No more forced junk and changes I have to undo? My computer can stay the exact way I like it for a long period of time without Microsoft fucking it up? Sounds like a dream.
Due to the embedded insecurity of our system we are forced to upgrade all of Earth's computers as remediation. While you sit tight for updates, all computers will run at half speed. Once the new chipsets are available, you may purchase them on a subscription basis.
This is a meme about enterprise equipment lifecycles.
Huge corporate entities with machine inventory counts in the hundreds of thousands aren’t going to give a shit about trying to upcycle old hardware - they just want it to not be their problem anymore.
I predict there will be a few companies that pop up to refurbish the hardware and sell it as a thin client solution. Places like call centers live on refurb equipment and are moving to a vdi infrastructure.
W11 and anything after it simply does not support any intel cpu before 10th gen, or (with a handful of exceptions) any AMD cpu before the 3000 series.
Edit: serious question: are W12 thin clients allowed to not have a TPM module? Or does that not actually matter for a thin client? I had assumed all machines involved had to have that capability, be it host or client.
E2: clearly I need to learn more about thin clients and related infra
It might have some basic apps on it, but it's main purpose is to remotely connect to either a storefront or desktop environment that's being provided by some sort of VDI infrastructure. The OS can easily be a stripped down Linux image.
This is beneficial for businesses because you only have to upgrade your servers instead of hundreds or thousands of desktops.
It's also beneficial from a security standpoint because you can deliver only what's needed for the job.
Source: I built and maintained a Citrix VDI environment for a multinational company. We mostly used Zero clients, which were basically Pis that could log into Citrix, but we had some departments that had to use thin clients for various reasons.
generally computers won't stop doing things they were already capable of doing. tons of machines and businesses may rely on older hardware and software to complete specific tasks.
but yeah, a 486 is pretty past its prime, and the task could have been accomplished on something far more modern.
But those aren't affected usually. For them it's about stability because their certification processes are a lot of work and they won't risk any interruptions unless absolutely necessary. So they actually pay a lot of money for support beyond the normal EOL.
the organizations I know personally, don't have those kinds of resources. They use XP because they rely on software that hasnt been ported to the new enviroments since forever, and it doesn't work on the new versions of windows. (or works poorly). plenty of places have old propriety licenses that they've never upgraded to new versions of software because it still works for their needs.
CNC machining, doctor's offices. Tax lawyers. bakery shops running acocunting software. farmers. You'll find it in lots of industries.
Yeah, i know just because of the security vulnerabilities, but it was for a long time better OS than windows 10 or 11, and because of that i switched to linux,
I'm sure some releases have become unsupported. The nature of Linux distros makes it a bit harder to define exactly which ones, even harder is you consider flatpak and snaps.
I would be surprised if any of the big ones released at the time Windows 7 was released is not supported. If course there's no gatekeeping on the upgrades that I'm aware of (in general at least)