141
Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware
(www.xda-developers.com)
I guess it's a good thing I am switching to Linux.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
141 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
61425 readers
4140 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The year of the Linux Desktop is coming!!!
And here I am with windows 11 compatible hardware refusing that upgrade. I'm primarily in Linux on my desktop these days, but it dual boots into windows 10.
Making Win 11 even harder to install is a bold move from Microsoft. Most average users are content with using the OS that comes with their PC and upgrading it when necessary. But if the option is to either buy a new PC or fiddle with registry settings in hope that Win 11 will work, I think a lot more people will start looking at Linux instead.
Nope. Brother in law is upgrading all the family PCs (a total of 3) so he can carry on with 11. Only nerds like everyone here and myself will switch to Linux because we know upgrading your PC just to support the OS is ridiculous.
Should they really though?
Been daily driving Linux for 15+ years now.
I recently got a computer that officially supports Linux (framework 13). Running Fedora, an officially supported distro.
Had to literally compile C code just to change my touchpad scroll speed.
I love Linux and it's improved a LOT over the years but there are still things that IMO make it not quite ready for average consumers.
That is most likely not a linux issue, but a driver issue, if the driver was as bad on windows as it is on Linux, you would need to do the same to achieve that with that hardware. 🤔
Or, if handled by window manager, it may be, that there are different implementations for different managers, and yours happened to not support scroll speed change🤔
To be fair, most common user do not change scroll speed.
But I agree, most will just continue using unsafe windows 10
Let's not kid ourselves, most people will not start looking at Linux. They should, but they won't. They'll continue to use the version of Windows their machine came with, becoming a botnet petri dish in the process, forever, until it breaks or becomes unusable. If Microsoft actually forces their machine to become unbootable they'll rush off to the mall and replace it with a Mac.
And in the meantime they'll click off any nags and warnings Microsoft sends them without reading them.
Just like happened with XP.
Just like what happened with Vista.
Just like what happened with 7.
Etc.
Most users are clueless, barely understand how to use their computers except by rote, and therefore are extremely afraid of change. Microsoft could offer a free puppy with your updrade to Win11 and I think about 75% of users would still refuse to take it.
Most users won't. Users that are happy to fiddle with registry settings might be a little more likely to though
They are already here..
My partner keeps telling me to stop trying to install Linux on things... It will fix all the problems though! Like someone that only ever uses chrome they could just have an Ubuntu install and I am sure they will be able to manage using firefox.
I work in IT, run Mint on my travel laptop, and yet at home use the desktop I got 10 years ago, still with Win 8.1. And I use my current desktop quite extensively. There's still a lot of perfectly fine hardware with outdated OS floating around, and I'd argue that a significant portion of it is used by people experienced enough that they know what they are doing. Much of that will shift towards Linux. Not most of it, I'll grant you that, but more than people expect.
This is so cursed i have to ask why? Windows 8.1 is riddled with vulnerabilities and its ugly.
I used Classic Shell to make it look as much as WinXP Classic as possible, so I'm happy with how it looks. As for vulnerabilities, knock on wood, so far I didn't have any issues (but I do run Bitdefender). I use it for gaming (GOG, newest game being older than my PC), photo editing (Gimp with Google Nik Collection), browsing, and office work. Nothing too demanding. But to be honest, I would have switched to Mint a long time ago if I found a Linux alternative for Smart Switch (my phone backup utility) and Garmin Connect for my watch. Those two are the only two pieces of software that keep me with Windows, and at this point I'm actually thinking of a cheap mini PC just for those two as a direct pass-through to my NAS backup.
😶
didn’t have any issues
You see the issues if you have sleeping agents on your machine and thus being part of botnets..
Additionally, it could be the entry point into your network, if connected to the internet. Your other modern PC trust you, to keep your LAN clean, so they are not as protective about LAN stuff than about stuff coming from WAN.
Have you tried running those things in wine or something like bottles?
Nah, just us tech heads that are willing to put in the effort (and I'm not, Linux on the desktop has a long way to go, and I use Linux for all sorts of services).
99% of users can't be bothered to understand the concept of a web browser, and that there are different ones. Switch them to any Linux distro and they'd freeze like deer in headlights.
Source: decades of providing support.
And yes, dumb move my MS, not sure what they're trying to do here.
Just install them a browser and pin it to task bar on mint. Maybe add all important websites to favourites, and boom 99% of use cases of common people: Check ✅
Linux on the desktop has a long way to go
What do you perceive is missing? I've been using Linux exclusively since 2006 (while supporting Windows users at work), there's never been a time when I felt like I was missing a particular Windows feature. Mostly I just find Windows' lack of user-friendliness to be extremely maddening.
To be fair, if you've been using Linux exclusively for nearly 30 years then yeah, you wouldn't be missing any Windows features because you don't daily it. That's a no-brainer.
I'm a daily Windows user but I do sometimes dabble in Linux both out of curiosity and also for challenge reasons. I used to use it for my school laptop(s) and at one point I had a 2nd desktop rig running it. I can gladly say it has come a long way and improved in many ways since the early days, but it still has a ways to go. Unfortunately one of the biggest obstacles is the Linux community itself which is both resistant to change and exceptionally hostile to new users.
About two years ago I was troubleshooting an audio driver that refused to work and I was asking in several Linux communities for assistance. The responses ranged from standoffish to indifferent to several people outright saying "If you can't even figure this out then maybe you shouldn't use Linux lmao". And I agree. Maybe I shouldn't. Because I was tired of spending so much time screwing around in a terminal while talking to people that think I am trash for struggling to use the operating system they claim is so good.
Linux can be an extremely polished, smooth, and effective experience but that experience is like the frozen surface of a lake. Once something goes wrong and you break through the surface - you are screwed unless you are highly experienced already. That has been my experience, at least.
Ugh that's terrible about the experience with the audio driver, and unfortunately I have to agree... there ARE some really elitist linux communities out there. My last bad experience was on Digg, I was trying to ask a question about changing the resolution on the console from the grub config. The admin of the group was so hung up on insisting that I couldn't have a "real" server because I had a monitor connected to it, that he wouldn't even let anyone else try to answer the question (and it's actually a simple setting). He actually deleted the post because he was so disgusted by the idea that my rack of servers has a kvm switch attached.
The communities here on lemmy have been so much better with helping people out. Yeah there is definitely still hardware out there that is impossible (or nearly so) to get to work under linux, but those are usually the "software" devices (like the 56k modems we saw just before broadband become widespread). I've also run across issues trying to get a soft keyboard to pop up on a 2-in-1 Dell laptop (where you can flip the keyboard to the back and use it like a tablet), but I didn't really poke at that for long. On the other hand I've run into similar issues on Windows over the years, trying to reinstall it on a machine and discovering even the manufacturer no longer has the drivers for the hardware they sold, so I don't feel like linux is unique in this problem.
As far as fixing problems goes... Have you ever had Windows break so badly that you had to burn an install disk, boot up to a command prompt, and perform a series of cryptic commands trying to get the system up and running again? I've had to deal with that both from viruses and from Windows breaking itself. Meanwhile linux has such tools built in from the boot menu, and yeah the commands are still cryptic to most people, but at least you don't have to visit pirate bay from another machine to get back online.
I can safely say that over 20 years of mainly Windows, I have never had any crashes or bugs. Ever.
I was using the same install of Windows since 2017, up to 2021, without a single issue. Why I had to reinstall it was because of a foolish mistake on my part, late late at night, trying to install Linux on a spare SSD I had lying around thanks to a laptop was really struggling to do anything any longer. Again, this was my fault 100% as I didn't understand SDA/SDB/etc. I do now though!
With Linux, there is always something that prevents me from using my computer in a manner that I would consider "normal". I mainly game. I use save editors, WeMod, and love to use mods on games that support it. I like how easy it is to set up my NAS, through Windows, without any extra fussing around in some config file somewhere. I like that I can just do what I'm planning to do with the computer that day, unlike in Linux where sometimes I can't even do something basic like set a jpg as a poster for a downloaded YouTube video on Plex that is all hosted on my NAS. On openSUSE, apparently I can't just do that. There is some arbitrary permissions issue preventing me from doing that, while on Windows, it just works.
Sometimes I wonder what actual programs Linux permanents use on the daily. I truly find it hard to believe it is a lot of applications, because most of the applications I like/need to use, will not work on Linux through Wine/Bottles/Proton. Nor do they have a Linux alternative. It makes me sad, because I truly want to get off that OS, but the wide amount of things I like to do always get snagged up on something in Linux.
All this to say that I absolutely fucking LOVE Linux, what it stands for, and the idea behind it. Just a counter argument, is all.
P.S. I've been an on and off again Linux noob since at least 2010, and even today, I am still trying to make the move. It's just not as simple as the Linux evangelicals like to say it is.
Linux as my only OS since 2010 here and poked it a little before that. Using Windows is annoying for me at this point
Switched my mum to Mint, and encouraged her to attend outreach meets put on by local Linux groups. She's well pleased with it and has been recommending her friends to switch.
not sure what they're trying to do here
Maximise profits and minimise losses. My guess is that someone important at Microsoft thinks that this will do just that, and if not that, will make them, personally, a lot of money. That person has no-one who will dare challenge their authority and so we go down this road.
They (that individual or Microsoft as a whole) almost certainly have a stake in the companies that provide newer hardware, and if they didn't before this decision, they will have by now.
It theoretically makes Micosoft's job easier too. A huge chunk of backwards compatibility maintenance goes out of the window, if you'll pardon the pun.
"Oh you have 5 year old hardware? We don't support that."
Sounds fairly similar to Apple's business model if you think about it that way.
It’s like they forgot that their monopoly is ensured by their lenience towards piracy and industry leading backwards compatibility. Being consumer hostile this way is unusual from Microsoft but I guess they hope to make it up by making Windows subscription based in the longer term.
Tbh I thought they would have already gone subscription by now. When they announced win11 after saying 10 was the last I was very surprised it wasn't either free or subscription based. Now I wonder if they will at some point release win12 with AI tools behind pro and make that subscription only.
I use Linux so I won't be touching it but will see how it goes. Usually end up having to know at least a little about this as people ask me to fix their windows PCs
You can keep using Windows 10 safely on your old hardware after „official” support ends, it’s just subscription based. Some individual customers will probably pay so it’s extra money on top of what they make on corporate volume licensing.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates
Extended Security Updates for Windows 10 can be purchased today through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Program, at $61 USD per device for Year One. The price doubles every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years.
Welp. Thanks, but no thanks.
Huh, didn't know there was already a subscription option. Perhaps that is the first step
How is this cracking down? The article says the documentation for the registry edits have been removed and an automated approach of removing restrictions is now a false positive for windows defender.
I'm assuming the registry edits still work (article doesn't say) in which case where am I meant to point my outrage?
Now if they block windows 11 from running and the registry entries do nothing, that would be a worthy news article.
This isn’t the story. All that’s changed is that a 3rd party script is being flagged my Defender as malicious. You can still update unsupported machines like always.
This is just going to push people who aren't locked into Windows, away from Windows, and Linux is making a pretty good argument for itself as a viable alternative atm, particularly for gaming.
Although another option would be to virtualize Windows on a Linux host too, that's what I'm doing right now /w Win10 LTSC for general apps that aren't entirely WINE-friendly, and then Win8.1 for some older games that aren't entirely WINE-friendly, and the Win8.1 VM has my R9 270 being passed through to it over vfio-pci for graphics for that reason.
The Win10 VM is using VirtIO paravirtualized graphics because its intended use case doesn't need anything more than basic acceleration as it was spun up mainly for running CUETools on for the things that app can't do in Mono, eg. like transcoding FLAC images to Vorbis or Opus.
As for gaming beyond the few edge cases that don't run well in WINE that are due to just being old code, I don't play anything that has an anticheat so 99% of my gaming is easily doable in Proton.