Microsoft closes the door on Windows 11 supporting older hardware

This feels like such a fuck you to working class. People can’t afford another layer of these costs right now.
- ... This is bait right? You want somebody to tell you there's a simple and free solution, and then you're going to say it's a bad solution?
  FINE! I'll bite: Pirated copy of Windows Enterprise LTSC. It's less useful, more resource hungry, privacy invasive and has worse support for older hardware than Linux though.
  
  Working class people at large don't know about these alternatives, I'm certain you know that. IT folk and nerds alike do, but anyone outside of these circles don't necessarily see the choice they have
  
  Working class doesn't have time to do this research and just needs a working machine
  
  Objectively speaking Linux is not a Windows replacement, its a minix replacement and competes with FreeBSD. Not everyone wants Linux and tbh I wouldnt reccomend Linux to most people.

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.
  
  Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it's supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it's that?
  
  Doesn't Ubuntu and a few other distros still sell physical install discs?
  
  I gave my distro dev $20 for the bragging rights. More than I ever paid for Windows.
  
  You used to be able to buy physical media. And that may be what they're talking about? Hard to say. For a long time this whole write it to a USB stick and install it was newfangled and not at all common. I 100% have a version of red hat in a box that I bought off a shelf of a local Best Buy back in the 90s. Yes you could have just downloaded and installed it or created your own install media. But having your own CD burners even weren't that common at the time. I remember 1999 being when I got my first CD burner and how special that was lol. It seems almost quaint by today's standards. And downloading wasn't really an option either. 56 kilobits per second if you were lucky would have taken days and days. Now it's just minutes over most broadband.
- I think my retiree parents (and in-laws) are going the same way. They only use their computer for email and search, and the options are just better.
  
  I'll have to ask my parents about it. They mostly just use a web browser, but they also occasionally use Word for writing Christmas letters and whatnot. I could probably get them to switch to LibreOffice, Google Drive, or Office365, but not completely sure about that. They are interested in getting a Chromebook, so I guess we'll see what they end up needing.
  I try not to force Linux on anyone, but I have brought it up before as a suggestion (they were complaining about their computer being slow, and ended up buying a new one). My dad really likes Windows, but they really don't use anything Windows-specific other than Word anymore.

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.
  
  also trying to add more emails to outlook. How do you fuck that up. You only get the options for suggested emails or new email creation.
  
  If you go to Google and search for xview mailtool screenshots, you might realize just how fucked up today's email UIs are.
  
  I keep hoping they will Classic Coke their whole Office suite

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..
  
  Does it have Windows Aero?

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.
- I've got a full screen ad for Windows 11 one day, despite having TPM 2.0 turned off. Not sure what exactly was written there, as I have turned it off immediately, but fuckers probably advertise their shitty "Windows 11-compatible" computers or some other shit.
  
  afaik that ad was sent regardless of TPM. I got it.

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. 🙏

Linux adoption intensifies
- Maybe in a decade from now Linux will achive 7.5% market share, maybe
  
  You only need about 15% for commercial support.

The used market is going to bomb if older machines can't be setup with newer windows version.
- All the better for us running Linux!
  
  I think I can see 3 "new" laptops in my future!
  
  yes!
- '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.
  
  Maybe the tariffs will serve to cull a bit of the consumist impulse the US suffers of.
  Regarding if a machine is desirable or not: I'm still seeing Windows XP machines being sold today for over 100€. No monitor, no peripherals, no nothing: just the machine. And people needing a machine to type a report, do a spreadsheet, do basic office work, with no other option, pay for it.
  i run my machines until they stop working, period.
  
  It's fairly trivial to bypass Microsoft's hardware requirements for windows 11 afaik. Just install via Rufus and click the relevant options. I agree with you that MS should have made these optional recommendations though, we shouldn't have to use third party tools.

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 wont do anything about it because SteamOS is not and will never be a general purpose desktop OS. Its a gaming distro designed to do one thing and one thing well, game. It can do other things but its not meant to, kinda like a reverse MacOS.
  
  You might like Bazzite. Its like a general purpose version of SteamOS with layering and printers
  
  I think printers is kinda going the way of having to support winmodems for Linux... Just not as important as it used to be.
  Last time I printed something was for a pistol permit. 3 years ago. And I just sent that to Office Depot to print it, and picked it up on the way to the permit office.
  Students at the local uni don't really need printers, either. Generally, the few times they do, there's public printers to email the doc to, and go pick up (Or, QR code and a phone, etc).
  Personal printers just aren't that big of a deal these days.

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.
  
  There are tons of low and medium boards that provide TPM, and they don't suffice, IIRC.

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
- That'll work until they actually make it do something with the TPM.
  I bet in 3 years they'll require an AI accelerator.
  
  I bet in 3 years they'll require an AI accelerator.
  You're right, better get out now!
  
  As far as I'm aware TPM 2 pretty much does with hardware, what is otherwise software emulated. It's more efficient and secure when using something like bitlocker etc. Everything should work, just is more suspectible to tampering and malware.

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.
  
  Some random old printer is much more likely to be plug and play on Linux these days than it is on windows.
- 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.
  Or we could just not care if it "takes over"?
  Even if Linux was and did all of those things -- and many of them are already crossed off of the list -- it may not "take over" and despite some corporate spend from some of the backing corporations, it's not really a profit driven ecosystem. Linux doesn't have to take over and do exactly what Microsoft does, Linux is just fine as is.
  
  It actually is a profit-driven ecosystem, otherwise Mr Poettering's creations would still be something as weird and unpopular as Leechcraft, if somebody remembers that software, and so would Gnome after 2.* and KDE after 3.*, and we would probably have something more interesting instead of Wayland as the coming X11 replacement, but you are right, waiting for the rest of the world to move to Linux before you do is an illogical position to say the least.
- I have never connected a printer to my network or via USB, clicked the add printer button, and was able to print on my first try.
  Then I tried to add a printer on Fedora Linux.
  Cant say never anymore.
- The more of us that buy computers with it preinstalled the more it signals that there is interest.
  Popular brands offer it. I'm not saying you have to go buy, but you can also let people know it's an option.
  I bought an XPS Developer edition and when asked I explained that when Linux had support from the manufacturer it can be as reliable as their Macs, often even more reliable.
- I’d argue it will be Android/iOS/ChromeOS over Windows, for better or for worse. This fucks over companies and governments than it does the average user, in aggregate.
  I spend a few months here and there just using my iPad for everything I can (I got through my college degree with one a long time ago and it’s nostalgic for me), and it’s crazy to me how feature complete it is for most work flows. Exactly programming is an issue, for me, but I can create an STL to printing it all on device! Much less office and what not.
- Yeah, you're right. Also, how bad Windows 11 is is massively exaggerated, once my machine was set up, all I've done is remove a few programs like One Drive from loading on start, and it's been fine.
  I do need to figure out how to get rid of the news and weather thingy on the start menu, to be fair.
  
  It'd take a fresh install, but W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is how all current Windows should be. Only has Edge + Defender.
  You can find it on massgrave.dev

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.
  
  It’s like in Unpretty, that 90s song by TLC:
  you can buy your hair if it won't grow
  you can fix your nose if you say so
  you can buy all the iPhones that MAC can make
- I would have installed Linux, logged into MSN.net, and then told them to eat shit on their support forum.

Another shitty decision from Redmond.

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.
  
  My Ryzen 1700 system was prevented from upgrading and it met the TPM requirement, it just wasn't whitelisted. That CPU was released in 2017, and that whole gen was pretty popular (1600 sold like hotcakes). I think anything newer should work though.
  That said, my primary OS is Linux anyway, so it doesn't matter, this is just an install on my other disk in case I need something Windows-specific (haven't needed it in years).
- I have a Ryzen 7 5800x with a 4070ti running windows 10. I could move it to windows 11 but fuck that. I've been slowly switching PCs to Linux for months already.

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).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro
Windows 10 Home and Pro
Retirement Date: Oct 14, 2025
Sounds like 2025 is gonna be a good year for PC manufacturers.
- With sales from companies? Yes. With sales from average consumers? Maybe not. Depends on what they can afford. There's people out there still using things like windows 7. If the computer still works they're unlikely to upgrade unless they care about having the newest stuff.
  
  A friend of mine just messaged me, that we cannot play a few selected games anymore, as his notebook was acting up. Upon further investigation I found out, that he is still running Windows 8.1 and cannot use Steam anymore, since Steam support on Windows 8.1 ended about a year ago and a Chrome update "finally" broke Steam on windows 8.1 a few weeks ago.
- I'm waiting for the planned obsidence lawsuit myself
  
  the wut?

What i wonder, is:
TPM a black box and then, why should i trust it
if not, why not just use RAM as protected memory instead?
- Ram can't run their blackbox code. The goal is a full processor running non inspectable code. The end of the PC.

Microsoft really playing into the bit. This is all just hype for Windows 12

As a W10 user,.....Oh no don't....
....Come back.

And closes the door on market share as well

Tech illiteracy?