Yes, about all that old Windows 10 hardware.....

[Artim]

Switching to Linux was hardly a "gargantuan task" for me. That was years ago now and it's only gotten easier since then. Learning to use and maintain Linux was the harder part, but no more difficult than running "defrag" and all that when I was learning Windows.

I think most ordinary desktop users don't care to "learn Linux" anyway. They point-and-click their way along and trust the OS to do what it's supposed to do "under the hood." MX-Linux and antiX do that. So do most of the popular Linux distros. For me a big "selling point" is that Linux is simpler than Windows to maintain and update.

Not that I "sell" Linux very much anymore. I kinda like being in a small minority that isn't "targeted" so much - on the desktop at least - by the evil geniuses that create malware aimed mostly at Windows machines.

[artytux]

Removed post because saw a possible security risk in the answers.

[Arnox]

You have to make up your mind. Either Windows is bad because new versions force people to accept new security features, or Windows is bad because sidestepping those new security features is possible but not simple enough for unskilled people who probably shouldn't be turning them off in the first place. Which is it?

It should be that Microsoft should encourage but not force TPM on users. TPM on mobos would have become the standard anyway, sooner or later, so Microsoft only had to wait. They didn't need to force anything. Windows is bad because it's forcing something on users, which can only be gotten out of with some technical steps, which some users will have a hard time with, and which, Microsoft could remove at any moment.

[artytux]

That's the same reasoning behind the idea of not moving to Linux or at the very least trying it out for the weekend just two days, some users tell themselves it's too hard with the terminal work and having to do that hi-tech things that Linux has (sort of was decades ago), lies and misinformed advice online about Linux will never help those that already have the idea that it's too hard and that's what Windows banks on, fear of the unknown (Linux in this case) is only fear while it is unknown.

[AK-47]

Windows is bad because it's forcing something on users, which can only be gotten out of with some technical steps, which some users will have a hard time with, and which, Microsoft could remove at any moment.

You do realise that most of these users have no idea what TPM is all about right? They won't care about what they don't know about. Installing Linux needs technical steps too, so who will take the plunge other than some technically inclined users.

The same situation can be said about many Linux distros. It "forces" you to have certain features on or off, unless you take some technical steps to change them.

[Arnox]

You do realise that most of these users have no idea what TPM is all about right? They won't care about what they don't know about.

They will care real quick when grandma tries to install Windows 11 onto her 4th-gen Intel pre-built and finds she now needs to spend money on a brand new PC just to run Windows 11 so she can browse the internet.

[MadMax]

The problem is: They will just accept that their "old" hardware apparently isn't supported anymore and buy a new one. People don't care about the technical backgrounds and will just treat the unsupported hardware as defective.

At the end of the day that is probably the real reason why MS is forcing that feature in Windows 11... :/

[DukeComposed]

They will care real quick when grandma tries to install Windows 11 onto her 4th-gen Intel pre-built and finds she now needs to spend money on a brand new PC just to run Windows 11 so she can browse the internet.

As I've said before, Microsoft would give Windows away for free at this point if they could. They have an agreement with OEMs to provide an operating system, and OEMs don't like it when they're denied an opportunity to sell new hardware. This thread has already explained the motivation for OEMs to sell more hardware, the motivation for Microsoft to promote adoption of their OS, their obligation to improve Windows security for its users, technical and non-technical, and how their security pre-requisites can be circumvented.

I don't understand where else your argument can go. Yes, Grandma's old hardware won't upgrade to Windows 11 unless she knows how to boot into rescue mode and run dism.exe. Do you want Grandma's machine to get pwned? Is that the user freedom you're arguing for here? "Because some people can disable the airbags on their cars, motor vehicle manufacturers should put a big button on the dashboard that turns off the airbags automatically, for anyone, because freedom."

Your argument supporting a firewall in XP SP2 was only because disabling it was easy, however you chose to define easy, regardless of the fact that enabling it protected hundreds of millions of users. I get the feeling you think that a firewall should be an opt-in-only security feature. Do you also want to suggest that passwords are draconian as well? Is Microsoft evil because enabling autologin for Windows 11 requires editing the registry?

If you don't like airbags, you can figure out how to shut them off in your car. If you really loathe them, you can build your own car from a kit and make sure it doesn't have them at all. But not everyone is an automotive engineer, and airbags are a beneficial safety mechanism. If the major software companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google didn't stay vigilant in pushing better and better security postures for their users, they'd be negligent in their duties of defending their customers', and their own, best interests.

Look. I get that Windows 11 """requiring""" a minimum hardware specification is annoying. And if that spec demanded something spurious like a three-button, left-handed Guitar Hero controller I'd agree with you about it being an unnecessary improvement. But insisting that a new security feature is evil and a company that has both a financial incentive and an ethical obligation to keep a billion people safe online somehow means they are personally screwing over you and your Grandma because ha-ha-ha, we just feel like it, is so unserious an opinion that I cannot see how it deserves any merit whatsoever.

[AK-47]

It is worth noting that Windows 10 is supported until 2025, by then the minimum hardware required to run Windows 11 would be at least 7-8 years old. Not perfect, Windows 11 would (in theory) be supported until 2031 (when the hardware turns 13 years old).

Remember Windows Vista, which required 15GB disk space and 512MB RAM? These specs were absurd back then, at least a 10-fold increase in comparison to Windows XP, which excluded many pieces of perfectly functional hardware that were only a few years old back in 2007. People stuck with Windows XP until the end of its life in 2014, now there are very few Linux distros that will run comfortably in those specs, these are "light weight" specs now.

Therefore, it is absolutely possible that Windows 10 will still be in use until its end of life in 2025.

[Eadwine Rose]

I remember my mate with Vista when it was still in its testing stages...


There was this horrid scream that came from the attic when the thing blue-screened.