Fun fact: you don’t even need a hard drive (or ssd or usb stick or any storage device) to run linux. You can just flash it directly into your firmware
When Win11 first released, the idiot I was (or maybe still am) decided to install it on my ancient laptop because it was the newest one. It had a 6th gen i3, 4GB of memory, and 128GB storage. Didn’t have TPM 2.0, so I found a workaround (forgot what it was but I did) and when I installed it, it CHUGGED.
I even installed Unity on the thing because I liked game development, and when I tried to mouse click while it was running, it took a good half a minute to register (and I somehow put up with this for like a couple years). Even without Unity, I remember the battery life being a lot worse and simple apps took ages to load.
Once I got a new laptop and learned that Linux isn’t voodoo computer magic and had a usable GUI, I installed Mint on my old laptop to try it out, and it was FAST. Gone were long load times. The battery at this point had completely died so it only powers on when connected to the wall, but the laptop felt like it was new again. The screen was still garbage so I wouldn’t use it as my daily driver, I much prefer my current laptop. If I ever got a new laptop, I would definitely install Linux again. (honestly I’m just not bothered to re-setup everything on Linux and backup all my data and settings and such on my current laptop, don’t think I have a thumb drive large enough to back up everything)
You’d have to settle for a very primitive WM to get a Linux system to run on those specs though, let alone less. KDE and Gnome both idle at about 5GB ram.
You get six consoles at boot. Isn’t that enough for you?
5 gigs is a bit high; just checked and my Mint Cinnamon installation is idling at under 2. I used to have an old 4GB Macbook Air with Cinnamon, which ran acceptably considering its specs (and was a heck of a lot faster than MacOS).
At this point run Linux in every device is already a meme.
This is what people mean when they say Linux nerds are out of touch.
Imagine caring about these requirements in 2025.
Sounds like you’ve only ever used desktops and/or laptops…
The post is about a laptop.
Username checks out, but troll level is weak. Try harder.
Got you to reply.
Joke’s on you. My bar for replies is extremely low.
Imagine being so out of touch that you cant see the torrent of ewaste this is going to create for a planet that’s already on fire.
Ah yeah, dude, Linux is definitely gonna be the thing that saves us from that. My bad.
This is a community for Linux memes; it’s not meant to be that serious. But if you do want to be serious, the fact is that a huge percentage of PCs currently in use (over half by some estimates) do not meet the Windows 11 requirements and therefore cannot upgrade. I’m sure those users care about the requirements.
🤓
Yeah, imagine caring for things
EDIT: in 2025
🤓
You could probably get Linux to run on a decently close friendship and a stack of paper.
Only win 11 home needs internet.
on a VM, I could boot windows from only 256MB RAM
Comfortably runs on electronic thermometer or pregnancy test.
Linux 🤝 DOOM
it actually did not run on the pregnancy test, just outputting on it’s display. something else was computing
for now
The pregnancy test has firmware in ROM as you’d expect, so it cannot be reprogrammed. You’d have to replace the chip.
I’m curious. I just updated to Windows 11 because I got tired of the full-screen EOL IS COIIMING PANNIICC! messages. I also just moved. I will be plugging in my PC tonight and won’t have Internet until the day after tomorrow. I wonder if it’ll let me do anything.
If you upgraded an existing installation of Win 10 you should be fine, AFAIK the internet requirement is only for installing a new copy of Win 11.
Yeee they removed the oobe (or whatever) skip account command which is just a script to create a reg key so you can do it yourself for now
That’s good to know. Thanks!
ok but can you run linux on a toaster
Of course, just make sure you paint a penguin on the side first.
I was just looking at that windows 11 list yesterday. My mother-in-law has a 7th gen i3.
She’s not eligible to get windows 11, but her computer works surprisingly quickly. Well it did after I removed 2 different antivirus programs from it.
But it’s fine for what she uses it for “Netflix”, maybe an occasional dock.
No, Microsoft, I’m not buying her a new computer for that. If ever, she’d just get an iPad.
My wife’s in favor of just letting the computer get infected if it gets infected since it’s just a Netflix machine.
I’m not here to debate whether that’s a good idea or not, but I’m here to say that this is what is going to happen for the majority of people.
I’ll probably end up putting Linux Mint on it if the WiFi card will play nice, but I expect that it will.
Getting infected with a crypto miner is the more likely outcome for such a computer, which can be a bother
Since it’s currently working, I don’t want to make any major changes because, as you know, that will be my fault when something doesn’t work as expected.
So, once it has a problem, I’ll switch it to Linux and a crypto minter as a way to fix it.
It’s crazy that microsoft, a company that once had 90+ market share of the OS market and is now down in the low 70% range and falling, would rather force this shit and potentially lose people to ipads than simply just make an upgrade path for older hardware (that isn’t even that old)
What could possibly motivate this? They have to see the folly in such a decision with all their market research and shit. Do they really have the hubris to think that people will just go out and buy new hardware en masse because they said to so they could check emails, go on social media, and do streaming shit? Tinfoil hat time: were they influenced by a three letter agency or something to include the need for secure boot and tpm? Is there an exploit or backdoor in these?
That is a great question. But, I do not think so, the computer without tpm are just not encrypted at all. I think it is about collecting user data and advertising.
This makes sense, the tinfoil hat shit is one thing but it’s much easier to just explain it as tpm and secure boot will enable more data collection, which is probably a stronger revenue stream than keeping windows on 75% of pcs vs 72%
Of course some nerd will probably figure out ways to defeat it all eventually but microsoft is probably (correctly) banking on your grandma not knowing how to install extensions and whatever 3rd party shit that will require
The sad thing is at one point I would have said that’s a foolish way thing to bank on and eventually those computer illiterate folk will die out but it appears that that younger gen z and below have many people that are slightly more advanced than boomers in tech knowledge. They know how to use their phones but have no clue how to do anything interesting with them and have barely any idea how to use a pc.
I worked in a school for a bit a few years ago and the amount of kids that didn’t know about something as basic as Adblock was shocking, let alone how to navigate the file system. Modern phones as a primary computing device really fucked that generation
What’s the long term play? We can teach our parents as best as we can and we can teach our kids the same, but from what i can tell they don’t really even care. What happens in 50 years, will the biggest tech companies just have unprecedented control of what people see and can do because no one who doesn’t get a career in it, just won’t care how things work?
The long term play is regulation but good luck with that
Why do you think the tech oligarchs are banding together to dismantle the government? They see the future you describe and recognize that we are at a key juncture to get there. Once the groundwork is laid they can go back to focusing on fighting each other for total dominance of the market
I have to imagine it’s because most of their money comes from business customers who rely on windows and would have to spend tons of money to switch to something else or OEMs who are making new computers anyways who this won’t affect. There’s a reason windows upgrades have been free for a while, I don’t think they really care about getting money from people anymore, they’re just after money from businesses and OEMs.
Dave Plummer recently put out a video on why he thinks windows upgrades are free now. I found it interesting.
Unfortunately Dave is an asshole who got sued for shipping scareware (I think). Fuck this guy.
For anyone else: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s-office-sues-settles-washington-based-softwareonlinecom
That’s a shame, looks like he ran one of the many companies around at that time that would offer a “free” scan because you’re “at risk” and then harass you to buy it after. For a guy who was involved in some competent software during a time when Microsoft made decent products it’s a shame he left to start that nonsense.
In any case, the insight into Microsoft in the video i still find interesting but yeah fuck that guy. Wouldn’t buy anything from him, even if it has been 20 years.
But what’s the net benefit if they overall lose a ton of market share? Sales of, absolute best scenario, 10 million dollars? That’s a lot of money but it’s also really unlikely they’d get that level of sales and is it worth having a shareholders meeting in 1 year where they have to address questions about market share continuing to slide noticeably? Apparently I guess
It seems like it would mainly be a good deal for oem pc manufacturers. If I was lenovo or whoever I’d be jazzed about it, let microsoft take all the negativity and sell more thinkpads
Yeah I agree I don’t think it’s a good long term strategy, losing the dominant position is gonna make it easier for businesses to seriously consider switching to Mac, Chrome OS, or Linux. And when more people start to switch the OEMs will follow. It’s the classic short term profit over long term success approach that companies will always fall into. For now it provides a nice bump in sales through mainly OEMs selling new computers to people and down the line through the businesses who don’t want to make the switch or can’t make the switch so are forced to buy new windows computers. But yeah it’s probably gonna continue to sink their market share if average people can’t use the new OS and are smart enough to switch to something else. Although I’ve seen people still using Windows XP while connected to the internet so who knows if it’ll even be a big impact or not. It will really just depend on if enough people switch that more programs get ported to other OSes and then businesses can actually make the switch more easily. And if that ball gets rolling Microsoft’s market share will keep tumbling down, but again it’s hard to say if that’s gonna start or if Microsoft is gonna have to do a lot more bad things first to get there.
Put my mother on mint. The only issue she encountered was the mouse cursor not appearing sometimes, but that hasn’t happened in a while. Other than that, she can hardly tell the difference from windows 10. You should go through with it.
She might get a video quality downgrade on Netflix because of DRM
Does she have the eyesight to see the quality difference?
Which is such a bullshit. On Linux we can met all requirements yet Netflix and co decides to not give us the best streams because we run Linux…
You can try the android netflix app via Waydroid(with widevine).
Maybe not as resilient/convenient/stable as a browser, but i think you can set up waydroid app as a single icon.
Of course then you’re just swapping MS for gooogle.
sure that, or… just don’t buy into it as streaming is more like Cable/PayTV 2.0 and go to the movies and or buy them in a store, or 🏴☠️
Yeah, I’m thinking it couldn’t be worse than windows is now. It even sometimes will drop wifi connection. So how much worse could Linux be.
My main concern for her is how often she edits documents. Since she gets her pension, she needs to do paperwork for it occasionally, so I don’t want formatting to mess something up for her.
be alpine linux
copy bootloader from the installer to ESP usb drive
load entire OS from bootloader to RAM
lbu commit, save changes to bootloader
378mb fully loaded to RAM
Linux. Hard disk optional.
of all that shit microsoft forces upon you…
it’s the msa (online microsoft account) that’s the biggest deal-breaker for me.
absolutely not. never gonna happen.
FYI: You can still use windows offline and without an account if you use Pro or Enterprise and I assume education edition.
I got doom eternal a month or so ago and haven’t gotten around to playing it. Now that I’ve tried it I realized that there’s a mandatory Bethesda account creation screen unless you don’t have an Internet connection. I’ve been turning the Wi-Fi off on my Steam Deck or pulling the ethernet on my desktop to get by that.
Why have you (or whoever you got the image from) rewritten what the Windows screenshot says but in red?
Makes it a whole lot easier to read
