I will not be upgrading to W11. Some time between now and when they sunset W10 I will be switching to Linux.
Or I could switch to Linux…
OH WAIT, I already did that, darn. Such a shame I can’t ditch Windows twice.
PCs that can’t run Windows 11 are valuable to people who don’t want to wake up one morning and find they’ve been upgraded against their will.
Just run windows 3.1 dual booted with Linux mint. Easily the most rational decision.
Humm, I installed Windows 11 on a really old Dell laptop (clean install). I’m sure it was not HW supported but it installed fine. I may have had to click something like, " Yeah I know it doesn’t meet the specs"; but otherwise fine.
No, I don’t like Windows but it’s what my partner needed at the time.
This isn’t news, it’s just the standard notice that Microsoft isn’t going to spend time making their new shiny OS work on 10+ year old hardware.
I dunno, I’ve got a laptop who’s CPU was too new for win 8.1 to have drivers or support for it, and is too old to put win 11 on it…
This is the first time they’ve intentionally cut off the ability to run their OS at all just based on hardware age when it could otherwise run it just fine.
Not dedicating support to old hardware is one thing, blocking it intentionally is something else entirely.
Oh, that laptop? High end gaming laptop that was 6 years old when Windows 11 released. The fact it’s blocked is flat out ridiculous, and defending it is equally ridiculous.
That’s not what anyone is asking and if that’s what MS said then they’re just dodging the issue entirely. If you buy a motherboard on your own today TPM still wouldn’t be enabled. And their “support” never went farther than hardware manufacturers registering where Windows could pull driver updates from. So that’s just the worst take I’ve seen in this whole thing.
You make it sound like an older gaming rig wasn’t powerful enough to run win 11. It’s not about the older hardware being too weak, it’s about enforcing their TPM bullshit with which they aim to gradually create an apple style walled garden where they control what you can do with your machine.
idk, sounds like an ad for Linux to me
FTFY
New Shitty “Os”*
*(Legal Disclaimer “Os” is actually malware)
My computer can’t upgrade to Win11 and I am buying a new one, but I’m putting Linux on it.
I have parts on the way to build a new PC. Believe it or not, also Linux.
My computer can upgrade to win11. I clearly remember the vendor stating that when I bought it last year.
I’ll continue with linux, though.
Mine too. I tried 11 and went back to 10. Honestly, only thing keeping me on Windows currently is my plex*arr servers. Guess I have a year to figure out docker.
Just pointing out, Plex and *arr work on Linux too…
LOL.
Windows isn’t even that good. The OS is kind of a huge mess. It has two unfortunate advantages though: it’s the default on many devices, and (because of that) software availability is best. I wish it wasn’t the case.
PowerShell is another advantage, oddly enough, though I’ve been worried for a bit the direction they’re going with that… Everything they’re doing now is Azure and they’re pushing everything to Graph, and the way all of it works is a massive pain for anyone trying to use PowerShell the way it was designed to be used
After about 10 hours of reading and video watching, it seems pretty unanimous that linux mint with cinnamon is the easiest one to use and everything else is hobbyist stuff.
Decent choice, but I massively disagree with the last 6 words
Right? The easiest one is the hobbyist stuff, everything else is srs bsns.
I’ll just keep running Windows 10.
BlizzardMicrosuck: “Don’t you all have bank accounts?”If one’s hardware is 10+ years old, I don’t think upgrading to the latest OS is likely high on their list of priorities.
Why upgrade hardware that still does all you need?
Considering I have Logitech devices that don’t even work on Win11 without first disabling a bunch of security settings…why bother? When some of your major vendors don’t have drivers that work on win11 fully you might want to help them out first before forcing people onto that OS.
Nope, the vendors see that as a win too. Go buy new hardware. Stop being a poor.
Smells like Microsoft air in here… A bit stale, dirty, corporate vibe.
Windows users have no idea what they are missing out on by avoiding Linux.
Honestly, I’m afraid of how complicated it sounds and have no idea where to begin.
I’ve recently been dabbling with Linux for the first time, so here’s a few things I’ve found along the way.
First, look at whether you can disable secure boot. Most computers can, but as I’ve recently discovered on my laptop, the option just isn’t there for some motherboards. If you can’t or don’t want to for whatever reason, it’s not the end of the world, you’ll just need to pick a distro that supports secure boot, I know Ubuntu does, and I believe a few of the other more popular ones do too.
Next, grab a few distros to try out. You may want to look into recommendations if there’s anything specific you want to do. For example, I wanted to make sure gaming setup was as straightforward as possible, so I looked at distros that were tailored towards that. Create some bootable USBs and spend a few minutes just looking at each to get a feel. You’ll pretty quickly decide whether or not you like a distro, there’s really no point spending more time with one if there’s something that puts you off from the get-go.
Dual boot is the way to go until you feel like dropping Windows entirely, if you can. And if there’s something that just isn’t going to work on Linux, it’s good to be able to just jump across to Windows for that purpose. The only annoying thing I’ve found is that Windows updates can break the dual-boot partition, so just be aware of that. If it happens, it’s not that difficult a process to repair it.
Other than that, Linux isn’t that different from other OSes in how you’ll probably use it. There are a few different ways you can install programs due to the different distros, so you’ll want to look at things like how to install a flatpak. For Windows programs, you can look at whether you can get it running in Bottles or a VM if you don’t want to bother rebooting.
In my opinion Linux is now easier to install than windows. The installers don’t have any user hostility built-in, nagging you for Microsoft accounts or activation keys or any of that crap. Once it’s Installed you could park your grandma in front of it and she’d be able to figure out how to surf the web.
I’m pretty sure that there are grandmas now who have actually used Linux.
Don’t be scurred! Download the Pop!_OS disc image, use Rufus to create a bootable USB drive. Put it into your USB port. Boot. Hit f12 if needed to select your boot device. Boot to the thumb drive. Follow the on-screen instructions. EZ!
PS: move your data off your primary hard drive before proceeding with step 3 above. You should follow a wiki, but it really is that simple.
The only difficult part is getting Linux on to a USB stick. After that, you boot your computer from the USB stick and click next, next, next until it’s done. It’s super easy.
There are guides how to burn a iso file with the Linux distinction to a USB stick too. Just start there, see if you can do that as step one.
As for Linux distro, pick something common and easy, like Pop OS or Fedora.
It’s not like it used to be where you absolutely needed to know command line and memorize them. It hasn’t been that way for at least a decade now.
Most Linux distros look identical to Windows that the average user would assume it’s Windows with a different skin.
And with WINE and Proton, Windows apps (except Windows Store apps) can be run with little to no issues in many cases.
The biggest obstacles are going to be:
- Choosing a Linux distro, which can be fun in some ways
- Making some apps compatible or finding an alternative if it doesn’t already exist there or isn’t compatible with a translation layer like Proton
- creating the USB to install, but this has been made a lot easier in the last decade and the installation process has been simplified on many Linux installations
I’m currently on KDE Neon which I love. Thinking about moving over to it fully on other computers too.
I’d say getting a distro with KDE Plasma is a good thing if you are accustomed to Windows.
GNOME if you are more accustomed to Mac.
Just in the way it looks and behaves. KDE Plasma feels a lot like Windows 7/10.
Some good distros to try with this would be KDE Neon, Zorin, or SteamOS. There are others out there to try.
YouTube is fantastic for any setup questions or just to follow for a painless experience.
