This feels like such a fuck you to working class. People can’t afford another layer of these costs right now.
My dad's bringing his PC to my house when they visit for Christmas so we can setup Linux as a dual boot for him to see if he can switch from Windows 10 to Linux instead of buying a new PC
My dad (in his mid 80s) told me proudly that he had just bought Linux and installed it on his computer. It's great that he wanted to try Linux but I wonder what malware-riddled scam distro he found, and how I'll sort it out on my next visit.
Can't be that bad. Some distros accept donations. It just could be that he felt he was making a purchase rather than just a donation.
Maybe elementaryOS? There is a Purchase button on the site, with a pay-what-you-want option. If possible to enter 0 though.
Not sure if it was Mint or Ubuntu, but one of them shows a donation box with a default amount when you click download. It's already downloading when the box shows up, but maybe he misinterpreted that.
That's fine, I've closed the door on supporting Microsoft. They could have just charged for the 'upgrade' and that would have been better since it wouldn't result in the colossal amount of e-waste that this is creating. Even without the forced obsolescence, their products have become hostile, invasive and generally just a PITA to use. Meanwhile Linux distros are knocking it out of the park lately.
I really don't know what Microsoft are thinking. They haven't made particularly good strides towards gaining any kind of goodwill, so once it becomes common knowledge that alternatives not only exist but actually show them up, those lost customers are people that they will never get back. Look how pathetic their marketshare is for Edge for example, even though it's the default browser on Windows. They still haven't been able to shake off the bad stigma that Internet Explorer had (and to be fair, they aren't doing people any favours with Edge either).
The new Outlook is fucking awful.
How did they fuck up email? Just put them all on the left and let me read and move them in the fewest clicks possible.
Thank you Microsoft god bless I will stay on core 2 duo forever 🙏🙏
It would be safer to use a Linux flavor and run the apps you need using Wine/Proton..
I bet it'll still try to install itself on that hardware though and break it.
Probably how they'll force upgrade down the track, upgrade or we brick your shit.
Non negotiable sounds fine with me. Because we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
I’d like to give a heartfelt thank you to Microsoft management though, for furthering the cause of Linux adoption. We couldn’t have done it without you. 🙏
The used market is going to bomb if older machines can't be setup with newer windows version.
'incompatible' hardware will be dirt cheap, and 8th gen or newer will sell for more than it would have otherwise--especially if tariffs jack prices up on new hardware.
i have a couple dozen older systems here. most were given to me before win11's requirements were known. fixing and flipping them for a few bucks was a small but relatively steady income stream, but not anymore. hardly anyone wants them.
the couple that are new enough to be blessed by microsoft will be kept, and i'll hang on to the better ones of the rest (like skylake, kaby lake) to put linux on. everything else will end up at ewaste recyclers even though there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of them other than the fact that a profit and 'shareholder value' driven megacorp says they can't be used anymore.
I'll see you all on SteamOS in six months
Love Linux and steam deck, but AS IS, steam os is a horrible choice for a desktop general use computer.
It's immutable without layering, so there are things that you can't install/keep after an update. Case and point, printers. You can't print, period. Valve knows, they don't need a gaming device to print so they don't care.
Hopefully they will do something about this, but I don't hold my breath for 2025
They don't need the hardware to run an OS. They need the hardware to run their AI shit for reasons nobody ever needs - except Microsoft.
So maybe it is not Microsoft closing the door for older hardware, but older hardware closing the door for Windows 11?
They need the hardware to run their AI shit
The requirement is for TPM, not parallel processing hardware. It provides trusted hardware, facilitates things like DRM.
Fyi you can install it without TPM 2 hardware, if using Rufus to create the installer, you can just tick an option to remove tpm forcing.
That's if you want to keep using Windows after 2025 on a 7+ year old hardware.
Not endorsing it, just saying you can, at no extra cost.
if you want to risk random update potentially bricking your computer or at least your os breaking, not worth it
I know everyone here foams over Linux, and for good reason... but please remember the average user is a techno-fobe who struggles to find the start menu. Linux just isn't an option for a lot of people. Windows has been around so long and feels familiar. Until there is a major demographic shift and ECE training on general computer use an basic troubleshooting... the majority of the population will stick with whatever arrives when they turn it on because "It's what they know".
If Linux is to take over it must come PRE-installed, Must be fully compatible (read: plug-n-play); even with the weird printer your aunt found in a garage sale, at-least feel familiar to the majority of users.... and for corpos... run MS office (read: excel) natively.
even with the weird printer your aunt found in a garage sale
Windows isn't supporting that anymore either.
at-least feel familiar to the majority of users
Start menu is at the bottom left of the task bar, you can start Chrome from there.
Thank you Microsoft after being a windows user since the 3.1 days your recent changes to Windows makes me happy to announce I bought my first MAC.
So close. You could have gone to Linux.
Why do people capitalize all of Mac?
They bought a Mass Accelerator Cannon from the UNSC
Its a Media access control address, AKA MAC address that he bought ofc. It lives inside his ethernet card.
I'm up too early, sorry.
Because they don't know that MAC is media access control, and Mac is Macintosh.
I suspect it's the "Mac vs PC" stereotype, and they think C stands for computer and MA stands hell knows for what. Because a PowerPC PC is not a PC, and an ARM PC is not a PC, and a SPARC PC is not a PC (OK, it's a workstation, of the noble blood, not like the rest), and I think I've lost my thought.
My reaction would not be switching to MacOS, because for something the users of which look down on Linux and FreeBSD, with all that "just works" and "made for Terrans" pathos, it surely is frustrating to use.
Just some well-supported enough Linux would do.
Another shitty decision from Redmond.
Yay!
blessing in disguise. at least you can build a system so poorly that 10 won't be forcefully upgraded on you.
Why have we stopped talking about how the $15 ~~TPU~~ TPM can make upgrading older systems possible? Does that not work anymore?
I think they also prevent most CPU released before 2017ish from installing as well so computers just missing the proper TPM are few and far between anyway. You can still get around all the requirements pretty easily though.
I installed Linux Mint on my wife's ageing Thinkpad (2016, new battery is en route but everything else works fine). Windows would struggle to even start its own file explorer (lol), so I said no more of that bullshit.
She is happy with it, apart from ProNote not working (she uses the web client instead).
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
