My dad’s bringing his PC to my house when they visit for Christmas so we can setup Linux as a dual boot for him to see if he can switch from Windows 10 to Linux instead of buying a new PC
I think my retiree parents (and in-laws) are going the same way. They only use their computer for email and search, and the options are just better.
I’ll have to ask my parents about it. They mostly just use a web browser, but they also occasionally use Word for writing Christmas letters and whatnot. I could probably get them to switch to LibreOffice, Google Drive, or Office365, but not completely sure about that. They are interested in getting a Chromebook, so I guess we’ll see what they end up needing.
I try not to force Linux on anyone, but I have brought it up before as a suggestion (they were complaining about their computer being slow, and ended up buying a new one). My dad really likes Windows, but they really don’t use anything Windows-specific other than Word anymore.
My dad (in his mid 80s) told me proudly that he had just bought Linux and installed it on his computer. It’s great that he wanted to try Linux but I wonder what malware-riddled scam distro he found, and how I’ll sort it out on my next visit.
Not sure if it was Mint or Ubuntu, but one of them shows a donation box with a default amount when you click download. It’s already downloading when the box shows up, but maybe he misinterpreted that.
You used to be able to buy physical media. And that may be what they’re talking about? Hard to say. For a long time this whole write it to a USB stick and install it was newfangled and not at all common. I 100% have a version of red hat in a box that I bought off a shelf of a local Best Buy back in the 90s. Yes you could have just downloaded and installed it or created your own install media. But having your own CD burners even weren’t that common at the time. I remember 1999 being when I got my first CD burner and how special that was lol. It seems almost quaint by today’s standards. And downloading wasn’t really an option either. 56 kilobits per second if you were lucky would have taken days and days. Now it’s just minutes over most broadband.
Can’t be that bad. Some distros accept donations. It just could be that he felt he was making a purchase rather than just a donation.
Hopefully it’s just something like this, not a scam.
Come back and let us know what you find out, please. If it’s a malicious distro, let us know the site so we can warn others.
Following up on this? Did you figure it out? Just to be aware of potential scams. 👀
I gave my distro dev $20 for the bragging rights. More than I ever paid for Windows.
Doesn’t Ubuntu and a few other distros still sell physical install discs?
They used to, but I don’t think they do anymore. In fact, I think they used to send one to you for free. I got an official Ubuntu install disk for free at college (someone was handing them out), and I’ve been on Linux ever since.
I do see Ubuntu install USBs on Amazon, but I wouldn’t trust those.
I ordered one years ago, still got it in the display cabinet but I’m sure it’s long rotted at this point.
Yeah, I wish I still had mine, it was from before I started hating Canonical. What a great piece of history that would’ve been.
But no, I threw it out like I did so many other things at the time, because having less stuff makes moving a ton easier.
Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but it’s supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe it’s that?
Maybe elementaryOS? There is a Purchase button on the site, with a pay-what-you-want option. If possible to enter 0 though.
Fyi you can install it without TPM 2 hardware, if using Rufus to create the installer, you can just tick an option to remove tpm forcing.
That’s if you want to keep using Windows after 2025 on a 7+ year old hardware.
Not endorsing it, just saying you can, at no extra cost.
That’ll work until they actually make it do something with the TPM.
I bet in 3 years they’ll require an AI accelerator.
I bet in 3 years they’ll require an AI accelerator.
You’re right, better get out now!
As far as I’m aware TPM 2 pretty much does with hardware, what is otherwise software emulated. It’s more efficient and secure when using something like bitlocker etc. Everything should work, just is more suspectible to tampering and malware.
if you want to risk random update potentially bricking your computer or at least your os breaking, not worth it
Another shitty decision from Redmond.
I’ll see you all on SteamOS in six months
Love Linux and steam deck, but AS IS, steam os is a horrible choice for a desktop general use computer.
It’s immutable without layering, so there are things that you can’t install/keep after an update. Case and point, printers. You can’t print, period. Valve knows, they don’t need a gaming device to print so they don’t care.
Hopefully they will do something about this, but I don’t hold my breath for 2025
I think printers is kinda going the way of having to support winmodems for Linux… Just not as important as it used to be.
Last time I printed something was for a pistol permit. 3 years ago. And I just sent that to Office Depot to print it, and picked it up on the way to the permit office.
Students at the local uni don’t really need printers, either. Generally, the few times they do, there’s public printers to email the doc to, and go pick up (Or, QR code and a phone, etc).
Personal printers just aren’t that big of a deal these days.
You might like Bazzite. Its like a general purpose version of SteamOS with layering and printers
My desktop is Bazzite and my htpc is Aurora (the non gaming version of Bazzite), so I have to agree with you haha
They wont do anything about it because SteamOS is not and will never be a general purpose desktop OS. Its a gaming distro designed to do one thing and one thing well, game. It can do other things but its not meant to, kinda like a reverse MacOS.
Currently, you’re right. But it’s a bad move, I think, moving forward for valve.
They have already confirmed they want steamOS to be a distro everybody can install on any computer. Being more limited than most distros is going to make it a hard choice to pick. On the deck, it’s fine tuned to that hardware. What is going to offer that Bazzite won’t replicate a few months afterwards, while offering a better general OS experience?
I think that just having layers and a recovery partition that can restore the system while preserving steam games (even if removing all configs) would increase the appeal a lot.
They don’t need the hardware to run an OS. They need the hardware to run their AI shit for reasons nobody ever needs - except Microsoft.
So maybe it is not Microsoft closing the door for older hardware, but older hardware closing the door for Windows 11?
They need the hardware to run their AI shit
The requirement is for TPM, not parallel processing hardware. It provides trusted hardware, facilitates things like DRM.
There are tons of low and medium boards that provide TPM, and they don’t suffice, IIRC.
Did you read the article text? It’s specifically discussing how Microsoft will not relax the requirement for TPM 2.0.
Which is on the market for more than six years now. That was my point. It does not only need TPM2.0, it also needs CPU and RAM in regions that are way more recent than TPM2.0
The CPU is due to instruction set requirements. The first version of W11 is technically compatible (with hack to pass the checks) with older CPUs than the newer versions. And it’s not Gusty’s guaranteed that there ones that currently can run it will do it after a few updates.
I hate it, and they could have done things to allow more compatibility, but it’s not without a technical reason.
…
I feel that this is diverging from your original comment, but okay, Windows 11 – as with all prior releases of Windows – has minimum CPU and memory requirements. That isn’t what the article text is discussing, but fair enough.
But I don’t see any association with that and AI. This isn’t parallel processing hardware being discussed.
But I don’t see any association with that and AI. This isn’t parallel processing hardware being discussed.
The one big eater of CPU power in future Windows will most likely be AI. Most of which will probably be useless for the user, which is a common problem with Windows “features” in recent years.
I can easily see a Microsoft AI engine churning the users data in order to determine which ads to serve - in the start menu, the screen backgrouns, the login screen, or as blatant popups. If people notice that such a thing is seriously eating into their machines’ power, they will try harder to kill this. Therefor it is the interest of Microsoft that the user has more than enough power. And this is just one example.
Why have we stopped talking about how the $15 TPU can make upgrading older systems possible? Does that not work anymore?
I think they also prevent most CPU released before 2017ish from installing as well so computers just missing the proper TPM are few and far between anyway. You can still get around all the requirements pretty easily though.
My Ryzen 1700 system was prevented from upgrading and it met the TPM requirement, it just wasn’t whitelisted. That CPU was released in 2017, and that whole gen was pretty popular (1600 sold like hotcakes). I think anything newer should work though.
That said, my primary OS is Linux anyway, so it doesn’t matter, this is just an install on my other disk in case I need something Windows-specific (haven’t needed it in years).
I think anything newer should work though.
I’ve got a Ryzen 3700X and my computer told me it couldn’t do the upgrade, either.
Your CPU is supported. It’s probably just a matter of enabling the fTPM (firmware TPM) option in your motherboard’s BIOS settings, which would satisfy Windows 11’s TPM “requirement”.
Dang. Is your board in the 300-series? Maybe it’s that?
I haven’t checked, but I think my 5600 is compatible. Maybe I’ll check sometime, but I’m not looking forward to the mountain of patches I’ll need just by booting into it again.
Thank you Microsoft god bless I will stay on core 2 duo forever 🙏🙏
It would be safer to use a Linux flavor and run the apps you need using Wine/Proton…
Does it have Windows Aero?
KDE Plasma + Klassy can do that. I think you can pull off a Win7 look with just those two.
KDE Plasma can get you far with its customization options, and Klassy adds more customization on top of that, and adds the translucent/transparent effects you need to emulate the Win7 look.
Old Gnome2-era themes will always win out imo. I tried looking for neat Plasma themes but a lot of em are just very basic colour swaps, nothing out there
Just a heads up while the look might be easy to emulate the feel part will at best be close. Which is actually good because a lot about that is rather shoddy in windows… and focussing on getting what you had with windows might make you miss stuff you didn’t think you wanted. Like MMB click on scrollbars, or dragging and resizing windows with Super+LMB/RMB
The important questions. I miss aero so much.
It has KDE, which I believe has something close to it.
Yup, Linux can look like whatever you want. I made my old Ubuntu install look like Windows 7 for the lulz once, but now I’m too lazy to change the defaults.
But can it sort by penis?
Length or girth?
Linux but with windows xp installation music
I’ve seen someone with that on their Steam Deck. Don’t let your dreams be dreams.
I use this as my ringtone, have for several years
Aww yeah
There is a KDE windows aero theme. The panels won’t mimic the start menu and bar perfectly. But it absolutely gives it an overall flavor.
Tech illiteracy?
What i wonder, is:
- TPM a black box and then, why should i trust it
- if not, why not just use RAM as protected memory instead?
Ram can’t run their blackbox code. The goal is a full processor running non inspectable code. The end of the PC.
I bet it’ll still try to install itself on that hardware though and break it.
I’ve got a full screen ad for Windows 11 one day, despite having TPM 2.0 turned off. Not sure what exactly was written there, as I have turned it off immediately, but fuckers probably advertise their shitty “Windows 11-compatible” computers or some other shit.
afaik that ad was sent regardless of TPM. I got it.
Probably how they’ll force upgrade down the track, upgrade or we brick your shit.
The used market is going to bomb if older machines can’t be setup with newer windows version.
‘incompatible’ hardware will be dirt cheap, and 8th gen or newer will sell for more than it would have otherwise–especially if tariffs jack prices up on new hardware.
i have a couple dozen older systems here. most were given to me before win11’s requirements were known. fixing and flipping them for a few bucks was a small but relatively steady income stream, but not anymore. hardly anyone wants them.
the couple that are new enough to be blessed by microsoft will be kept, and i’ll hang on to the better ones of the rest (like skylake, kaby lake) to put linux on. everything else will end up at ewaste recyclers even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of them other than the fact that a profit and ‘shareholder value’ driven megacorp says they can’t be used anymore.
It’s fairly trivial to bypass Microsoft’s hardware requirements for windows 11 afaik. Just install via Rufus and click the relevant options. I agree with you that MS should have made these optional recommendations though, we shouldn’t have to use third party tools.
You can do that, but then the major updates MS pushes out twice a year won’t install via Windows Update anymore.
microsoft keeps tightening the screws; there’s no guarantee a loophole to do that will remain–but rather the opposite: they will disappear.
Maybe the tariffs will serve to cull a bit of the consumist impulse the US suffers of.
Regarding if a machine is desirable or not: I’m still seeing Windows XP machines being sold today for over 100€. No monitor, no peripherals, no nothing: just the machine. And people needing a machine to type a report, do a spreadsheet, do basic office work, with no other option, pay for it.
i run my machines until they stop working, period.
All the better for us running Linux!
I think I can see 3 “new” laptops in my future!
yes!
Yay!
blessing in disguise. at least you can build a system so poorly that 10 won’t be forcefully upgraded on you.
Thank you Microsoft after being a windows user since the 3.1 days your recent changes to Windows makes me happy to announce I bought my first MAC.
I would have installed Linux, logged into MSN.net, and then told them to eat shit on their support forum.
So close. You could have gone to Linux.
Why do people capitalize all of Mac?
They bought a Mass Accelerator Cannon from the UNSC
Because they don’t know that MAC is media access control, and Mac is Macintosh.
I suspect it’s the “Mac vs PC” stereotype, and they think C stands for computer and MA stands hell knows for what. Because a PowerPC PC is not a PC, and an ARM PC is not a PC, and a SPARC PC is not a PC (OK, it’s a workstation, of the noble blood, not like the rest), and I think I’ve lost my thought.
My reaction would not be switching to MacOS, because for something the users of which look down on Linux and FreeBSD, with all that “just works” and “made for Terrans” pathos, it surely is frustrating to use.
Just some well-supported enough Linux would do.
They’re all PCs they just aren’t IBM (compatible) PCs. Anything from a Workstation to a Smartphone is a Personal Computer.
I know ; just mocking the marketing terms
Its a Media access control address, AKA MAC address that he bought ofc. It lives inside his ethernet card.
I’m up too early, sorry.
Non negotiable sounds fine with me. Because we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
I’d like to give a heartfelt thank you to Microsoft management though, for furthering the cause of Linux adoption. We couldn’t have done it without you. 🙏
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro
Windows 10 Home and Pro
Retirement Date: Oct 14, 2025
Sounds like 2025 is gonna be a good year for PC manufacturers.
With sales from companies? Yes. With sales from average consumers? Maybe not. Depends on what they can afford. There’s people out there still using things like windows 7. If the computer still works they’re unlikely to upgrade unless they care about having the newest stuff.
A friend of mine just messaged me, that we cannot play a few selected games anymore, as his notebook was acting up. Upon further investigation I found out, that he is still running Windows 8.1 and cannot use Steam anymore, since Steam support on Windows 8.1 ended about a year ago and a Chrome update “finally” broke Steam on windows 8.1 a few weeks ago.
My mom only upgraded from her original surface pro running windows 8 when my siblings and I bought her a surface pro 7. She watches Netflix and checks her email and plays like plants vs zombies and solitaire. Some people really do live by the rule of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
I’m waiting for the planned obsidence lawsuit myself
the wut?
The planned obstinance lawsuit.
I still don’t know what you are talking about and I’m not trying to be stubborn
My bad, I thought you were making a joke about Pika saying “planned obsidence” instead of “planned obsolescence.” I did not realize you were making a genuine inquiry.
Planned obsolescence is when businesses intentionally design a product to become useless after a period of time.
For example, imagine a high end camera company that also sells replacement parts. They change their lens shape every model, and only keep the most recent models’ lenses in production. When an older model’s lens inevitably breaks, the customer cannot buy a replacement, and thus has pressure to buy s new camera, and the company hopes that most customers will buy from them again.
We see this in tech with smartphone companies only giving OS updates for a few years, causing older phones to go end of life, so even if the phone is fully functional it needs to be replaced. Again, the company hopes the customer will again buy from them rather than going to a competitor (who is likely running the same scheme.)
OP suggests Microsoft’s TPM requirement is there to force new computer sales, which will include a purchase of a Windows 11 OEM license bundled with the PC.
