openness may be more cautious, prefer familiarity, and are less likely to embrace change or new ideas, including new products.
For an example: AMD 5000 and 7000 GPUs had major issues when they launched.
How do I use a Quest 2 for PCVR on Linux?
Valve did an amazing job and I love my SteamDeck, but they call it the bleeding edge for a reason.
Win 10 and win 11 installs with the drive being in a state of “we kinda started the encryption, you have to finnish it, but we do not have the keys and if something happends you loose your data”. In BL manager the disk looks unencrypted, but using the manage-bde under command prompt you can see and change the real state of the encryption.
I’ll need to look into this, I install 10 and 11 with TPM disabled in BIOS, does that change anything?
I work in a hospital and the I.T. budget is larger than the budget for R.N.’s
Think about that for a minute.
“Think about that for a minute.”
The next time you wait 4 hours in the ER to be seen or it takes 3 months
to see your doc.
What M$ does effects almost everything in our life’s.
I just came here to say that I miss Clippy, little paperclip guy.
“I can hear the ‘just use Linux/BSD/etc.’ crowd already clamoring in the comments, and will preface this by saying that although I use Linux and BSD on a nearly daily basis, I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here. I’m still holding out some hope for ReactOS hitting its stride Any Day Now™, ”
Not trying to force you to use Linux or anything, but why would you think ReactOS will be usable any time soon, when Linux has had decades to work out and refine every kink?
what about smartphone ? i have a drawer full of quad and octocore SoC with no updates and I can’t build AOSP cause their drivers didn’t get upstreamed or simply proprietary blobs
“what about smartphone ?”
I feel your pain! I kept a few of my best with decent battery and loaded ‘Sky Map’ onto them: my 11YO grandson and friends gets a kick out of viewing the constallations or identifying the occasional planet.
I’m amazed you got the bootloader unlocked. Of course my carrier disallows bootloader unlocking 🙄.
Windows 11 situation seems to prove that most people are masochists. Level of changes between different versions of Windows is larger than users of Windows 10 just switching to Linux Mint, for example. But they keep bending over and paying for a rather poor performance, and even giving away their usage data for free.
Idiocracy was indeed a documentary about the future.
Just run win xp or win 7 or linux or dos easier no need for win10/11 shit
I have Windows 11 dual booting on older hardware Phenom 2 x4 944 with Windows XP partly as i’m into retro computing and tbh the machine is capable of everything I want of it, web, some basic Tinkercad 3d design and has all mod cons like wireless internet, a scsi card, ide and sata, Zip drives, multicard reader and floppy disk drives, serial and parallel port. Plenty of usb ports, 2,3 and c and connects to all the accessories i want to. Reasonable GPU Palit 4GB GeForce GTx 960 that supports dx12 it isn’t going to be a gamers box but that’s fine.l for me for still playing the odd game on steam. Very much into using hardware way past its shelf life. Whilst Wondows could be criticised for trying to enforce TPM etc it should be applauded actually for running in the specs of machine I have and well enough to be usable. My drivers and everything are bang up to date and receive all Windows 11 updates and so far no end of life warnings. I’ll be happy at that for some time to come. Even on my XP partition i have a modern browser and the GPU is still supported. Works fine.. I do have an active antivirus in place and upto date scan running covering both partitions.
Some people will follow the trend but there’s plenty of us see our machines have many years ahead of them yet.