Not all that long ago I was told by someone who claimed to be an expert that a 3 year old middle of the road gaming laptop was to old to support win 10 and that’s why it was crashing all the time, Linux may not be perfect in every way but Windows is dying a slow, painful, e-waste generating death and Microsoft doesn’t seem to care, I’m glad I jumped ship when I did
I just installed Linux Mint on a 15-year-old desktop that has never been upgraded and was middle-of-the-road when I got it. It shipped with Windows 7, and I tried a couple of times to upgrade to 10 (it failed every time, either losing core hardware functionality, running so slowly as to be unusable, or just refusing to boot altogether). But it runs Linux like a dream. Seriously—it’s easily running the latest version of Mint better than it ran an 11-year-old service pack of Windows 7.
What’s even crazier is that I installed VirtualBox on it, and put Windows 10 on that, to use some work programs. And that runs Windows 10 a bit slowly, but otherwise more or less flawlessly!
That’s right: I’m having a better Windows experience in Linux than I’ve ever had on baremetal Windows on this box.
I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.
I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.
For what it’s worth, your experience 15 years ago likely would have been very different. It’s only in the past few years that things like drivers for basic hardware have become widely available on Linux without a bunch of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And even today, there are still certain drivers that often don’t like to play nice.
Ask anyone who had an nvidia GPU 15 years ago if they’d suggest switching to Linux. The answer would have been a resounding “fuck no, it won’t work with your GPU.”
Eh, “a few years” here is selling Linux a bit short. I switched about 15 years ago, and while driver issues were a thing, it was still a pretty solid experience. I had to fiddle with my sound card and I replaced my wifi card in my laptop, but other than that, everything else worked perfectly. That still occasionally happens today, but as of about 10 years ago, I honestly haven’t heard of many problems (esp. w/ sound, that seems largely solved, at least within a few months of HW release).
I don’t know what you’re talking about WRT GPUs. Bumblebee (graphics switch) was absolutely a thing back in the day for Nvidia GPUs on laptops, which kinda sucked but did work, and today there are better options. On desktops, I ran Nvidia because ATI’s drivers were more annoying at the time. Ubuntu would detect your hardware and ask you to install proprietary drivers for whichever card you had. I ended up getting a laptop w/o a dGPU, mostly because I didn’t want to deal with graphics switching, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work, it was just a pain. For dedicated systems though, it was pretty simple, I was able to play Minecraft on the GPU that came with my motherboard (ATI?), and it ran the beta Minecraft build just fine, along with some other simple games.
In short, if you were on a desktop, pretty much everything would work just fine. If you were on a laptop, most things would work just fine, and the better your hardware, the fewer problems you’d have (i.e. my ThinkPad worked just fine ~10 years ago).
Playing games could be a bit more tricky, but for just using the machine, pretty much any hardware would work out of the box, even 15 years ago. It has only gotten better since then.
That’s a good point. I didn’t think about that.
Cant crack what you cant reach
Is secure boot still required? Yes?
Can’t force me to do shit Microsoft. Your own OS prevents it :)
You’re misunderstanding, they’re stopping people like you and me who don’t have those.oj their PCs from upgrading via workarounds, not preventing us from a forced upgrade.
I had to go back and reread. I really shouldn’t comment when I’m still in bed.
Seems like you’re not the only one in this thread that fails to even read the title correctly.
They probably read requirement as meaning being required to upgrade to 11.
“By god we have got to stop people from using Windows!”
Uh. Yes. Do that.
deleted by creator
Got so angry, that you deleted your own comment, huh? /j
Look at the vote ratio, do you think I got angry that everyone agreed with me or something?
I just saw a deleted comment, then your username and found it funny.
I know.
A lot of people make similar attempts at hand crafted jocularity. Most fall about as flat as yours.
That’s okay. I’m always in for stupid, shitty and flat jokes. It might put a brief smile on someones face and make this existence a little bit more bearable for a second.
I didn’t mean to offend you though.
No, I think they are referring to your username.
What a clever and original thing to see that I have not seen ever before in my 4 decades on the internet, yes sirree, certainly one of the most fresh and unique takes ever committed to electrons.
Thank you. <3
This is my sarcastic face for future reference: -_-
Indeed I was.
If it’s just an installer check then people could just use the old installer versions and update afterward right? Or are they planning on stopping updates for unsupported hardware that already installed windows 11?
It’s MS. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bricked systems attempting to bypass the requirements.
My guess is one of the upcoming major updates will either refuse to install, or will try to install and fail, if you try that route.
Something like that happened with a 2006-era laptop I have with Windows 10. It ran Windows 10 fine for several years, but finally one of the big updates decided it no longer liked some of the Vista-era drivers I was using. The update would try to install, fail, and roll back. And since Windows doesn’t let you turn off or disable updates, a few days later it would try again only to fail in the exact same way.
So Microsoft wants to force everyone to ditch their perfectly good machines so they can make more money off of selling OEM licenses.
I’m just waiting for Europe to sue their greedy asses for planned obsolescence.
While I do agree that a lot of the PCs that are deemed not compatible is really stupid, there are people that are trying to use Windows 11 on devices that have no business running it, so this is partially to prevent their devices from getting infected with a virus or something
I’ve lost count of how many times Microsoft, and many other big tech companies, hindered me from doing something I wanted to do on a device that I own for “security” reasons while it had absolutely nothing to do with security and everything to do with forcing their users to comply with their business model.
DRM chips have nothing to do with device security and everything to do with further controlling what you can and cannot do on your machine and making more money off of you.
You really shouldn’t believe the Corporate bad faith arguments used to justify anti-consumer practices.
My job has radicalized me against windows, the settings are factory reset quite frequently due to updates or reimaging so I’m constantly resetting every single option just to get it back to a continent state (Who in their right mind thinks centered task bar icons is a good thing!?!?!)
Malware such as that imbedded in Windows 11?
Why won’t they get a virus or something on Windows 10 with that same hardware?
Since when is having vulnerable hardware the business of the operating system? Sure, they’re allowed to do whatever they want, but it’s stupid. It’s your system. You should be able to try to run any software you want on it and the software shouldn’t care (unless it just literally can’t work, not a software check to make it not work).
I’m on Linux only though, so I may be biased. I think I own my computer and you may not agree with that.
At the very least, they should be releasing some “Lite” version for older hardware or something.
It’s such a catch-22 with Linux, because you’re not going to see ads for it and most “normal” people don’t even know what it is (and that they have a viable alternative to Windows).
I don’t want ads for Linux, but I wish there was a way to elevate it into the general public consciousness so people are aware that they even have an option. AND ITS FREE.
I can’t tell you how many Apple devices I’ve had that have become unsupported over the years.
Yeah as much as this sucks I honestly hope that Microsoft will actually take advantage of this and start moving legacy support into more specialized options.
A lot of the reason windows is so janky at times is because of the insane obsession they have with backwards compatibility.
Lol, worst take I have ever heard.
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Windows has no purpose these days outside backwards compatibility.
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Windows primarily sucks because of ads and forced updates, not jank.
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Microsoft exclusively deals in antiquated spaghetti code, removing backwards compatibility won’t change that.
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Microsoft has no interest in improving users experience they have invested entirely in squeezing in micro transactions not exactly a user first design philosophy.
Enshittification
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False.
I work for Microsoft and I can assure you that any effort I make to increase code quality or reduce jank (or pretty much anything other than shoving more AI in our products) will not positively impact my bonus next year.
What if you found another window to put ads in?
Are you working on Windows or another product? Also do you know why MS expects ROI for new Windows features ie. Amazon Appstore? Since Windows is a paid product (at least for OEMs) I would expect license income to sustain feature development.
Like what? I’m still using my 2011 MacBook Pro, and my phone is about six years old.
I can’t update my 2011 MBP to the latest version of OSX, but it still works fantastically for everyday stuff. Phone can update to the next version of iOS.
can’t update
Yeah, that’s the problem, if your hardware can run the latest software, it should be able to update to the latest software
It’s THIRTEEN YEARS OLD! It still functions! If it stops functioning, I can put Linux on it!
It’s a first-gen Core i7… I don’t think the hardware would support the latest version that well, if at al.
It’s THIRTEEN YEARS OLD!
Thirteen year old Windows computers still get updates (not to mention Linux).
It still functions!
Really? You don’t have any apps that refuse to run because the OS version is too old? My 10 year old iMac won’t run hardly anything…not even a browser.
Mind you, not because the hardware is broken or unsupported, or the software is supported, but because Apple simply refuses to allow it.
not even a browser
Try Firefox maybe? Safari and Firefox work perfectly on my 13 year old MacBook… I don’t know what’s wrong with your machine.
Edit: you can’t put Windows 11 on a 13 year old machine, that’s a straight-up lie. Mind you, not because the hardware is broken or unsupported, but because Microsoft simply refuses to allow it.
you can’t put Windows 11 on a 13 year old machine
I didn’t say Windows 11. I said Windows. An up-to-date version of Windows. Nice try, though.
Used market is about to have some bargains on very usable Linux machines.
Nice I could use a laptop
Cool. I can upgrade some of my decade old machines on the cheap.
Hopefully that newer hardware is as stable as what I already have.
I’ve literally been trying to install windows 11 several times. I’ve made my PC support it, but the update just breaks and rolls back every time
When googling I see others with the same issue but no solution
Install Linux, be done with anything from Microsoft
Stop. We get it. I got a proxmox server, a truenas server, a half rack in the garage and everything is great. I’ve also got three brand-new in the box laptops for people who wouldnt know what to do with any Linux distro. They wanna use office and QuickBooks and that’s it.
I used office and QuickBooks oninux 10 years ago, easier and safer than on windows. What’s your point?
It’s ok. You aren’t gonna get it. Otherwise you already would have.
Neither will you, but I’m not paying for my mistake
Fighting with Windows 11 introduced me to Linux Mint, which works perfectly! I’m not an OS geek, so I really don’t care about the OS – it’s just the thing I deal with on the way to Firefox.
Good! The less PC’s that run W11 the better
And here I am using a modern Linux OS on a 15 year old desktop without any issues or nagging to log into an online account or to backup all my shit to some server, open to hackers, in windows world.
I’m sorry is this the fucking draft
Are we going to war or is the author bad at writing?
lol sorry, i meant in the war sense… cracking down on “dodging” minimum requirements sounded so self-serious, like the government cracking down on draft dodgers or something.
Article isn’t that great. The change is in beta, and it’s preventing the installer from accepting a switch that declares the OS to be a server product.
MS hasn’t said it’s going after any upgrades that are running out of spec hardware. This really sounds like they are just fixing an upgrade option.
Here’s the best way you can dodge Windows 11 system requirements, and trust me… you’ll never look back. Infact, you can dodge Microsoft all together.
Thank me later. https://manjaro.org/products/download/x86
manjaro
Are you sure they’ll be thanking you? ;)
Honestly, I’m so sick of Microsoft’s bullshit, I just want to spread to love of Linux desktop. They’re more than free to downvote me in to oblivion. I’m pro-freedom over the software, open source software, and freedom to use the hardware we want to use. Plus I really love Manjaro and XFCE. KDE’s a good experience, but Windows 11 has advertisements in its start menu, and I’m not entirely sure what that ‘screenshot your desktop to feed an AI’ stuff was about but I’m not really down with that.
So, don’t thank me, but I would hope more people enjoy the different flavors of Linux desktop or give them a chance. The only way to not have Microsoft jam its software/cloud services/Teams down your throat is to get the HIPAA related Windows 11 OS which they make it a pain in the butt to grab.
I was just making a silly joke about Manjaro breaking a lot…
