Why would anyone want to buy a new computer now unless the old one is worn out?
There is no price/performance improvement. Nor will there be for the next five years or so. NVidia says to expect 10% price increases each year. DRAM prices have doubled, and Samsung says not to expect price cuts. Micron just exited the retail RAM business.
Microsoft is trying to escape this trap by pivoting to Windows as a subscription service. It will get worse, not better.
Well it also means it could be a good time to buy so you won't have to pay even more overprice for the same performance years down the line.
I just bought one a good month ago. My old one was over 10 years old, not worn out, but not upgradeable to Win 11. I had been thinking waiting one more year before the security updates to Win10 are out... But I bought in when the first stories hit of the DDR5 price rises - at that time there had 'only' been a doubling, now the price is a further 3x of what I paid a good month ago. I thought it might be a good time to buy given the machine was so old and component prices were going up, and might for a long time.
But yeah, performance improvements aren't what they used to. Part of the reason is that normal things were already felt so fast on the old one ;-) But I did get a much better gfx cards allowing some games that were unplayable before, and I think the CPU upgrade was needed for that as well, and then you might as well overhaul the machine. I also went from 16 to 64 GB, and the 16 GB had been a bit too little for some things.
Yes. So Microsoft (which manufactures hardware itself and has close ties to other hardware manufacturers) needed to find... other ways to, er, motivate people to buy new hardware anyway. Which brings us back to the blog post we are commenting on.
Not sure Windows as a subscription service is the end goal though. But maybe we should all wish for M$ to do that, maybe that would be what's needed to finally bring about the Year of The Linux Desktop™.
I don't think selling more hardware is the primary motivation. The motivation is ensuring everyone has TPM 2.0 enabled on their device.
This allows Microsoft to protect parts of their software even from the user that owns the hardware it's running on. With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
Unbreakable DRM for software, such as for your $80 billion game business or your subscription office suite.
As a bonus, it prevents those pesky Windows API compatibility tools like Wine from working if the application is designed to expect signed and trusted Windows.
Maybe instead Microsoft could allow Windows 11 to install and run on machines that are otherwise capable and just flash red screens at you all the time where otherwise ads would show up that constantly nag that "THIS COMPUTER IS FUCKING INSECURE!" or something. It would be equally as annoying but I'm sure running latest Windows 11 but with TPM 1.0 instead of TPM 2.0 will be more secure than running Windows 10 without bug fixes and security patches.
(But my understanding is there were other things like bumping minimum supported instruction sets that happened to mismatch a few CPUs that support the newer instruction sets but were shipped with chipsets using the older TPM)
Registry keys and autoattend.xml config keys are not clever people finding a way, it's people using stuff Microsoft put there to do just this for now. I.e. Windows 11 has not been strictly enforcing these yet, they are just "officially" requirements so when they eventually decide to enforce in a newer version (be it an 11 update or some other number) they'll then be able to say "well it's really been an official requirement for many years now, and over 99% of Windows 11 installs which has been the only supported OS for a while now are working that way" at that time. If they just went straight from Windows 10 to strictly enforced Windows 11 options it'd've been harder to defend.
Windows 12 will close the loophole: your CPU will require a signed code path from boot down to application level code. No option to disable Secure Boot or install your own keys. But there needs to be an installed base of secure hardware for this to happen, hence the TPM 2.0 requirements for Windows 11.
Hardware key storage is a low level security primitive. Both Android and iOS have mandated it for far longer. It's a low level security primitive that enables a lot of scenarios, not just DRM.
For example - it's not possible to protect SSH keys from malware that achieves root without hardware storage. Only hardware storage can offer the "Unplug It" guarantee - that unplugging a compromised machine ends the compromise.
Open source drivers, and a sense that Linux support will forever be top priority, would be a motivator for me. Most of my tech spend has been with Valve in the past few years. I'd love if there was another company I actually enjoy giving my money to.
Any computer that can't run Windows 11 is almost a decade old. There has been plenty of improvement. Compare a laptop with a high end Intel i7 7920HK to even a lower end part like the Core Ultra 5 226V. Right now prices on pre-builts and laptops aren't totally reflecting the craziness at least.
Many budget laptops from 2020 don't support Windows 11. HP laptops with AMD A4-9125, HP notebooks with AMD A6-7310 APU, HP Envy x360 models with first-generation AMD Ryzen processors.
My daily desktop is mostly 2012 vintage. This hardware is still in use and works fine.
For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.
The antivirus / EDR / monitoring / inventory software that most corporate IT departments installs ages computers ten years. We constantly had problems with such services slamming the disk, holding files open, breaking software, running CPUs at 100%, etc.
My only complain is that nowadays laptops are usually poorly built, so unless one purchases an expensive guarantee, anything beyond the default guarantee is not guaranteed.
And the manufacturers are in a quest to remove as many keys as they can from the keyboard. Like you can hardly find any light laptop today with page up/down keys anymore. Why?.... Haven't these guys heard of keyboard shortcuts?
Worse than that, there's no consistency in Fn+key shortcuts. Recently acquired an HP Ergonomic Keyboard as a replacement for a broken Sculpt, only to find out that it literally cannot send Ctrl+Break -- there's no key for it, no Fn+key shortcut for it and the remapping software doesn't simulate it properly.
Yes, it's a miracle that after 40 years of typing every day, my fingers still work. But that may be a biased view on my part; there may be lots of programmers out there with arthritis in their fingers, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other occupational diseases.
Oh yeah, they sometimes put page up and down on up and down which infuriates me very much. There are other issues like less USB ports, but overall quality is poor comparing to MacBooks.
Sad to look back years ago when the first mobile apps started adopting this "Remind Me Later"-only dark pattern and is now festering everyday drivers like your OS.
Between these and services that suddenly suffer from amnesia and spamming me with marketing notifications and emails after months or years of silence, it’s becoming more tiring to use any service that grows significantly enough where they don’t need to care about what their users actually want.
> Sad to look back years ago when the first mobile apps started adopting this "Remind Me Later"-only dark pattern and is now festering everyday drivers like your OS.
I can offer a slightly different perspective. I remember Microsoft from the 90s and early 2000s. And while technical details differ, their attitude towards users didn't change that much.
The more likely option than any of these excellent free options is going to be MacOS… just because your average user with even semi-technical inclination does not want to use LibreOffice Present; they want PowerPoint.
I have just seen this first hand with my significant other: they are very technical and more than capable of it, but have zero interest in learning Linux and instead just bought a MacBook on Black Friday specials when their 5 year old HP laptop finally got too annoying to use.
I literally only use Windows for games. And I guess now RealityScan which is gaming adjacent.
If I had the confidence that I could play a new release on Linux day 1 without trading an enormous amount of performance, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
I think it would be less daunting for many if there were 1 or 2 popular alternatives to rally around. Including window managers / desktop environments. (Granted, it's nice they can all coexist peacefully.)
There are a handful of popular Linux distros. Ubuntu is probably the most beginner-friendly one with the most staying power; it's the easiest place to start if you have no other ideas/requirements.
The thing is, a healthy ecosystem thrives on diversity. Rallying behind one or two tends towards a monoculture.
What a bubble you exist in. I'm self-employed and my entire suite of software is either windows or apple only and I have 'been a pc' for nearly thirty years and have pc hardware that fulfills all my requirements and can't run apple software.
I'm eyeing up a shift to apple when my current hardware fails me, but it's impossible for me to just go Linux.
I get what you're saying, but OS vendors could prevent themselves from running arbitrary code, even from themselves, without the user's authorization if they really wanted to. I'm not sure it is in anyone's best interest since it would affect everything from security updates to automatically installing device drivers (e.g. people would be left with insecure systems or would claim Windows is broken since most would not understand the prompts). It would also be difficult to prevent Microsoft's marketing department from sneaking a trojan horse into things like security update.
The average user is not able to understand the code that is running and the 99th percentile user does not want to spend the time to understand the code.
Make it do the security stuff out-of-the-box, allow the user to change ANYTHING they want, including turning off the security stuff. Linux! It's in everyone's best interest.
I mean.. how is this different from any OS distribution? Apple can push whatever. So can Red Hat or Ubuntu or Gentoo. Unless im literally running Linux From Scratch im at the mercy of maintainers to do whatever they want.
I'm not sure what the current state of most distributions is, but I remember update applications providing an option to accept or reject individual packages. Even without that, you could preview the list of pending updates and delay them indefinitely, do manual updates of individual packages, or configure it to ignore particular packages during updates. Historically, I believe that you could block certain updates on Windows as well - or maybe you could just rollback and update. Of course none of this is considered user friendly so things may have changed.
But where does the original compiler come from? Reproducible builds are only as good as the compiler used to compile them. That's the point of Trusting Trust. If you build with a backdoored compiler and I reproduce your build with the same backdoored compiler, that solves nothing. This is why full-source bootstrap is important[0].
"Ubuntu will apply security updates automatically, without user interaction. This is done via the unattended-upgrades package, which is installed by default."
Right, but it's a minor annoyance, get rid of it with:
sudo apt-get remove --purge unattended-upgrades
(doesn't trigger removal of anything else, and you'll enjoy 420kb of additional disk space).
OTOH the real issue with Ubuntu is snap(d). Snap packages definitely do auto-update. You may want to uninstall the whole snap system - it's (still?) perfectly possible, if a little bit convoluted, due to some infamous snaps like firefox, thunderbird, chromium, or eg. certbot on servers
Or just use Debian or any snap-free fork for the matter.
There are a lot more distros than RH, Ubuntu, Gentoo and LFS. And none of them will show you ads except maybe Ubuntu. Plus you can also look at *BSD.
None of them comes close to what Microsoft is doing. To me, your comment looks like you do not understand the Linux eco-system. Plus IIRC, LFS can now come with compiled binaries.
The most egregious thing in recent iterations of Win11 is that a fresh installation will basically map all of your home folder to OneDrive. My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc. A recent Windows update also told me that I need OneDrive now to back up my files. Yup, apparently you really, really need it.
Worse is that the notification for this “error” telling me I couldn’t back up without OneDrive was behind the little dot in the restart/logout menu in the start menu, which (until now) only showed me that updates were required. Now that they’ve infested that notification with ads there’s no reason for me to ever look at it again. Good job, Microsoft.
I hope you researched Linux driver support for that model first. I share the dissatisfaction with the direction of Windows -- but their driver library is unparalleled. Linux CAN run great on lots of machines, but it has nowhere near the hardware support.
My usb scanner would like to have a word with you. Its last supported driver was for windows 2000 and it still works well on Linux.
Hardware support vary between the 2 operating system and new stuff may be supported earlier on windows but I can't say that windows driver library is unparalleled, quite the opposite actually.
I've not really seen that much of a problem with Linux drivers being available recently while the quality problem of windows drivers being unreviewed code seems like its partly addressed for central monopolies but still in the peripherals if you'll pardon the pun.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"ProductVersion"="Windows 10"
"TargetReleaseVersion"=dword:00000001
"TargetReleaseVersionInfo"="22H2"
Sets the underlying Registry keys for the Group Policy "Select the target Feature Update version". It tells the Windows Update service to select updates for a specific feature update instead of offering latest.
Tells Windows update the version to target ie it won't try updating past this. I'm not sure if it stops every nag screen tho (it did stop the big one starting up IIRC).
I don't know how many years/months/days/hours the author is going to continue using Windows for, but this seems like a perfect task to be "resolved" by AHK, which is probably in the top 10 things Windows users have access to. Worth trying, at least before switching to another source of operating system.
I wonder how hard would it be to just switch back to Windows 7 for these kinds of cases? Obviously the most ideal solution is to use Linux but there's still some edge cases where Windows is needed or is just preferred. If you install Windows 7 in a VM you'll be blown away by having a simple, clean OS that just runs applications and doesn't shove ads or Bing search into the start menu. And obviously it would be vulnerable to software exploits but if the device is mostly kept offline I can't see many issues with that coming up. Something to think about...
Most people with ad blockers don't realize how unusable the web is for those that don't have ad blockers. I think most would agree this is a poor state that industry incentives have landed us in, and with the web being distributed, it's hard to know how to fix.
Similarly those who use Linux probably don't realize how bad Windows has got recently.
Microsoft has managed to replicate this awful ux problem on a system that they entirely control...
> Linux was designed to run on potatoes and has very little bloat over the years.
I think it's more that it was designed in the 80s-90s for hardware at the time, and hasn't added bloat or "requirements" since then. So as computers have gotten more capable Linux takes less of the overall capacity.
Well, I'd say it's almost the reverse of how it is with windows.
In windows, the bloat is built in by default. You don't get to chose how the start menu works, you get the windows default start menu and you better like the ads in it. It takes work to pull that garbage out.
In linux most stuff is opt in.
The other part of linux is most stuff isn't simply there running in the background by default. Firefox eats a decent amount of memory, but it's not doing that when I don't have my browser open.
To be honest Linux desktop has been ready for the past 4-5 years or so. Long gone are the days where Bluetooth suddenly stopped, external monitors crashing and when closing the lid only put the laptop to sleep every fifth time. Heck, even Wayland, wireless printers and usb-c docking stations work these days, even with nvidia. You might even find some games.
It’s become a boring appliance that just works every time. Just they way I want it. I even forgot how to use grub.
Especially having ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini available nowadays. It’s a godsend when troubleshooting any Linux issues, and you can learn so much in the process.
I just upgraded my PC’s motherboard, CPU, memory, and video card and used Claude as a build buddy to help me lay out steps to follow. I also used it after installing CachyOS for the second time, but on this new hardware. It had me double checking to make sure I had all the proper drivers set up by running commands, but everything was already setup correctly by CachyOS. It even helped me figure out that I had a fan wire half plugged in, which was causing a fan not to throttle. I would alternate between Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.2. But it’s so much easier and quicker than the old days of sifting through the manuals and forums, if you could get online to a forum that is.
I don't know... Two people around me recently switched to Linux because they could not stand how bad Windows 11 got. I did not encourage either of them (I've got my share of frustrations after running a Linux desktop exclusively for 25 years, and will not consent to be the object of their ire when they inevitably get frustrated - I'd rather help them on neutral ground instead).
I've always dual booted windows with some Linux and used it like 90/10.
I haven't even tried windows 11 even though my PC is compatible.
Went full Linux and I'm not sure what I was missing at this point that I needed from Windows.
Ran Pop OS (cosmic) which is the new Wayland based one but unfortunately it's still buggy and then I switched to a gaming focused Linux called Bazzite which has been perfect.
Tiny learning curve because it's an "immutable" OS but have everything I need running on it plus everything gaming related works out of the box.
I’m really hoping Steam Deck keeps on pushing game makers to support Linux. It’s really gotten a lot better, except for competitive games that need most types of anti-cheat.
If Linux supported all the games I wanted to play, I would ditch Windows on my home PC.
But Firefox on Ubuntu is not very good. It can expand to fill the whole machine and get killed by the OOM killer. Sometimes during long text input it hangs and has to be killed and restarted. 8 GB isn't enough any more.
IMO Mac eco is good hardware plus meh software. Some built ins are really in bad shape — but I guess people have different opinions, although I think calling Finder a beta version is an insult to “beta”.
Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.
0 updates can be applied immediately.
108 additional security updates can be applied with ESM Apps.
Learn more about enabling ESM Apps service at https://ubuntu.com/esm
every time I log in. Or
> You do not have a valid subscription for this server. Please visit www.proxmox.com to get a list of available options.
That’s if you run a OS version older than 5 years. You can still update to a newer Ubuntu version for free and get another 5 years if you pick an LTS version.
For many types of users, Windows is no longer viable. I have friends who work at a .NET shop and most of that team now uses Macs. Unthinkable just a few years ago. Meanwhile, I checked ProtonDB and now 90% of my Steam library is Platinum or Native. So I finally switched my gaming PC to Linux. Microsoft's priorities are elsewhere, Windows doesn't have a bright future.
I'm happy with Windows 11 after tweaks to fix it. I certainly sympathesize with Windows 10 users who can't upgrade. But it seems to me Windows 10 users aren't getting the message: Microsoft just isn't that into you.
Do you think Windows OS is a profit center, especially after factoring in the cost of security fixes for older less secure releases? I'm guessing not (I don't have the figures) and Microsoft would rather you replace your 10 year old laptop that can't run Windows 11 or run Linux on it. They really don't care which, just as long as you go away and they don't have to support you anymore.
I'm not assosciated with Microsoft, just someone who has been using their products for 40 years. I am someone who can read in between the lines, and this is my take.
There is no free support, e.g. call center agents for Windows 10 users. As for security vulnerabilities in Windows 10, Microsoft is going to continue fixing them until at least 2032 (probably longer with extended support) anyways, as Windows 10 1809 LTSC end-of-life is 2029 and Windows 10 21H2 IoT LTSC is supported until 2032.
Microsoft isn't that into you either. With Windows 11 you are not a customer, you and your data are the products.
Meh. I'm also a Linux destop user on a second machine. I'll completely switch when Windows 11 becomes a problem for me. Microsoft used to be a OS company, but is now a cloud company that offers Linux on it's cloud services.
The author just wants Microsoft to stop harassing him. He's not asking for handouts. He's not even asking to be allowed to bypass the hardware requirements for Windows 11. He just wants to stop getting nagged by Microsoft to upgrade.
He could buy new hardware and run Windows 11. But this pattern will only continue from Microsoft. The only way out is to run a non-Microsoft OS (assuming he can).
You're not getting what I'm saying. Hassling him is the point. They want him to use Windows 11 or go away. He's a security update expense because he's too cheap to upgrade his laptop or run Linux on it.
Use Rufus it'll disable hardware requirements, without hassle. You will need an iso. If you know someone with 11 have them download it. Otherwise download the generic.
There must be a way to disable this thing. Maybe we can disable the service? But anyway I already switched to Linux for my daily usage. It is not smooth as Windows due to driver issues and other weird things, like Firefox crashing frequently when I’m typing in a text box like this one, but still feels better than Windows.
The Windows team and its product manager is determined to trash the product. Good work!
Ultimately, I didn't switch to Linux because I wanted to. I switched to Linux because Microsoft became so actively hostile to me I felt like I didn't have any other choice.
No Microsoft, I'm not buying new hardware just to get the new OS. No, I'm not going to let you nag me every single day until I get pissed off enough to. No, I will not tolerate all the little things in your OS that piss me off everyday. Your software sucks. Your filesystem sucks. Your constant nagging sucks. I don't want your cloud TPM security bullshit and I DEFINITELY don't want Copilot or Recall.
Seriously Microsoft: fuck you.
Giving up being able to play certain games - which require me to install malware into my computer anyway - is a small price to pay to have my sanity and freedom back. I own my computer, not you. Goodbye and good riddance.
I already used MacOS and Linux for work anyway. But don't worry Apple, you're riding that line pretty dangerously too - you're gonna be next on the chopping block if you don't get your act together.
Adding to the enshittified pile of bad decissions that Windows has become, the actual requirements for Windows 11 are just a corporate caprice and not a real "requirement". I did whatever it needed to bypass the checks at install time, and W11 is now working exactly and equally as well as W10 was, on a laptop which only has TPM 1.2 and an old CPU.
Where is the requirement then in modern CPUs and TPM 2.0, Microsoft? Didn't you mean "nice to have" so additional but perfectly optional security features could be enabled?
Almost every even half decent CPU made in the last decade does have TPM 2.0, albeit for some strange reason OEMs used to ship with it disabled. You may be able to turn it on in the bios.
I disagree. I think his intention was to maximize shareholder value which he has done dramatically by making the user the product being sold. Microsoft stock has soared even at the expense of Microsoft shedding users. Satya has realized the true value of Windows as a revenue platform. It never was a competitive operating system.
From my earlier comment to another Windows post:
Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.
I disagree. Satya doesn't give a crap about Windows; he's the cloud guy. Over 40% of Microsoft's revenue is cloud. Another 20% is office (which is also heading towards cloud). Windows revenue is a measly 9% -- even less than gaming.
Windows is what it is because it's really not important to Microsoft to anymore. It's effectively unmoored from the rest of organization and left to fight for some kind of financial relevance in an organization that doesn't care about it anymore.
I've been running Win11 without a TPM for 6 years. Saying you can't upgrade isn't the same thing as Windows saying you can't upgrade. Knowing your OS seems to be a lost art. I'm not dismissing the valid complaint, but the title is empirically wrong clickbait.
In Win 11 Home, and want to add a local account and not change it to a Windows account, and not share my stuff with MS. No Cloud or "Backups", thank you.
The option to enable a local account was through the command line only. The dark patterns and persausion to convince me not to was off putting.
But every time I boot in to have to go through the nag screen is off the wall.
It is truly crazy how much I understand the dedication people have to avoid using a unfamiliar system.
When I, as a developer, was told (essentially forced if I wanted to keep my job) to implement dark patterns, I did it knowing I made the world worse. I was fully aware of it, and my coworkers as well, we discussed it openly, and I imagine everyone implementing such tech are. Of course I and other could claim plausible deniability, ”we didn’t understand consent”.
Blaming the sales people is correct. Technically-minded people likely do know better, they just lack the authority to override the top-down administrative decisions.
Microsoft is trying to escape this trap by pivoting to Windows as a subscription service. It will get worse, not better.
Not sure Windows as a subscription service is the end goal though. But maybe we should all wish for M$ to do that, maybe that would be what's needed to finally bring about the Year of The Linux Desktop™.
This allows Microsoft to protect parts of their software even from the user that owns the hardware it's running on. With TPM enabled you finally give up the last bit of control you had over the software running on your hardware.
As a bonus, it prevents those pesky Windows API compatibility tools like Wine from working if the application is designed to expect signed and trusted Windows.
(But my understanding is there were other things like bumping minimum supported instruction sets that happened to mismatch a few CPUs that support the newer instruction sets but were shipped with chipsets using the older TPM)
For example - it's not possible to protect SSH keys from malware that achieves root without hardware storage. Only hardware storage can offer the "Unplug It" guarantee - that unplugging a compromised machine ends the compromise.
Open source drivers, and a sense that Linux support will forever be top priority, would be a motivator for me. Most of my tech spend has been with Valve in the past few years. I'd love if there was another company I actually enjoy giving my money to.
You mean the Microsoft vacuum cleaner ? /s
For what it's worth, that machine is being used while I upgrade my 2001 Computer Of Theseus once more. It's now getting it's third motherboard with CPU - this one salvaged from a 2018 or 2019 gaming machine. It's on its second case, and has seen more hard drive and memory upgrades than I can count - all of them piecemeal. Other than perhaps the motherboard screws and hard drive screws, I'm not sure if anything actually purchased in 2001 still survives in there. Maybe the power cable and pc speaker. And I don't remember ever replacing the rear case fan now that I'm looking at it.
Also, even when they are the same, on certain laptops you literally hit the key-rollover problem.
Between these and services that suddenly suffer from amnesia and spamming me with marketing notifications and emails after months or years of silence, it’s becoming more tiring to use any service that grows significantly enough where they don’t need to care about what their users actually want.
I can offer a slightly different perspective. I remember Microsoft from the 90s and early 2000s. And while technical details differ, their attitude towards users didn't change that much.
Linux FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD DragonflyBSD Haiku Plan9 Redox ReactOS Debian Gnu/Hurd FreeDOS Genode SculptOS
And probably some others I haven't heard of. Using Windows in 2025 AND complaining about it is complaining about a self inflicted wound.
I have just seen this first hand with my significant other: they are very technical and more than capable of it, but have zero interest in learning Linux and instead just bought a MacBook on Black Friday specials when their 5 year old HP laptop finally got too annoying to use.
Also, MacOs is as difficult to learn as Linux is for someone who never used it. Resistance to change exist in all directions.
If I had the confidence that I could play a new release on Linux day 1 without trading an enormous amount of performance, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
The thing is, a healthy ecosystem thrives on diversity. Rallying behind one or two tends towards a monoculture.
I'm eyeing up a shift to apple when my current hardware fails me, but it's impossible for me to just go Linux.
I get what the author is trying to say, but...like... obviously?
https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
[0]: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-...
Of course every time I run an update, they can install whatever. But that's different from what Windows is doing as I understand it...
https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/software/auto...
OTOH the real issue with Ubuntu is snap(d). Snap packages definitely do auto-update. You may want to uninstall the whole snap system - it's (still?) perfectly possible, if a little bit convoluted, due to some infamous snaps like firefox, thunderbird, chromium, or eg. certbot on servers
Or just use Debian or any snap-free fork for the matter.
Edit: fixed
The other OS distributions let you turn it off.
None of them comes close to what Microsoft is doing. To me, your comment looks like you do not understand the Linux eco-system. Plus IIRC, LFS can now come with compiled binaries.
My usb scanner would like to have a word with you. Its last supported driver was for windows 2000 and it still works well on Linux.
Hardware support vary between the 2 operating system and new stuff may be supported earlier on windows but I can't say that windows driver library is unparalleled, quite the opposite actually.
https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/Default.aspx?PolicyID=151...
Most people with ad blockers don't realize how unusable the web is for those that don't have ad blockers. I think most would agree this is a poor state that industry incentives have landed us in, and with the web being distributed, it's hard to know how to fix.
Similarly those who use Linux probably don't realize how bad Windows has got recently.
Microsoft has managed to replicate this awful ux problem on a system that they entirely control...
Linux was designed to run on potatoes and has very little bloat over the years. The UX isn't terribly worse on fairly old hardware.
This is factually not true.
In windows, the bloat is built in by default. You don't get to chose how the start menu works, you get the windows default start menu and you better like the ads in it. It takes work to pull that garbage out.
In linux most stuff is opt in.
The other part of linux is most stuff isn't simply there running in the background by default. Firefox eats a decent amount of memory, but it's not doing that when I don't have my browser open.
Upgrade, to Linux.
It’s become a boring appliance that just works every time. Just they way I want it. I even forgot how to use grub.
I just upgraded my PC’s motherboard, CPU, memory, and video card and used Claude as a build buddy to help me lay out steps to follow. I also used it after installing CachyOS for the second time, but on this new hardware. It had me double checking to make sure I had all the proper drivers set up by running commands, but everything was already setup correctly by CachyOS. It even helped me figure out that I had a fan wire half plugged in, which was causing a fan not to throttle. I would alternate between Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.2. But it’s so much easier and quicker than the old days of sifting through the manuals and forums, if you could get online to a forum that is.
It just depends on application compatibility and to a smaller extent driver support, though that shouldn’t be a problem for an older laptop.
I haven't even tried windows 11 even though my PC is compatible.
Went full Linux and I'm not sure what I was missing at this point that I needed from Windows.
Ran Pop OS (cosmic) which is the new Wayland based one but unfortunately it's still buggy and then I switched to a gaming focused Linux called Bazzite which has been perfect.
Tiny learning curve because it's an "immutable" OS but have everything I need running on it plus everything gaming related works out of the box.
If Linux supported all the games I wanted to play, I would ditch Windows on my home PC.
But Firefox on Ubuntu is not very good. It can expand to fill the whole machine and get killed by the OOM killer. Sometimes during long text input it hangs and has to be killed and restarted. 8 GB isn't enough any more.
Both Mac and Windows are for suckers.
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every time I log in.
Bonus is it strips out all the crap and is super fast
Downside is a few specific pieces of software refuse to install (for no good technical reason). Adobe Photoshop for example
There is also win11 LTSC iOT which I believe might actually install on older hardware that normal win11 will not (don't quote me on this)
Do you think Windows OS is a profit center, especially after factoring in the cost of security fixes for older less secure releases? I'm guessing not (I don't have the figures) and Microsoft would rather you replace your 10 year old laptop that can't run Windows 11 or run Linux on it. They really don't care which, just as long as you go away and they don't have to support you anymore.
I'm not assosciated with Microsoft, just someone who has been using their products for 40 years. I am someone who can read in between the lines, and this is my take.
Microsoft isn't that into you either. With Windows 11 you are not a customer, you and your data are the products.
He could buy new hardware and run Windows 11. But this pattern will only continue from Microsoft. The only way out is to run a non-Microsoft OS (assuming he can).
The Windows team and its product manager is determined to trash the product. Good work!
If Windows had a slogan, this would be it.
No Microsoft, I'm not buying new hardware just to get the new OS. No, I'm not going to let you nag me every single day until I get pissed off enough to. No, I will not tolerate all the little things in your OS that piss me off everyday. Your software sucks. Your filesystem sucks. Your constant nagging sucks. I don't want your cloud TPM security bullshit and I DEFINITELY don't want Copilot or Recall.
Seriously Microsoft: fuck you.
Giving up being able to play certain games - which require me to install malware into my computer anyway - is a small price to pay to have my sanity and freedom back. I own my computer, not you. Goodbye and good riddance.
I already used MacOS and Linux for work anyway. But don't worry Apple, you're riding that line pretty dangerously too - you're gonna be next on the chopping block if you don't get your act together.
Seriously though, don't get why anyone would voluntarily use, let alone purchase, any windows distro.
Where is the requirement then in modern CPUs and TPM 2.0, Microsoft? Didn't you mean "nice to have" so additional but perfectly optional security features could be enabled?
> The hardware limitation is specifically TPM 2.0
Almost every even half decent CPU made in the last decade does have TPM 2.0, albeit for some strange reason OEMs used to ship with it disabled. You may be able to turn it on in the bios.
From my earlier comment to another Windows post:
Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.
Windows is what it is because it's really not important to Microsoft to anymore. It's effectively unmoored from the rest of organization and left to fight for some kind of financial relevance in an organization that doesn't care about it anymore.
The option to enable a local account was through the command line only. The dark patterns and persausion to convince me not to was off putting.
But every time I boot in to have to go through the nag screen is off the wall.
It is truly crazy how much I understand the dedication people have to avoid using a unfamiliar system.
Yep. And you got what you've paid for.
Look at it. This is "pro" now.
It describes so much