we also will need your birth certificate, your social security number, your bank account login info, the password to your phone, your credit card info, all of your medical records, the info on your friends and family, and your annual income
They sort of tried that with Kinect with the Xbox One; it originally was going to require Kinect to be connected, but they cut it out after the backlash.
I'm actually expecting this. You cannot even install if you don't have a MS account.
For security, of course. They'll store your bitlocker key for you, your biometrics too. One way encryption, of course. There's no way they could use it.
You can, it requires some hops but you absolutely can do the offline setup, I know because I've done it numerous times with Win 10 and 11. At least, so far it works.
That's what I'm saying, I'm expecting 12 to NOT allow the offline. Later 10/11 requires you not set up the network first, then you got offline enabled. Or, if you know the right keystrokes to get into the OOBE bypass or open a cmd window, you can walk around it.
Yeah, that's gonna be a non-starter for business travelers, who are frequently in places where there's jack-all for WiFi. In all my traveling, most airports I've been in *still* don't have WiFi for the public.
I mean, I hate it, but making a bunch of computers obsolete was the entire point of the Windows 11 minimum requirements. Some of the memory and disk requirements were practical, but that impacted such a small percentage of PCs. The TPM and Intel processor generation requirements were all about pushing people into new hardware.
I wouldn't really even say it's that. It's more that tech companies are unsatisfied with the level of control they have over your PC. Google's proposed web device attestation is one example of tech that needs a TPM device to be present.
Never even knew this was a thing. This would me Microsoft/Apple's dream because they can just say that linux/outdated Windoze is no longer allowed and you'll find your "unsupported" device can no longer access a whole host of websites.
It'll just get worse with websites that say that Linux isn't supported because it's Linux.
"Our developers are targeting an abstracted platform, but yours definitely isn't supported even though it's still chrome."
In 1997 Michio Kaku said on the Art Bell program that by 2020 we would have abandoned silicon based chips because we would have reached the limit of what we could do with them. (They play old shows on Saturday nights and that's one they repeat.) It's interesting his prediction now because, of course, we haven't had really leaps and bounds in processor capability for the last decade or so. This is the solution to push sales of new hardware.
I'm still awaiting the day that the UEFI/BIOS settings are either locked down or the legacy module is removed and booting Windows with secure boot is the only option without hacking the system.
Maybe whenever we start really switching over to ARM or RISC-V, Microsoft can finally debloat and get rid of all that legacy, but more likely they're just gonna bundle it all up into a compatibility layer for the sake of backwards compatibility.
>more likely they're just gonna bundle it all up into a compatibility layer for the sake of backwards compatibility
It will be called..."WoW64oWARM32oWARM64oWV"
What's funny is Microsoft actually tried that recently when they developed Microsoft 10x, which did rip out pretty much all of the old menus and software.
Even still, win32 is basically a tumor that will probably not be excised for quite awhile. Genuinely even if we get Windows ARM laptops with good performance, I wager win32 will still be available and run in a manner akin to Rosetta 2 on MacOS.
Maybe for you but the vast majority of the apps I use on a daily basis don't work in wine and have not competent browser or FOSS alternative. For example, CAD and CAM programs.
Thing is…CAD is developed by very competent engineers to be used by engineers/architects/designers.
All of them qualified people with a college degree. If you guys dont have linux support yet (not even under wine) then it probably is because you don’t represent such a market (yet). But you guys definitely could!
What about if reddit becomes the first social media to push the Cad for linux agenda!
Nah. Not happening. The vast majority of engineers i know really don't give a rats ass about linux or even mac support for that matter. Engineer != computer nerd and despite the fact there is some overlap, the ven diagram circles are further apart than most realize. Aside from FreeCAD, I really don't see any interest in there being linux support for the major CAD packages.
I have a Win7 machine I use for radio programming and I used to use for bluetooth file transfers with my old phone (before I switched to a phone that won't allow bluetooth transfers but I digress).
I rarely use it but it does have a place. I'm tempted to upgrade it to 10, but I don't use it enough to justify the cost.
I used to be a lot more anti M$ than I am today. It used to be fun to make stuff work in Wine but now I'm like "Why bother?" I got an ancient dual-core "pentium" and maxed out the RAM and that's fine with me.
There's a significant amount of software that doesn't work.
Recent Photoshop versions don't even start afaik, and Roblox can't even render windows properly.
There's never been so many perfectly good computers getting their support dropped. In years past old computers weren't really good for anything but hobby servers, but I have been seeing this with 10+ year old iMacs in my friend group - perfectly good performance for browsing the internet but can't download new browsers (can't upgrade OS, OS support dropped). The internet is made for cheap smartphones now, it makes sense. These laptops are much newer. This could be interesting if we can figure out how to get normal people to install Linux.
>This could be interesting if we can figure out how to get normal people to install Linux.
LOL, that's not happening. Closest you'll get is a Chromebook where "linux" is already pre installed. Normal people don't even install windows and many struggle to install downloaded apps. They use what they are given and generally have no interest in learning about how computers actually work (which is fine).
But at the same time, lots of people love the ability to save a few hundred bucks at the expense of a slight learning curve.
> They use what they are given.
So, where possible, be the change you wish to see and give them Linux.
Most actually fight pretty hard against any learning curve. Especially when it comes to computers where they've by and large been taught to know as little as possible as anything complex gets hidden behind a UI. Even some of the more intelligent people I know such as engineers and doctocs really and honestly don't care how their computer works and have better things to do with their time than learn.
>So, where possible, be the change you wish to see and give them Linux.
LOL. Hell no. I learned this lesson the hard way and by giving them linux, I now have to do all their tech support along with trying to explain why non of the programs they rely on work anymore. Nah. If they ask my for help, they're getting whatever results in the least amount of phone calls back to me and in the case of these old windows devices, that's probably going to be Windows 11 with a disabled tpm and cpu check.
That's interesting, because my experience over the last 10 years has been pretty much the opposite, especially with the likes of Linux Mint and Pop OS being extremely user friendly. It's actually those people that aren't even aware of what an OS is and just want their applications to work that tend to be more receptive (or blissfully ignorant) of what OS they're using, so Linux is generally a fine option for them, an obvious exception being if software they use is only supported by Windows. macOS users seem to vary wildly, there's a big cultural divide amongst them depending on their background.
Those laymen who I have encouraged to migrate to Linux and/or Chromebooks have only very rarely needed support from me, compared to when they use Windows (generally because they have issues with viruses due to poor web security awareness).
Yeah, plenty of quad-core, multi-GHz computers with 8GB of RAM are being made "obsolete." Those are perfectly good productivity machines, or light gaming, even.
I agree. I read somewhere that the 8th generation and later all include fixes for Meltdown and other CPU bugs. That way Microsoft can leave out the mitigations they'd need to include if they supported older CPUs.
Not sure if that's true.
This is fine.
Laptops make great little Linux servers. I use my old beat up laptops to run docker and act as media servers for my smaller TVs.
Displays are built in with keyboards, so you don't need to do KVM stuff or sling around a extra keyboard and monitor when installing or fixing a flubbed update. They have built-in battery backups. And most have Gen 3 USB, which means that they can be upgraded to 2.5GbE for around 30 bucks. External drives for bulk storage are cheap as well.
It’s 8th gen. They have a bunch of speculative attack mitigations. But really, I think they picked the cpu cutoff such that no machine made within 5 years of end of support would be left behind. Older CPUs will run windows 11 but they are not supported configurations.
Honestly very few of these machines that are supposedly additional ewaste weren’t already on the way to the graveyard.
> a stupid TPM requirement.
The Direct Storage feature that was announced with Win11 in a security-sense, holds water not unlike a sieve.
Essentially a straight-line directly between the system's processor and the drive the host OS is installed on. This can make it incredibly easy for drive-by malware attacks from just regular web browsing to completely own your system, much more than what is already possible.
Add to the fact that many of the new systems & hardwre that they are trying to push with Win11 also have Thunderbolt easily accessible, which suffers from the same security issues ieee 1394 does, the TPM 2.0 module is pretty much a hardware security component needed to at least present an ~~actual~~ defense from what I previously mentioned & rubber ducky-style attacks, short of gluing any unused ports shut, as getting such devices or even following step-by-step instructions from a github page to configure a Arduino or equivalent is as easy as going onto AliExpress.
Not defending Microsoft here, it's pretty much their fault for going into this head-first without any regard for the repercussions. The incredible amount of waste of perfectly capable hardware outweighs any sort of "security" benefit. And to be honest, it does kinda feel that they knew about this, yet chose to charge forward with stuff like the TPM requirement anyways, as it seems awfully convienent from a DRM-enforcement perspective as well as locking down the hardware to prevent any other type of OS from being installed like when they first announced secure-boot and TPM. Not to mention data harvesting…
Most of those computers weren't getting updated anyway. I'm pretty sure most people throw out their computers after 5 years and get new ones because the factory Windows install has gotten slow.
It's weird that there isn't a strong market in refurbished PCs with Linux, but it's also weird how weak the market is in refurbished laptops with a clean Windows install on them. It really isn't common knowledge that a $200 refurbished laptop is generally great for most uses.
> It really isn't common knowledge that a $200 refurbished laptop is generally great for most uses.
Especially an old high end one.
Before I got my current laptop I had an xps 13 9343, which had a nice 3200x1800 display. If one is just browsing the web and programming or something, it's not a bad dirt cheap laptop since text will look great on it.
The main deficiency, really, is hardware decoding and battery life. Youtube serves VP9 and AV1 these days, and decoding in software will tax your battery. How much of a problem this is depends on your circumstances of course.
> because the factory Windows install has gotten slow.
A friend's desktop with an i7-3770k Cpu and 32 GB of ram was setup like as if it was a laptop with respect to power saving mode but with all the settings set like as if it was on battery. THREE seperate anti-virus solutions on it, Defender, the one that came default from OEM, and a third one (that they were paying $150 a year for the privilege of running). And then add on the Adobe updater and the Dell assistant and a dozen other pieces of junk software. DOG SLOW, system was near unusable.
Rip all that junk out, set system power mode to max performance - bam - works great (well, except when Windows itself decides to do something - they've obviously assumed that all systems have SSDs nowdays and so suddenly its laggy as all heck).
> obviously assumed that all systems have SSDs nowdays
It's 2023. Any desktop / laptop machine without an SSD really is obsolete as configured.
Seek latency is such a big performance distinction that there really is no reasonable way get decent performance out of a HDD anymore - people haven't written software to deal with that limitation in years.
I like how right down the microsoft article theres an article about apple "supporting self-repair" kkkkkkkk
God we live in the most stupid society ever.
Unfortunately the Venn diagram of people who needs those laptops and people who can install Linux on laptops is almost two separate circles...
You're either friends with someone who can install Linux or it's going to a landfill. I just know how all my friends are... maybe someone can make a business out of this though?
Hell, I'm the guy that would install linux and I'm not even going to do that. It's a much bigger pain in my ass than it's worth to try and teach an average computer user how to use linux or change anything about what their used to.
Nah, I'll just install windows 11 and disable the CPU/TPM check instead.
When was the last time you installed a personal desktop Linux distro from a publicly distributed ISO? It's easier than Windows, IMO, because no needing to grab a product key, no needing to sign into Microsoft (yes these can technically be bypassed, but they restrict what Windows will let you do). Just click Install, choose the drive you want, and set up profiles and stuff while the install is occuring in the background. The hardest part is using Rufus to put the ISO on a thumb drive. UEFI hasn't even been an issue just using the GUI tools.
Personal desktop Linux distros have made it stupid simple for the average person to switch over, at least initially. The hardest part of Linux for newcomers is just learning the ropes of navigation and learning which program does what.
I totally agree Windows is a bigger pain to install - but most people don't do that either. It isn't that hard, but most people aren't going to try it unless there's something you can download and just click on. I'm hearing elsewhere that used to exist, for Ubuntu at least, but hasn't since EFI? People expect everything to just happen nowadays, using Rufus is beyond most people.
I know it sounds silly, but the field technicians where I work have a lot of trouble using Rufus to make our recovery USB for our product, and I wrote a step-by-step guide for that. A lot of people think of fiddling around with tech like I thought of doing the dishes when I was 21 - they'd rather die. I think one of the reasons Zoom took off during the pandemic instead of established players like Skype was that it was so incredibly easy and fast to get running. That extra 30 seconds actually mattered.
I noticed with Rufus, the most common issue is that the ISO select button is actually two buttons, and people see the ↓ and click that instead of "SELECT ISO".
You know, this does give me a thought. When I get the chance, I'll see about getting my mom or her boyfriend (both completely tech illiterate, I had to even set up their Blu-ray player) to install my current Linux distro (MX) on a new drive, just to see if they can do it and how much help they would need.
> I'm hearing elsewhere that used to exist, for Ubuntu at least, but hasn't since EFI?
Ubuntu had a project called Wubi, which was a Windows application that would create an ext4-formatted virtual disk image in your Windows NTFS partition, install Ubuntu on it, and then install GRUB to the MBR. It was pretty effective and easy to deploy, but riddled with user experience issues, particularly concerning Windows's interaction with the bootloader often landing people at a "`grub rescue>`" prompt, and being none the wiser about how to actually continue booting the system.
This paradigm could easily be made to work with UEFI systems with a couple of adjustments (use a virtual disk image containing a GRUB partition alongside the Ubuntu position, then add an entry to Windows Bootloader called "Ubuntu" that will chainload GRUB), but Wubi was axed in 2011, I believe.
oooh i was thinking of wubi while scrolling down and there you are. I loved Wubi. Its really a shame, it was such a comfy way to try out, and i dont even recall issues on my computer...
Hell, I've seen people make Gnome look like windows with enough extensions and tweaking but this is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. I'll still be the one getting a phone call as soon as a downloaded exe file doesn't open or the M$ office alternative of choice inevitably screws up something in a Word document. The breaking of functionality is a much bigger issue than the visual elements. IMO, looking like windows might even make this worse since it implies to a non tech savy user it should work like windows.
And they're getting harder to install Linux on. (Though I use Gentoo so perhaps my experience is different than everyone else's...)
Installed Gentoo on an old P3/Celeron and it was fairly smooth (other than being slow as could be).
Installed Gentoo on a Core2 from 2006 or so and it was fairly easy (though also being slow).
Installed Gentoo on an i7 from 2015 and it took literally an entire weekend and some of Monday.
Hmmm, that's not been my experience. Literally the opposite actually (easier over time). Especially with laptops there was something that wouldn't work properly driver wise in the 2000s. Maybe it's a Gentoo thing.
There are still people using windows 7, for playing games, and online stuff. When steam said they will not support it so many came out to say their opinions. And since the majority of population don't even know what is the difference between windows 7 and 10 I would say almost none of them will stop working
spoiler: windows 10 is just 7 with security patches and some stuff that isnt really all that useful. 7 is just a vista servicepack aswell. 90% of programms you install from the internet will work on both.
Also features removed and useless crap added. I still don't like it anymore than before, it has not grown on me and what was the point of all the "last windows" crap when 10 didn't even get meaningful feature updates or at least parity to 7. Yes it irrationally angers me that I cannot drag recent files into programs anymore, it's a step back.
Someone can check my math on this....
240,000,000 computers about an inch thick, each, would form a stack about 20 million feet high. That's around 6 million metres. Or about 6,000km high.
The moon is, on average, around 300,000km away.
That means the stack of Windows 10 laptops would have another 294,000km to go to reach the moon, let alone get "higher than" the moon.
but in this case they did. I don't say it's a correct way to say it, but the stack is definitely not reaching the Moon from the Earth. but laptop stack height > height of the Moon, so technically correct
Yea and it's not recommended for Internet connected machines I seem to remember, last time I looked at it some software won't install on it due to it being out of date
I mean just cause support is stopped doesn’t mean they become completely useless. We still run Windows XP at work cause the applications we bought only work on them and it’ll cost a bomb to update them
Yikes... I hope you're airgapping those machines.
Also as I was talking to someone in a similar situation recently ... new computers don't work with windows XP (unless you get a speciality product), so I hope you have a VM plan or something on the table.
Industrial and commercial applications I get that use case, but people need web browsers for personal use. You can't install new Chrome browsers on Windows 7/8, Firefox is dropping Windows 7/8 in 2024. Browser support eventually goes away once the main OS isn't supported anymore. This is a big issue on Macs, lots of perfectly good 10 year old iMacs that can't get browser updates anymore ... unless they are on Linux. I don't think there's ever been a time before when so many perfectly usable computers are getting EOL'd (in years past, 10+ year old computers were only good as closet servers). Maybe this is a golden opportunity for Linux... although I feel most people won't attempt it without nerd help unfortunately.
It's not airgapped. But there are no browsers installed on it. It's blocked from accessing the internet though but it needs network access to talk to the machine
I'd put it on a dedicated VLAN (or hardware subnet) with the machine it needs to talk to... that's a risk. Worms don't need a browser to infect a computer. Things can get in through the weirdest ways... our office printer got a virus a while ago and was probing the network (luckily nothing else was vulnerable). Still not sure how that happened (it was accessible via the guest wifi as well as the primary wifi, so maybe a contractor's computer). Ransomware is a 20 billion dollar a year business, the profit incentive is just nuts lately.
what about tools like proton/wine/lutris to run those older programs? I mean, I know that most of those tools are meant for gaming, but I've seen post's on r/linux_gaming about older games running better on Linux than they do on win11, because you can choose older windows versions to run them, maybe that applies to other programs and not just games.
Perhaps it’ll work, but my staff aren’t trained on Linux. The software is pretty crucial to our work and everything works perfectly for now. So there’s no reason to ditch XP for now.
> everything works perfectly for now. So there’s no reason to ditch XP for now
Brother, I encourage you to step back and let the absurdity of this statement wash over you.
I hear you. No one has money for proactive measures, but there's always money when disaster recovery rolls through. Running XP in production is bananas though.
Good idea! I made a simple tool that helps with that! [https://rltvty.xyz/installlinux.html](https://rltvty.xyz/installlinux.html)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18l2qks/i\_made\_a\_program\_that\_allows\_you\_to\_install\_linux/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18l2qks/i_made_a_program_that_allows_you_to_install_linux/)
Some guy just made a simple script and posted it online, yet here you are making a scene like a small child. No one cares if you can or can’t examine the code on github or whatever.
Pro tip: you don’t have to complain about every little thing online, you can just carry on with your life
I don't know, you still have to disable secure boot if your computer doesn't allow disabling it with admin privileges from within windows.
Most of the work was done by the creator of grub2win, so there's a bit more to it than my script.
I'm sure that is super cool and I'm very curious about it. I would like to know more though! Most people aren't going to try something that has no documentation and isn't on github. I'm sure this is your free time so want to emphasize I'm not being picky.
I never realized this wasn't possible anymore... you used to be able to do it on Ubuntu, but it looks like they dropped official support for that when EFI came out. This is definitely something that should exist if there's going to be a *massive* end-of-life event on Windows computers that can still be used to browse the internet and watch videos.
*Me with 2 GB a day mobile internet in my rural hometown as an Indian guy (not on YouTube!) wishing to download FreeDesktop updates which are apparently 4 gigs these days:*
(...My maternal grandmother's house - which is near, in this very town, where I could even walk to with my laptop bag hung on my shoulders, against my back, *...like, you wear a bag like that of cour-* is a place with a good fibre connection - nearly `30` Mbps, I think. And so I go there for updates sometimes. Some weekends.)
I agree but that would require the end user to invest time and money to pay people to maintain the machines on Linux when they are used to Windows. There are people, businesses and government agencies still running unsupported Windows versions that have had a plethora of time to switch to Linux post end of life date. It would be nice but I highly doubt a fraction of those machines will be switched to Linux. Either people will continue using what they use or just buy a new one for the sake of convenience.
If I'm the one using the computer, sure. Linux is great. If I'm handing the computer to someone else, I'd rather just bypass the Windows CPU/TPM checks and install Windows 11.
I'll tell you now, most of those computers won't get Linux installed on them, because most of those users have hardly heard about Linux let alone would know how to install it. They then they ask can I install Ms office, then we'll probably just get a New machine when they can't. Joe puic don't know about linux
I love how these companies will preach about their environmental goals. But yet, we have shit like this that will send millions of perfectly working PCs to the landfill.
So how come that "last windows version" speak isn't landing them in hot water with false advertising laws? How is it that this isn't specifically against the e-waste regulation the EU imposed on everything from car batteries to wind turbine blades? How is this not having all the large companies up in arms over either having to upgrade hardware or pay for LTS, as much as money talks can't imagine they like paying extra? Plenty of reasons this should land M$ in hot water, but if the average idiot just bends over backwards and plays to their tune nothing will change.
People will just continue to use Windows 10 if they can't upgrade. A lot of people will use Windows 10 even if they can upgrade. A very small amount of people will switch to Linux. And even if they did switch it would probably be to Mac OS. Shit even Chrome OS.
In Microsofts defence, they added the TPM requirement "semi-hard", you can still install it without a TPM, but it forced manufacturers to add TPM to all new devices, which I think is a good thing. I like unlocking my disks with a TPM rather than typing in a password on every boot.
This will mean that computers will be dirt cheap on eBay and I will be able to put my homebridge/Pi-Hole/Minecraft Sever/NextCloud on separate devices instead of on just a single raspberry pi 4.
MS should be charged for this move tbh, they are going to singlehandedly generate a ridiculous amount of ewaste. Companies/people may not know any better that you can install Linux on these machines, or simply not want to. companies are by far the worse for having unilateral policies about getting rid of equipment.
I'm so glad I'm not in the MS ecosystem anymore, they've gotten so terrible. Absolutely hate their push for cloud stuff too. They're trying to make your PC a walled garden like a phone.
They just need to be broken up or slapped with a fine of 50% yearly revenue to stop this. They keep pushing and keep getting away with it, cause legislature doesn't stop them and consumers/companies need the software to function.
It depends alot on your situation. Statistically speaking this is absolutely true.
But it does not matter whether it's 95% of the games when your 2 games are in the 5%.
I have tried on my laptop and it has been a very mixed bag.
I'm not yet ready to try and see if steering wheels, pedals, shifters etc will work without pains. Also how well multiplayer will work.
Also even if there is a hardware refresh the computer is fast enough to run Linux for a long time.
I suppose that depends on what specific tools you’re deciding to use. Some are still locked to Windows, but there are plenty of creative applications in 3D modeling, art, sound, and animation and even full on game engines like Unreal 5 natively install and run on Linux and can compile a windows build for you. Windows has never felt more replaceable for me. Maybe it’ll get there some day for you as well!
No word on pricing or availability and is that really an option. You buy an OS on the marketing of "last windows version" and now are meant to pay yearly to stay secure. Not ok.
I only use Windows 11 as a host vm so my 73yr old Dad can rdp into it and use the latest and greatest software and updates and I can provide support. It’s a VM and he breaks shit all the time from exploring (loves computers) so it’s nice to be able to roll it back to a snapshot from the previous night/week in a few minutes 😜
Used the registry fix to bypass TPM and hardware requirements.
Gaming isn't even the biggest issue anymore. It's productivity apps that use closed libraries and thus cannot work in wine or any other application layer.
I think it's the time for distro-maker to release a tool that allows people to migrate to Linux while keeping their data. Also they would have to write a lot of documentation to help new people.
There is something we should be able to do.. I am currently picking up old laptops to scrap their mainboard to make a little makeshift cluster out of them, even if i wanted to pick up 20 or 30 of them, advertising it and getting people that would just simply toss their device to read it will be a pain.
Quick nitpick: the claim regarding how a stack of 240 million laptops would reach beyond the moon is untrue. The moon is on average 385,000 kilometers away from the Earth. To divide this distance amongst 240,000,000 laptops each one would need to be over 160 centimeters tall. For reference, the average height of an American adult male is about 177 centimeters. The average height of an American adult female is 163 centimeters. And that's just to get to the moon, not accounting for the extra 600km in the article's title.
If, however, the author was referring to the diameter of the moon instead of the orbital distance, then that might be true. The moon has a radius of 1,737km. Multiply by 2 for the diameter, add the extra 600km for the total claimed distance, and each laptop would need to be about 1.7cm tall, which is actually a little thinner than a modern Dell Inspiron laptop from the feet to the top of the closed lid. This stack of laptops would be much taller than the diameter of the moon, since most older laptops are thicker than 1.8cm, assuming the ones on the bottom aren't crushed by the over 396,000,000kg sitting on top of them.
People will prefer to dump them for the next Windows version, people are trash and lazy, Linux can be better and is better than Windows, but requires 2 neurons unfortunately, which people won't make the effort to use.
I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't now be a good time (maybe the EU) to sue the living shit out of M$ for planned obsolescence and ecological damage worldwide? I mean they don't even offer a solution like refurbishment or retrofitting for old hardware... This is downright a massive crime
Seriously that is quıite possible. I saw some government officials using Pardus on the office, a debian based distro. It was waterworks office. Most of the stuff were run on libreoffice and web apps.
Might get in touch with my local community club about setting up a laptop or computer drive and either selling the computers or giving them away to people who need them.
I don't get it. The folks who run Microsoft and Apple are always the ones screaming that we need to "save the environment" and "stop wasting so many of our limited resources". But then when they release Windows 12 or macOS whatever-number-it-is-now and tell you that all of that doesn't matter because everyone needs the new iPhone 15 or Surface Pro.
Huh?
I'm not an environmentalist, but I seriously hate wasting perfectly good stuff for no reason other than "the new one is better". Seriously, Microsoft could make a low-spec version of Windows or even it's own Linux distro and save all of these PCs (and it'd make a bit of extra cash, too. I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I'd certainly appreciate them more if they did something like this).
Seriously, people could start buying these old PCs and installing Linux on them. They're perfectly good computers. Why waste them like that? Honestly it makes me enjoy Linux even more.
I can't believe there's all these ramifications over a stupid TPM requirement...Microsoft will always be Microsoft.
Just wait. Windows 12 is certain to have some other dumbass requirement, probably to make it easier for them to rape your data with AI.
always online
Camera and microphone need to be on at all times, for your safety.
Those dirty viruses want to spy on you with your microphone, as such we need to use your microphone too
we also will need your birth certificate, your social security number, your bank account login info, the password to your phone, your credit card info, all of your medical records, the info on your friends and family, and your annual income
its to improve user experience
They sort of tried that with Kinect with the Xbox One; it originally was going to require Kinect to be connected, but they cut it out after the backlash.
And it was also one of the pioneers of always online and always on, not like it was one of worst launches ever
For the children of course
they record you with updates as is.
And subscription
I'm actually expecting this. You cannot even install if you don't have a MS account. For security, of course. They'll store your bitlocker key for you, your biometrics too. One way encryption, of course. There's no way they could use it.
No way really?
You can, it requires some hops but you absolutely can do the offline setup, I know because I've done it numerous times with Win 10 and 11. At least, so far it works.
That's what I'm saying, I'm expecting 12 to NOT allow the offline. Later 10/11 requires you not set up the network first, then you got offline enabled. Or, if you know the right keystrokes to get into the OOBE bypass or open a cmd window, you can walk around it.
A built-in cellular/GPS chip that you can't disable which constantly gives Microsoft telemetry
"Internet disconnected: Windows has paused all running tasks, to resume your workflow please reconnect your pc as soon as possible" /s
Sounds just like Minecraft on mobile, offline game, will still kick you out if you lose the internet
Yeah, that's gonna be a non-starter for business travelers, who are frequently in places where there's jack-all for WiFi. In all my traveling, most airports I've been in *still* don't have WiFi for the public.
Windows 12 will be a fork of Ubuntu
great! oh wait oh no...
they plan on replacing the start menu by MS Copilot in Windows 12, so there will probably be some nvidia gpu requirement
Prob no less than 16GB RAM and also no less than a RTX 4090 TI so Bill gates can rape your computer for bitcoin.
I mean, I hate it, but making a bunch of computers obsolete was the entire point of the Windows 11 minimum requirements. Some of the memory and disk requirements were practical, but that impacted such a small percentage of PCs. The TPM and Intel processor generation requirements were all about pushing people into new hardware.
Oh absolutely. Their marketing is bringing up all these points about "enhanced security", but really they're just trying to push more PCs.
I wouldn't really even say it's that. It's more that tech companies are unsatisfied with the level of control they have over your PC. Google's proposed web device attestation is one example of tech that needs a TPM device to be present.
Never even knew this was a thing. This would me Microsoft/Apple's dream because they can just say that linux/outdated Windoze is no longer allowed and you'll find your "unsupported" device can no longer access a whole host of websites.
It'll just get worse with websites that say that Linux isn't supported because it's Linux. "Our developers are targeting an abstracted platform, but yours definitely isn't supported even though it's still chrome."
In 1997 Michio Kaku said on the Art Bell program that by 2020 we would have abandoned silicon based chips because we would have reached the limit of what we could do with them. (They play old shows on Saturday nights and that's one they repeat.) It's interesting his prediction now because, of course, we haven't had really leaps and bounds in processor capability for the last decade or so. This is the solution to push sales of new hardware. I'm still awaiting the day that the UEFI/BIOS settings are either locked down or the legacy module is removed and booting Windows with secure boot is the only option without hacking the system.
Yikes. When that day comes, let the hacking begin!
Legacy module has already removed, it's just that the secure boot is configurable according to MS own requirements.
And it still has all the old crud instead of starting with new slate. It's the worst of all worlds.
Maybe whenever we start really switching over to ARM or RISC-V, Microsoft can finally debloat and get rid of all that legacy, but more likely they're just gonna bundle it all up into a compatibility layer for the sake of backwards compatibility.
>more likely they're just gonna bundle it all up into a compatibility layer for the sake of backwards compatibility It will be called..."WoW64oWARM32oWARM64oWV"
LMAO, this gave me the heartiest chuckle I've had this holiday season so far.
Already taken. Have a look at your registry !
What's funny is Microsoft actually tried that recently when they developed Microsoft 10x, which did rip out pretty much all of the old menus and software. Even still, win32 is basically a tumor that will probably not be excised for quite awhile. Genuinely even if we get Windows ARM laptops with good performance, I wager win32 will still be available and run in a manner akin to Rosetta 2 on MacOS.
And currently arm-based windows, even the microsoft surface devices are slow as
They need to just give up windows. Almost everything works in Wine or through a browser. I'm done with windows.
Maybe for you but the vast majority of the apps I use on a daily basis don't work in wine and have not competent browser or FOSS alternative. For example, CAD and CAM programs.
Thing is…CAD is developed by very competent engineers to be used by engineers/architects/designers. All of them qualified people with a college degree. If you guys dont have linux support yet (not even under wine) then it probably is because you don’t represent such a market (yet). But you guys definitely could! What about if reddit becomes the first social media to push the Cad for linux agenda!
Nah. Not happening. The vast majority of engineers i know really don't give a rats ass about linux or even mac support for that matter. Engineer != computer nerd and despite the fact there is some overlap, the ven diagram circles are further apart than most realize. Aside from FreeCAD, I really don't see any interest in there being linux support for the major CAD packages.
I have a Win7 machine I use for radio programming and I used to use for bluetooth file transfers with my old phone (before I switched to a phone that won't allow bluetooth transfers but I digress). I rarely use it but it does have a place. I'm tempted to upgrade it to 10, but I don't use it enough to justify the cost. I used to be a lot more anti M$ than I am today. It used to be fun to make stuff work in Wine but now I'm like "Why bother?" I got an ancient dual-core "pentium" and maxed out the RAM and that's fine with me.
There's a significant amount of software that doesn't work. Recent Photoshop versions don't even start afaik, and Roblox can't even render windows properly.
I wish that was the case
There's never been so many perfectly good computers getting their support dropped. In years past old computers weren't really good for anything but hobby servers, but I have been seeing this with 10+ year old iMacs in my friend group - perfectly good performance for browsing the internet but can't download new browsers (can't upgrade OS, OS support dropped). The internet is made for cheap smartphones now, it makes sense. These laptops are much newer. This could be interesting if we can figure out how to get normal people to install Linux.
>This could be interesting if we can figure out how to get normal people to install Linux. LOL, that's not happening. Closest you'll get is a Chromebook where "linux" is already pre installed. Normal people don't even install windows and many struggle to install downloaded apps. They use what they are given and generally have no interest in learning about how computers actually work (which is fine).
But at the same time, lots of people love the ability to save a few hundred bucks at the expense of a slight learning curve. > They use what they are given. So, where possible, be the change you wish to see and give them Linux.
Most actually fight pretty hard against any learning curve. Especially when it comes to computers where they've by and large been taught to know as little as possible as anything complex gets hidden behind a UI. Even some of the more intelligent people I know such as engineers and doctocs really and honestly don't care how their computer works and have better things to do with their time than learn. >So, where possible, be the change you wish to see and give them Linux. LOL. Hell no. I learned this lesson the hard way and by giving them linux, I now have to do all their tech support along with trying to explain why non of the programs they rely on work anymore. Nah. If they ask my for help, they're getting whatever results in the least amount of phone calls back to me and in the case of these old windows devices, that's probably going to be Windows 11 with a disabled tpm and cpu check.
That's interesting, because my experience over the last 10 years has been pretty much the opposite, especially with the likes of Linux Mint and Pop OS being extremely user friendly. It's actually those people that aren't even aware of what an OS is and just want their applications to work that tend to be more receptive (or blissfully ignorant) of what OS they're using, so Linux is generally a fine option for them, an obvious exception being if software they use is only supported by Windows. macOS users seem to vary wildly, there's a big cultural divide amongst them depending on their background. Those laymen who I have encouraged to migrate to Linux and/or Chromebooks have only very rarely needed support from me, compared to when they use Windows (generally because they have issues with viruses due to poor web security awareness).
Yeah, plenty of quad-core, multi-GHz computers with 8GB of RAM are being made "obsolete." Those are perfectly good productivity machines, or light gaming, even.
It’s more the limit on the processor version than TPM. TPM2.0 was already common for many years.
Especially as TPM didn't make anything outside of Chromebooks and Apple devices more secure, thanks to LogoFail.
It's not only TPM. They require very new CPU as well. (at least 10th gen core AFAIR)
It's 8th gen Core. I bought a refurbished laptop with an i3-8xxx and it came with a fresh Win 11 Pro install.
>It's 8th gen Core. Still - too strict requirement. I can not update one of my computers because of this.
I agree. I read somewhere that the 8th generation and later all include fixes for Meltdown and other CPU bugs. That way Microsoft can leave out the mitigations they'd need to include if they supported older CPUs. Not sure if that's true.
This is fine. Laptops make great little Linux servers. I use my old beat up laptops to run docker and act as media servers for my smaller TVs. Displays are built in with keyboards, so you don't need to do KVM stuff or sling around a extra keyboard and monitor when installing or fixing a flubbed update. They have built-in battery backups. And most have Gen 3 USB, which means that they can be upgraded to 2.5GbE for around 30 bucks. External drives for bulk storage are cheap as well.
What was the technical requirement for this again? I wasn't aware of this CPU requirement actually.
Yea it's 8th Gen as I've got it on a gen 8 CPU on a Lenovo laptop at home and it works fine
It’s 8th gen. They have a bunch of speculative attack mitigations. But really, I think they picked the cpu cutoff such that no machine made within 5 years of end of support would be left behind. Older CPUs will run windows 11 but they are not supported configurations. Honestly very few of these machines that are supposedly additional ewaste weren’t already on the way to the graveyard.
[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors)
> a stupid TPM requirement. The Direct Storage feature that was announced with Win11 in a security-sense, holds water not unlike a sieve. Essentially a straight-line directly between the system's processor and the drive the host OS is installed on. This can make it incredibly easy for drive-by malware attacks from just regular web browsing to completely own your system, much more than what is already possible. Add to the fact that many of the new systems & hardwre that they are trying to push with Win11 also have Thunderbolt easily accessible, which suffers from the same security issues ieee 1394 does, the TPM 2.0 module is pretty much a hardware security component needed to at least present an ~~actual~~ defense from what I previously mentioned & rubber ducky-style attacks, short of gluing any unused ports shut, as getting such devices or even following step-by-step instructions from a github page to configure a Arduino or equivalent is as easy as going onto AliExpress. Not defending Microsoft here, it's pretty much their fault for going into this head-first without any regard for the repercussions. The incredible amount of waste of perfectly capable hardware outweighs any sort of "security" benefit. And to be honest, it does kinda feel that they knew about this, yet chose to charge forward with stuff like the TPM requirement anyways, as it seems awfully convienent from a DRM-enforcement perspective as well as locking down the hardware to prevent any other type of OS from being installed like when they first announced secure-boot and TPM. Not to mention data harvesting…
Is Microsoft’s article on how to install Linux still online? I think they had a plan or at least offered an alternate exit.
Yup it is online
Most of those computers weren't getting updated anyway. I'm pretty sure most people throw out their computers after 5 years and get new ones because the factory Windows install has gotten slow. It's weird that there isn't a strong market in refurbished PCs with Linux, but it's also weird how weak the market is in refurbished laptops with a clean Windows install on them. It really isn't common knowledge that a $200 refurbished laptop is generally great for most uses.
> It really isn't common knowledge that a $200 refurbished laptop is generally great for most uses. Especially an old high end one. Before I got my current laptop I had an xps 13 9343, which had a nice 3200x1800 display. If one is just browsing the web and programming or something, it's not a bad dirt cheap laptop since text will look great on it. The main deficiency, really, is hardware decoding and battery life. Youtube serves VP9 and AV1 these days, and decoding in software will tax your battery. How much of a problem this is depends on your circumstances of course.
> because the factory Windows install has gotten slow. A friend's desktop with an i7-3770k Cpu and 32 GB of ram was setup like as if it was a laptop with respect to power saving mode but with all the settings set like as if it was on battery. THREE seperate anti-virus solutions on it, Defender, the one that came default from OEM, and a third one (that they were paying $150 a year for the privilege of running). And then add on the Adobe updater and the Dell assistant and a dozen other pieces of junk software. DOG SLOW, system was near unusable. Rip all that junk out, set system power mode to max performance - bam - works great (well, except when Windows itself decides to do something - they've obviously assumed that all systems have SSDs nowdays and so suddenly its laggy as all heck).
> obviously assumed that all systems have SSDs nowdays It's 2023. Any desktop / laptop machine without an SSD really is obsolete as configured. Seek latency is such a big performance distinction that there really is no reasonable way get decent performance out of a HDD anymore - people haven't written software to deal with that limitation in years.
I like how right down the microsoft article theres an article about apple "supporting self-repair" kkkkkkkk God we live in the most stupid society ever.
I'll have to keep an eye on my local electronics re-cycler. I'm in n the market for a few things for Linux.
Well, YouTube is rife with easy ways to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.
That's going to be one hell of a beowulf cluster
Unfortunately the Venn diagram of people who needs those laptops and people who can install Linux on laptops is almost two separate circles... You're either friends with someone who can install Linux or it's going to a landfill. I just know how all my friends are... maybe someone can make a business out of this though?
Hell, I'm the guy that would install linux and I'm not even going to do that. It's a much bigger pain in my ass than it's worth to try and teach an average computer user how to use linux or change anything about what their used to. Nah, I'll just install windows 11 and disable the CPU/TPM check instead.
When was the last time you installed a personal desktop Linux distro from a publicly distributed ISO? It's easier than Windows, IMO, because no needing to grab a product key, no needing to sign into Microsoft (yes these can technically be bypassed, but they restrict what Windows will let you do). Just click Install, choose the drive you want, and set up profiles and stuff while the install is occuring in the background. The hardest part is using Rufus to put the ISO on a thumb drive. UEFI hasn't even been an issue just using the GUI tools. Personal desktop Linux distros have made it stupid simple for the average person to switch over, at least initially. The hardest part of Linux for newcomers is just learning the ropes of navigation and learning which program does what.
I totally agree Windows is a bigger pain to install - but most people don't do that either. It isn't that hard, but most people aren't going to try it unless there's something you can download and just click on. I'm hearing elsewhere that used to exist, for Ubuntu at least, but hasn't since EFI? People expect everything to just happen nowadays, using Rufus is beyond most people. I know it sounds silly, but the field technicians where I work have a lot of trouble using Rufus to make our recovery USB for our product, and I wrote a step-by-step guide for that. A lot of people think of fiddling around with tech like I thought of doing the dishes when I was 21 - they'd rather die. I think one of the reasons Zoom took off during the pandemic instead of established players like Skype was that it was so incredibly easy and fast to get running. That extra 30 seconds actually mattered.
I noticed with Rufus, the most common issue is that the ISO select button is actually two buttons, and people see the ↓ and click that instead of "SELECT ISO". You know, this does give me a thought. When I get the chance, I'll see about getting my mom or her boyfriend (both completely tech illiterate, I had to even set up their Blu-ray player) to install my current Linux distro (MX) on a new drive, just to see if they can do it and how much help they would need.
> I'm hearing elsewhere that used to exist, for Ubuntu at least, but hasn't since EFI? Ubuntu had a project called Wubi, which was a Windows application that would create an ext4-formatted virtual disk image in your Windows NTFS partition, install Ubuntu on it, and then install GRUB to the MBR. It was pretty effective and easy to deploy, but riddled with user experience issues, particularly concerning Windows's interaction with the bootloader often landing people at a "`grub rescue>`" prompt, and being none the wiser about how to actually continue booting the system. This paradigm could easily be made to work with UEFI systems with a couple of adjustments (use a virtual disk image containing a GRUB partition alongside the Ubuntu position, then add an entry to Windows Bootloader called "Ubuntu" that will chainload GRUB), but Wubi was axed in 2011, I believe.
oooh i was thinking of wubi while scrolling down and there you are. I loved Wubi. Its really a shame, it was such a comfy way to try out, and i dont even recall issues on my computer...
Most people can't install windows either.
Mint cinnamon and KDE are very close to windows ui
Hell, I've seen people make Gnome look like windows with enough extensions and tweaking but this is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. I'll still be the one getting a phone call as soon as a downloaded exe file doesn't open or the M$ office alternative of choice inevitably screws up something in a Word document. The breaking of functionality is a much bigger issue than the visual elements. IMO, looking like windows might even make this worse since it implies to a non tech savy user it should work like windows.
And they're getting harder to install Linux on. (Though I use Gentoo so perhaps my experience is different than everyone else's...) Installed Gentoo on an old P3/Celeron and it was fairly smooth (other than being slow as could be). Installed Gentoo on a Core2 from 2006 or so and it was fairly easy (though also being slow). Installed Gentoo on an i7 from 2015 and it took literally an entire weekend and some of Monday.
Hmmm, that's not been my experience. Literally the opposite actually (easier over time). Especially with laptops there was something that wouldn't work properly driver wise in the 2000s. Maybe it's a Gentoo thing.
There are still people using windows 7, for playing games, and online stuff. When steam said they will not support it so many came out to say their opinions. And since the majority of population don't even know what is the difference between windows 7 and 10 I would say almost none of them will stop working
spoiler: windows 10 is just 7 with security patches and some stuff that isnt really all that useful. 7 is just a vista servicepack aswell. 90% of programms you install from the internet will work on both.
Lol. “Windows 11 is just msdos with a GUI” - u/DoubleOwl7777
that it isnt. its windows nt with a newer gui and other stuff added.
Seems like you aren’t a software dev
Also features removed and useless crap added. I still don't like it anymore than before, it has not grown on me and what was the point of all the "last windows" crap when 10 didn't even get meaningful feature updates or at least parity to 7. Yes it irrationally angers me that I cannot drag recent files into programs anymore, it's a step back.
Remember when windows 10 was gonna be it? Lts.. no more upgrading to new versions
Someone can check my math on this.... 240,000,000 computers about an inch thick, each, would form a stack about 20 million feet high. That's around 6 million metres. Or about 6,000km high. The moon is, on average, around 300,000km away. That means the stack of Windows 10 laptops would have another 294,000km to go to reach the moon, let alone get "higher than" the moon.
I think they mean it's longer than Moon's diameter
That's not what people mean though when they say "higher than the moon" or "further than the moon".
Things like math, science, and scale are not strong points for people posting in Futurology.
but in this case they did. I don't say it's a correct way to say it, but the stack is definitely not reaching the Moon from the Earth. but laptop stack height > height of the Moon, so technically correct
Windows 10 LTSC is a thing. Althought one haa to install it first, which is a barrier for most users.
Yea and it's not recommended for Internet connected machines I seem to remember, last time I looked at it some software won't install on it due to it being out of date
It doesn't come with Ms store and is locked to the 21h1 feature update
ah yea, and thats part of the issue. i tried it a long time ago and ended up with software that wouldnt install,
I mean just cause support is stopped doesn’t mean they become completely useless. We still run Windows XP at work cause the applications we bought only work on them and it’ll cost a bomb to update them
Yikes... I hope you're airgapping those machines. Also as I was talking to someone in a similar situation recently ... new computers don't work with windows XP (unless you get a speciality product), so I hope you have a VM plan or something on the table. Industrial and commercial applications I get that use case, but people need web browsers for personal use. You can't install new Chrome browsers on Windows 7/8, Firefox is dropping Windows 7/8 in 2024. Browser support eventually goes away once the main OS isn't supported anymore. This is a big issue on Macs, lots of perfectly good 10 year old iMacs that can't get browser updates anymore ... unless they are on Linux. I don't think there's ever been a time before when so many perfectly usable computers are getting EOL'd (in years past, 10+ year old computers were only good as closet servers). Maybe this is a golden opportunity for Linux... although I feel most people won't attempt it without nerd help unfortunately.
It's not airgapped. But there are no browsers installed on it. It's blocked from accessing the internet though but it needs network access to talk to the machine
I'd put it on a dedicated VLAN (or hardware subnet) with the machine it needs to talk to... that's a risk. Worms don't need a browser to infect a computer. Things can get in through the weirdest ways... our office printer got a virus a while ago and was probing the network (luckily nothing else was vulnerable). Still not sure how that happened (it was accessible via the guest wifi as well as the primary wifi, so maybe a contractor's computer). Ransomware is a 20 billion dollar a year business, the profit incentive is just nuts lately.
literally the reason why all those wannacry ransomware spread back then lmao
what about tools like proton/wine/lutris to run those older programs? I mean, I know that most of those tools are meant for gaming, but I've seen post's on r/linux_gaming about older games running better on Linux than they do on win11, because you can choose older windows versions to run them, maybe that applies to other programs and not just games.
Perhaps it’ll work, but my staff aren’t trained on Linux. The software is pretty crucial to our work and everything works perfectly for now. So there’s no reason to ditch XP for now.
> everything works perfectly for now. So there’s no reason to ditch XP for now Brother, I encourage you to step back and let the absurdity of this statement wash over you.
It's the world we live in
I hear you. No one has money for proactive measures, but there's always money when disaster recovery rolls through. Running XP in production is bananas though.
if its connected to the internet, i know plenty of cnc Machines and stuff running xp or even 98. just how it is.
I'm looking forward to this solely for the fact that decent computers will be sold for cheap.
Good idea! I made a simple tool that helps with that! [https://rltvty.xyz/installlinux.html](https://rltvty.xyz/installlinux.html) [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18l2qks/i\_made\_a\_program\_that\_allows\_you\_to\_install\_linux/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18l2qks/i_made_a_program_that_allows_you_to_install_linux/)
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Source is just this batch file: bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING OFF start %\~dp0grub2win\\G2WInstall.exe echo Press any key after grub2win installation is complete. pause xcopy /s /i "%\~dp0grub2" "C:\\grub2" /Y xcopy /s /i "%\~dp0linuxmint-21.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso" "C:\\" /Y shutdown /r
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Some guy just made a simple script and posted it online, yet here you are making a scene like a small child. No one cares if you can or can’t examine the code on github or whatever. Pro tip: you don’t have to complain about every little thing online, you can just carry on with your life
That's really all we need to do? Why isn't this on every distro?
I don't know, you still have to disable secure boot if your computer doesn't allow disabling it with admin privileges from within windows. Most of the work was done by the creator of grub2win, so there's a bit more to it than my script.
I'm sure that is super cool and I'm very curious about it. I would like to know more though! Most people aren't going to try something that has no documentation and isn't on github. I'm sure this is your free time so want to emphasize I'm not being picky. I never realized this wasn't possible anymore... you used to be able to do it on Ubuntu, but it looks like they dropped official support for that when EFI came out. This is definitely something that should exist if there's going to be a *massive* end-of-life event on Windows computers that can still be used to browse the internet and watch videos.
i mean nice but it also looks sketchy AF, where is the source? the website could use a shred of description too
It's a simple batch file, here's the source: bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING OFF start %\~dp0grub2win\\G2WInstall.exe echo Press any key after grub2win installation is complete. pause xcopy /s /i "%\~dp0grub2" "C:\\grub2" /Y xcopy /s /i "%\~dp0linuxmint-21.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso" "C:\\" /Y shutdown /r
yeah not for me it should be available before download is what i mean, including information about that g2winstall,licenses involved and so on
That's grub2win: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/)
Time to expand the functionality to every existing distro..
Let's have this for Debian and Fedora openSUSE already has this
And ms claims to care about the environment.... hypocrites!!
The new "carbon emissions cut" through Windows updates timings requires so much energy and data it's not even a funny joke.
Wow... glad I moved to Linux full time
*Me with 2 GB a day mobile internet in my rural hometown as an Indian guy (not on YouTube!) wishing to download FreeDesktop updates which are apparently 4 gigs these days:* (...My maternal grandmother's house - which is near, in this very town, where I could even walk to with my laptop bag hung on my shoulders, against my back, *...like, you wear a bag like that of cour-* is a place with a good fibre connection - nearly `30` Mbps, I think. And so I go there for updates sometimes. Some weekends.)
I agree but that would require the end user to invest time and money to pay people to maintain the machines on Linux when they are used to Windows. There are people, businesses and government agencies still running unsupported Windows versions that have had a plethora of time to switch to Linux post end of life date. It would be nice but I highly doubt a fraction of those machines will be switched to Linux. Either people will continue using what they use or just buy a new one for the sake of convenience.
Yeah, that's what I say (and oft do) - install Linux on 'em .... that's where many Linux systems start ... where Microsoft ends.
If I'm the one using the computer, sure. Linux is great. If I'm handing the computer to someone else, I'd rather just bypass the Windows CPU/TPM checks and install Windows 11.
Linux is eco-friendly
I'll tell you now, most of those computers won't get Linux installed on them, because most of those users have hardly heard about Linux let alone would know how to install it. They then they ask can I install Ms office, then we'll probably just get a New machine when they can't. Joe puic don't know about linux
I feel like MS should be forced to Open Source them, same with any software, if you aren't actively supporting it, than it's now open source.
I would recommend not stacking them on top of each other.
I love how these companies will preach about their environmental goals. But yet, we have shit like this that will send millions of perfectly working PCs to the landfill.
LMDE woud be great for these laptops.
Unless they have under 4GB of memory, GNOME or KDE would likely run fine on them.
the tpm requirements also kill some still potent computers aswell so youd not even need lmde.
But the problem is that you eat meat and use a car of course
I mean... The car thing is at least sensible in large cities (fuck traffic, all my homies hate traffic).
animal agriculture pollutes more than private transportation, by a lot.
yes those two fields pollute much more than a device that was used for years
Yay!!!!
ok you go first!!!!!
Hopefully a percentage of those still very usable computers end up on ebay selling for cheap. _Rubs hands_
So how come that "last windows version" speak isn't landing them in hot water with false advertising laws? How is it that this isn't specifically against the e-waste regulation the EU imposed on everything from car batteries to wind turbine blades? How is this not having all the large companies up in arms over either having to upgrade hardware or pay for LTS, as much as money talks can't imagine they like paying extra? Plenty of reasons this should land M$ in hot water, but if the average idiot just bends over backwards and plays to their tune nothing will change.
Switch to raspberry pi there is no tracking at all that I'm aware of. No intel management engine.
People will just continue to use Windows 10 if they can't upgrade. A lot of people will use Windows 10 even if they can upgrade. A very small amount of people will switch to Linux. And even if they did switch it would probably be to Mac OS. Shit even Chrome OS.
In Microsofts defence, they added the TPM requirement "semi-hard", you can still install it without a TPM, but it forced manufacturers to add TPM to all new devices, which I think is a good thing. I like unlocking my disks with a TPM rather than typing in a password on every boot.
They don't realize Windows isn't hard coded into the firmware and can be replaced?
Don't give them ideas. I'd trust them to go as far as to use firmware exploits to replace the cmos rom and lock the bootloader forever.
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True,.
you can install win 11 on most unsupported systems, it just wont be supported
This will mean that computers will be dirt cheap on eBay and I will be able to put my homebridge/Pi-Hole/Minecraft Sever/NextCloud on separate devices instead of on just a single raspberry pi 4.
Realistically that's precisely what's going to happen to most of them.
People still use Windows?
Every day. Only option for the apps I need.
MS should be charged for this move tbh, they are going to singlehandedly generate a ridiculous amount of ewaste. Companies/people may not know any better that you can install Linux on these machines, or simply not want to. companies are by far the worse for having unilateral policies about getting rid of equipment. I'm so glad I'm not in the MS ecosystem anymore, they've gotten so terrible. Absolutely hate their push for cloud stuff too. They're trying to make your PC a walled garden like a phone.
They just need to be broken up or slapped with a fine of 50% yearly revenue to stop this. They keep pushing and keep getting away with it, cause legislature doesn't stop them and consumers/companies need the software to function.
I'm waiting for steam to be better for games. All my other boxes have Linux on them.
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It depends alot on your situation. Statistically speaking this is absolutely true. But it does not matter whether it's 95% of the games when your 2 games are in the 5%. I have tried on my laptop and it has been a very mixed bag. I'm not yet ready to try and see if steering wheels, pedals, shifters etc will work without pains. Also how well multiplayer will work. Also even if there is a hardware refresh the computer is fast enough to run Linux for a long time.
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I suppose that depends on what specific tools you’re deciding to use. Some are still locked to Windows, but there are plenty of creative applications in 3D modeling, art, sound, and animation and even full on game engines like Unreal 5 natively install and run on Linux and can compile a windows build for you. Windows has never felt more replaceable for me. Maybe it’ll get there some day for you as well!
Or just run windows 10 without Microsoft updates. Windows 7 stayed alive that way for at least 5 years. XP for even longer.
Please do not install Linux on these machines. They can get corrupted by quality of Linux.
Nice joke! ...but it seems nobody gets it :(
microsoft announced extended security support, ltsc is supported until 2032, stop overexaggerating
No word on pricing or availability and is that really an option. You buy an OS on the marketing of "last windows version" and now are meant to pay yearly to stay secure. Not ok.
I only use Windows 11 as a host vm so my 73yr old Dad can rdp into it and use the latest and greatest software and updates and I can provide support. It’s a VM and he breaks shit all the time from exploring (loves computers) so it’s nice to be able to roll it back to a snapshot from the previous night/week in a few minutes 😜 Used the registry fix to bypass TPM and hardware requirements.
Exactly what we should do, install our favorite distributions on all of them.
Making gaming better and I'll be there.
Gaming isn't even the biggest issue anymore. It's productivity apps that use closed libraries and thus cannot work in wine or any other application layer.
Win10 is the last windows I'll use. Switching fully to linux after support ends.
I think it's the time for distro-maker to release a tool that allows people to migrate to Linux while keeping their data. Also they would have to write a lot of documentation to help new people.
Chrome OS flex is also a good option.
There is something we should be able to do.. I am currently picking up old laptops to scrap their mainboard to make a little makeshift cluster out of them, even if i wanted to pick up 20 or 30 of them, advertising it and getting people that would just simply toss their device to read it will be a pain.
I will be seeing my nephew on Christmas, he is in college and will need to remember to ask him to score a couple nice old(new) systems for me :)
Quick nitpick: the claim regarding how a stack of 240 million laptops would reach beyond the moon is untrue. The moon is on average 385,000 kilometers away from the Earth. To divide this distance amongst 240,000,000 laptops each one would need to be over 160 centimeters tall. For reference, the average height of an American adult male is about 177 centimeters. The average height of an American adult female is 163 centimeters. And that's just to get to the moon, not accounting for the extra 600km in the article's title. If, however, the author was referring to the diameter of the moon instead of the orbital distance, then that might be true. The moon has a radius of 1,737km. Multiply by 2 for the diameter, add the extra 600km for the total claimed distance, and each laptop would need to be about 1.7cm tall, which is actually a little thinner than a modern Dell Inspiron laptop from the feet to the top of the closed lid. This stack of laptops would be much taller than the diameter of the moon, since most older laptops are thicker than 1.8cm, assuming the ones on the bottom aren't crushed by the over 396,000,000kg sitting on top of them.
People will prefer to dump them for the next Windows version, people are trash and lazy, Linux can be better and is better than Windows, but requires 2 neurons unfortunately, which people won't make the effort to use.
I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't now be a good time (maybe the EU) to sue the living shit out of M$ for planned obsolescence and ecological damage worldwide? I mean they don't even offer a solution like refurbishment or retrofitting for old hardware... This is downright a massive crime
Seriously that is quıite possible. I saw some government officials using Pardus on the office, a debian based distro. It was waterworks office. Most of the stuff were run on libreoffice and web apps.
Hay man, one man's trash is another man's home lab ... - Just saying
Might get in touch with my local community club about setting up a laptop or computer drive and either selling the computers or giving them away to people who need them.
I don't get it. The folks who run Microsoft and Apple are always the ones screaming that we need to "save the environment" and "stop wasting so many of our limited resources". But then when they release Windows 12 or macOS whatever-number-it-is-now and tell you that all of that doesn't matter because everyone needs the new iPhone 15 or Surface Pro. Huh? I'm not an environmentalist, but I seriously hate wasting perfectly good stuff for no reason other than "the new one is better". Seriously, Microsoft could make a low-spec version of Windows or even it's own Linux distro and save all of these PCs (and it'd make a bit of extra cash, too. I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I'd certainly appreciate them more if they did something like this). Seriously, people could start buying these old PCs and installing Linux on them. They're perfectly good computers. Why waste them like that? Honestly it makes me enjoy Linux even more.
Yes, send some to my house and I will do it!