I've been shouting at the void for years (https://gist.github.com/osy/45e612345376a65c56d0678834535166) about how TPM doesn't bring any practical security and was originally introduced for DRM then repurposed to sell "enterprise" security and now it's used as an excuse to force consumers to buy new PCs. TPM was designed by a committee who focused on designing the most secure gate without building a fence. There are many issues that Microsoft knew about for decades and never bothered to fix because security was never the goal.
This can be said for 90% of all cargo-cult "infosec" initiatives.
At best, you're gaining marginal security benefits at the cost of major productivity loss of power users and performance loss on older OS/hardware combinations.
What does TPM has to do with this? Microsoft is cutting support for CPU generations irrelevant to TPM support. It's just a cutoff CPU makers told them to add. There is an official Microsoft Long term security support version of Windows 11 that doesn't have any tpm or cpu age requirements (other than an instruction that was added to all cpus 15 years ago).
I quite like Windows 11, and to me it feels like the most uniform and stable version of Windows thus far. The claims of it being bloated with ads surprises me, because it has less ads on a fresh install than Windows 10 and most Android phones.
It's still a highly customizable platform and overall backwards compatibility is unmatched. If I'm honest, I hated working on Windows in the 7-10 era as a developer. Doing anything from the command line was painful, you were forced to use clients like PuTTY, there was no built in package manager, and development tools like VS were so unstable. As a .NET developer that also does a bit of frontend work, the experience is completely different.
“Less ads than most android phones” is a low low bar. Try “less ads than a new Debian install” and then I’ll be interested. Until then.. no thanks, go pound sand.
Is it really absolutely unacceptable? This is not like ye olden days where you'd buy a Compaq and it comes preloaded with actual trashware. The only things preinstalled that I would consider ads are shortcuts to apps like Spotify, Facebook, Grammarly. All stuff that's very easily removed in less than 30 seconds.
Yes, any advertising in the base operating system is totally unacceptable since it means the OS is tailored to the needs of the advertiser instead of those of the user. The base operating system - that is everything needed to run the system as normal without compromising on functionality - should be a clean slate as far as advertising, and 'telemetry'/user data exfiltration is concerned. If a user wants to install anything on top of that base system which comes with advertising that is his choice but the base should be ad-free.
Easily removed, but new microsoft software seem to be magically added by default, and if you have to maintain a number of non-enterprise windows 11 installs, it suddenly becomes a game of whack-a-mole across multiple machines.
I'm happy for updates for existing software, but I draw the line at them adding new things that I can just remove in 30 seconds over and over again.
It’s just part of Microsoft’s plan to finally give some help to Linux on the desktop. I’ve already seen at least three PCs that’s aren’t Win11 compatible get the Linux treatment.
Pretty sure the reason people aren't upgrading is that Windows 11 is full of ads and crapware, not because of the hardware reqs. It sucks ass, why should anyone upgrade?
They've lost the narrative bad here. Any technical merit it might have has been blasted by the poor messaging and uninspiring initial experiences.
My work gave me a Win11 machine. It works well enough (for a 16Gb machine trying to juggle Docker and JetBrains software) but I find it frustrating in trivial regressions:
* I didn't ask for rounded corners, and it tends to make software look weird if it doesn't expect to have the bottom right corner chopped off. Evidently there is no trivial way to disable this-- I looked and saw guides like "you basically have to disable hardware-accelerated graphics to force it into a compatibility mode" which seems rather using a chainsaw to cut butter. This just seems to be another stop on the "the user shouldn't be theming their machine at all" journey. (I set up a clean Win10 install this week and was surprised to see now it seemed to default to a randomized Bing wallpaper instead of the Windows logo)
noticed
* The little pop-up calendar if you click the taskbar is gone. "Is October 30 a Thursday" is the sort of question I ask a couple times a week for scheduling purposes; an immediate answer is now gone, replaced with nothing.
Yes, these are small problems, but the overall problem is that Windows 11 doesn't give me enough 'new and better' to make up for even tiniest of drawbacks. Even Vista, for all its warts, said "here's a shiny new UI that's interesting rather than just "we made it look more like MacOS because for some reason every design enthusiast on earth can only sniff Apple's farts" and "64-bit support that's actually going to work on most mainstream gear."
If they can't provide enough pros to outweigh "I miss a tiny calendar in the corner of the screen", what chance do they have to respond to the well-documented bigger annoyances like "let's break common taskbar configuration options", "cramming MS accounts even harder down people's throats" and "let's obsolete kit that would run it fine for poorly elucidated reasons."
You'd think they'd have put a lot more effort into trying to find some killer feature or app to actively sell Win11, that makes it worth dealing with the faults, like how back in the day, a new DirectX or IE version might have justified going beyond Windows XP. I guess they're just in maintenance-rundown mode-- not really caring if people embrace Win11 because they know that eventually enterprises will be required to accept it for support/compliance reasons.
The calendar is still in the system tray somewhere, it's just pointlessly buried behind layers of interface that tell you unrelated things like bluetooth status, and not at all immediate. I've usually already consulted a paper one by the time it appears.
It looks like if I click the date then click the arrow next to the date to pop open the calendar, it appears to stay open from now on when I next press the date, like the previous versions?
If you're a windows users this is really the least of your problems with the new "trusted computing" measures microsoft will implement with the new requirements.
> If you're a windows users this is really the least of your problems with the new "trusted computing" measures microsoft will implement with the new requirements.
Does user mean 'forced into malicious spyware eco-system in order to complete University tasks under surveillance' these days? If so, yes, I sadly had to give my maxed out 11th gen X1 to M$ spyware to do school work now.
I'm taking a break this semester so it just sits with a dead battery in the closet for now. Such a waste of good hardware.
I think this is why, just like the legacy financial system, these obsolete, bloated forms of spying disguised as an OS will never go away: you're forced into abject compliance with no recourse with only repercussions if you deviate unless you're willing to de-couple entirely.
There are no alternatives if you do work using these enterprise based products, and if you're one of the few lucky WoH class you pretty much allow this thing to monitor you day and night at this point. Same goes for your smart phone, but at least you can just get a dumb phone there and most won't be the wiser.
One thing that was surprising to me, and might be a reason for quite a few people to upgrade without a reason, is that you might not know that your computer would be able to handle Win 11 (based on e.g. the checker), because of an old BIOS version.
In my case, updating my BIOS version let me enable firmware TPM on my CPU (without an update there was no such setting), which was a blocker - in practice I used Rufus to install it anyway, but some anti-cheat software fail on Win 11 if you don't have a TPM (e.g. Riot Vanguard).
Microsoft has a metaplan to take control of the entire path from server instance, to hardware chipset, and host all thier applications, leaving a tablet like device that rejects anything out of band with this secure chain.
This is looking close to last opportunity to migrate out, and participate in rebuilding a user centric ecosystem.
After 20 years of Linux, my only use for Windows is as a runtime engine for Visio and Project running in a VM. All I really ask for is a secure runtime with updates. What annoys me is when I start getting popups and ads in my start menu or desktop when going to launch said Visio or Project.
Hopefully it keeps driving people away to Linux or sadly even Mac, it isn't really needed for much these days, even games.
> it isn't really needed for much these days, even games
Windows will be with us for decades to come. There is no shortage of industry-specific software that doesn’t run on anything else.
Take our family business: Our CAD doesn’t run on Mac; and forget about the CAM software for a router. That’s just our industry - I would say almost every industry has it’s bespoke software that isn’t going away.
For many other businesses, Microsoft Office is non-negotiable. What’s the alternative, sending PII to Google Docs? Knowing that if you open that 2011 document, the formatting will be cooked? What if you need Adobe or Affinity software?
I’ve just accepted that Linux on the desktop will never happen.
Edit: The comment below me on Adobe, shows the commentator is clueless. Adobe legally has commercial rights to their stock photo library (Adobe Stock) and the 248 million images in it. That’s plenty for training AI, and as a result, a copyright challenge against Adobe has never been attempted. Many artists have been fairly vocal that this wasn’t what they intended when they literally sold their photos to Adobe, but that’s hardly a winning legal argument.
The Windows API will be with us for decades to come, but not necessarily Windows itself. We'll deal with legacy Windows software the same way we deal with legacy mainframe software: run it in a container.
That container may or may not be running Windows and it may or may not come from Microsoft. Compare with how millions of people run Windows games on Steam Decks.
What’s the appeal of Windows now, is it primarily the productivity tools? So many Linux OS are user friendly to a fault, like Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian. I think if someone is setting up Windows for grandma to use Facebook on, then surely Ubuntu can serve the same purpose? Maybe some dedicated grandkids can try and report back.
Apps that only run on Windows. (Some Windows apps don't even have macOS versions.)
>I think if someone is setting up Windows for grandma to use Facebook on, then surely Ubuntu can serve the same purpose? Maybe some dedicated grandkids can try and report back.
I know a "grandma" in her late 70s that runs Windows with sewing embroidery software (Bernina and Brother) and Quicken for personal finances. Those apps don't run on Linux and using workarounds such as Wine or virtual machines for them is not reliable.
So it's not just the exotic business apps like CAD/CAM and Adobe Photoshop/Premiere that keeps users on the Windows platform.
If a user is using the desktop as just a way to run a web browser 100% of the time, then yes, a Linux desktop is a realistic platform for non-techies.
some people are locked in because of third party software which isnt available on linux and dont want/cant afford a mac, others just want to stick with what they know regardless of how hard microsoft keeps repeatedly pounding them in the ass. i think unfortunately most people will just accept that they need a new computer for windows 11 at face value and not question it.
A quick scan of the features available in Windows 11 vs Windows 10 tells me that there is no advantage to the user in an upgrade. It's just unnecessary (from the user side) additions that have no immediate meaning. From MS standpoint, it's great, but they need to do a much better job of explaining why we need to upgrade and do it in terms that are clearly understandable to users and that explain what the benefits to the users are.
Over the past 10 years or so, that gaming moat has turned into a shallow puddle. There are a few sub-niches of gaming where Microsoft still has a moat, e.g. a few online games that rely on the most restrictive rootkits, and PC VR gaming due to (what I understand to be) highly complex proprietary drivers dealing with very sensitive math that decides whether we have an enjoyable experience or get physically sick.
Most other games have become perfectly playable via Proton. 76% of Top 1000 Steam games have a ProtonDB rating of "Platinum" or "Gold", meaning that they run with no or very few tweaks.
Ain't it partly about forcing laptop/pc refresh cycle?
Also higher HW requirements implies that Windows 11 may be better for many people because they'll finally drop their 15 years old HW, so W11 may have better UX
There is exactly zero reason to upgrade to w11. Everything will be running fine at least until 2027 (ltsc support date), or 2032 (server 2022 support date) by which point all incompatible PCs will be 10+yrs old
Just continue using your Windows 10 computer unsupported. Most people use Android phones, arguably a more important and personal computer, unsupported for years with no issues.
First sentence: Despite Microsoft trying hard to get people to upgrade to Windows 11...
Title: buy new Windows 11 PC
I mean, there is a clearly a difference, and XDA knows that.
So it brings up TPM 2.0 and says Microsoft "sends a signal" "old CPUs are useless". I don't think anybody, Microsoft or others, ever said or hinted anything like that. The "useless" thing is just completely made up. If we are talking about security updates etc, sure, that's a real issue, let's discuss that, but "useless" is just a meaningless yet very misleading word to tack on here.
Then, "big push for Copilot+". Sorry to point out that "Copilot+" as a concept has only existed for a few months, but things in the rest of the content were already happening long before this year.
I can't see how any of this is different from macOS Sequoia only supports MacBook Air 2020 or later, or MacBook Pro 2018 or later. A company only has the resources to support old hardware for that many years, after that it's all on your own. That's just how things have worked for a very long time.
But this is XDA, and I don't think people ever take XDA's "news" articles seriously. So never mind.
I'm glad I'm skilled enough for this to not annoy me. I'm using a cheapo CPU from 2010 and a $7 TPM 2.0 module plugged into my motherboard. Elden Ring runs fine on a GTX 970 from ebay for $30. Windows 11 has been happy for years. I might have also run some hack or trick or bypass, but I've long since forgotten since it was easy and widely published how to do it. The environmental impact of enterprise licence businesses throwing out good hardware in a year sucks though. But honestly any business paying for enterprise license was replacing hardware that frequently anyway. E-waste levels from corporate america IT departments has always been shocking. Hopefully the recyclers can refurb those.
at this point gaming is easy enough on linux that i'm happy enough to just go without the handful of games that don't work at all. modern games are so bad that most aren't even worth playing anyway.
steamos is the only one ive used in recent years (steam deck) but i've had pretty much no problems with it, i virtually never encounter a game that won't run
