this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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[–] Stern 92 points 5 days ago (1 children)

guess it was negotiable after all

[–] ogeist 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Well, would you look at that, if it ain't the consequences of their own actions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This doesn't end well.

What if it becomes a requirement of software not available outside of their OS?

Of the CPU itself?

DRM intensifies

[–] surph_ninja 39 points 4 days ago (11 children)

Well there goes my strategy of turning off tpm to prevent a sneaky upgrade.

What’s the current best way to prevent an unwanted Windows 11 upgrade?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 days ago

Linux.

I say this as someone using Win11. I'm okay with using it, but if you don't want to, then just go to Linux.

[–] AnUnusualRelic 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Installing XP? I don't think you'll get any upgrades.

[–] baatliwala 20 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You can still do that, the article is fucking stupid. If you don't have the correct requirements you will never get Windows 11 officially. You can however create a custom install of Win 11 using tools like Rufus to bypass the TPM requirements.

The point of the change is that now if you install it on an unsupported machine, you won't get any official support; they're not stopping you from messing with the OS installer but you will still NOT get the upgrade officially and if you do upgrade and find some issue they ain't helping you.

IIRC they used to pester users with this unsupported setup to upgrade to a correct setup and they won't do that any more.

[–] surph_ninja 11 points 4 days ago

I don’t want Windows 11. It performs like shit. But I guarantee this will lead to sneaky upgrades.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (7 children)

Many people are going to say Linux. It's probably annoying to hear, but its just the truth at this point. It probably seems daunting to switch over, but let me give you a very brief suggestion from a beginner on how to smooth over the transition.

Load up youtube and watch a few videos reviewing linux distributions for beginners just to see what's recommended. My personal recommendation is to stick with a distro that uses KDE Plasma as the desktop environment since it will be very familiar coming from Windows. Once you decide what looks best for you...

Check and see if your computer has an available SATA port on the motherboard. If it does, grab yourself a SATA SSD and put your choice of a Linux distribution on it. Once Linux is up and running, set your BIOS to boot into Linux by default. Use Linux for everything you can and slowly migrate your workflow over to the new OS. Keep Windows as it is on its original drive and boot into it whenever you encounter something that doesn't work or you haven't set up on Linux yet. Don't stress about rushing through this part. You have almost a year before Win10 is unsupported. Take your time and enjoy the process.

Over time, your Linux OS will become very useful for you as you uncover more ways to use it instead of Windows and Windows will be reserved for those infrequent edge cases where your needs are not met by Linux. This decouples you from the Microsoft ecosystem, making their enshittification less impactful on your life. I followed this exact path and I'm now a near full-time Linux user with Nobara as my chosen distribution and I could not be happier. I love my PC again.

The only thing I use Windows for now is sim racing games, as I haven't yet dedicated time to find out how to get the expensive sim racing peripherals I own working on Linux yet. Apparently it's possible and some people have had great success with it. This is something I will be actively working on over the coming year. Everything else I own runs perfect on Linux. I run a home studio so that means a lot of audio peripherals and specialized software. For 95% of my use case, Nobara just works.

The transition will take some work, but in the end if you can get yourself away from dependence on Windows, the options and freedom available to you expand like crazy. Its worth it just to show Microsoft that no, they no longer have a stranglehold on desktop PC users. The more we engage with non-mainstream options, the more the mainstream has to behave itself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Did the same thing. Finally settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but Nobara looks good too.

It's hard to cold turkey jump to Linux, transitioning to Linux should be the default recommendation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I tried switching about a decade ago, when gaming wasn't really possible. I ended up just not using it. Recently, after proton, I tried to dual boot again, to slowly transition. I chose to install them on the same drive on different partitions, and this worked fine until I booted into Windows one time and it updated and nuked the boot partition. I just swore off Windows at that point because Linux was now handling everything I needed. Anything I wanted with Windows I could live without, and it's been fantastic since.

I was on Fedora then, and I'm on Garuda now. Both are good, but a few things with Fedora annoyed me (they were done for a reason but I didn't like it). Garuda has been great. I've had zero complaints.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'd never recommend cold turkey-ing it. That's a recipe for dissatisfaction I think. A gradual transition is easy and there's so much less pressure when things go awry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I still have windows for VR. Maybe there's a solution, but VR is enough of a hassle. I'm glad I've still got the windows drive around in that sense

[–] Wild_Mastic 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm actually doing what you are suggesting for about a month or so now, and i'm also on Nobara!

Today i booted windows for the first time in 2 weeks, just to change the date format as kde wasn't booting for some weird ansi character problem in the date. Apparently I changed the time on the motherboard and broke something.

That said, i've been playing games with basically 0 issues so far (many indies, rdr2 and a copule others) and doing what i usually did on windows.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Hot damn, that's awesome. Glad you're enjoying it! Nobara is great!

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[–] riodoro1 6 points 3 days ago

Uninstalling that fucking malware?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Steve Gibson's InControl probably a no research needed option https://www.grctech.com/incontrol/details.htm

I've been listening to the security now podcast for about 8 years, so my trust of him and yours might vary. The website looks like web 1.0 because it is.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

If you still need/want Windows, get an LTSC certain. 10 is supported through 2028 iirc, and the IoT version through 2032.

I haven't tried the LTSC version of 11 yet, so no idea if it's worth trying.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ain’t going to stop my folks from switching to Linux mint.

[–] Valmond 24 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Linux Mint Gang!

Are we becoming "I use Mint BTW"?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Yes,

I use arch BTW.

[–] Wild_Mastic 30 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

I still cannot understand the utiliy of tpm, except for tricking tech illiterate people to spend money on a new pc.

[–] surph_ninja 28 points 4 days ago

It’s OS level DRM.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's a way of tying an encryption key to the processor. Depending on how you look at it that's either a good way to ensure your disks aren't readable if they're separated from your machine or a vendor lock-in.

[–] madcaesar 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Man, I recently ran into this shit when I bought a computer for my patents. I wanted to upgrade their hard drive and the fucking thing wouldn't boot unless I fully cloned the original hard drive into the new one.

I never even knew about this fuckery

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

It certainly can be a pain in the proverbials. It's one of those things that can be good or bad. When it's the end user deliberately choosing to use it, it can provide extra peace of mind and lock down certain attack vectors, when it's the vendor doing it, it's just a way to make it harder to service your machine. That it also still locks down certain attack vectors is almost a byproduct in that scenario.

[–] AtHeartEngineer 5 points 3 days ago

This is misleading, tech linked did an explanation about this the other day https://youtu.be/Jio-Wq11K80

[–] undu 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Where's the source for the supposed U-turn? I only see the article defending TPM.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

TPM is still part of what they're calling "minimum system requirements" but they're allowing you to install without it. There will be big scary warnings though and they're threatening to not provide support.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-on-devices-that-don-t-meet-minimum-system-requirements-0b2dc4a2-5933-4ad4-9c09-ef0a331518f1

Time will tell what happens. I believe if they see a significant portion of Windows 10 users on legacy devices without TPM upgrade to 11 they'll continue to support it because the data they suck up is more valuable to them than the effort to support it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago
[–] AceBonobo 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

That page does not mention tpm, and on the requirenments page TPM 2.0 is still listed:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-11-specifications

EDIT: OK I see it now, it says that the requirenments are still in place, but that they are not enforced. But it also notes that future updates may not be available to computers that does not fullfill the requirenments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A non enforced requirement sounds like it is not a requirement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I see it more like that Microsoft are saying something like "Fine, you can install Windows 11 without meeting the official minimum requirenments, but we can't promise that future patches won't break your system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I mean if I was a shitty corporation that wanted to onboard new clients I would do a sweet bait and switch later once they are dependant on the new system... And I don't just mean Microsoft, it is common now

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I think it's just scare tactics to get people to buy a new computer. I really doubt that Microsoft will withhold updates because it will cause huge security problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

It's more about manufacturers, they want all new laptops to have a tpm, if those mobo/laptop manufacturers want the shiny "compatible with win11" stickers they have to add a tpm.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

They're not withholding, this is a normal lifecycle for their OS'es (technically this one is already an extended deadline due to covid). The fact that Win10 had a 10 year life is the first time they have done so (LTS builds not withstanding). The amount of vulnerabilities and patching necessary to keep that husk going isn't worth the squeeze to them.

Even Linux builds are lucky to reach 10 years of support on a given kernel.

Mint Life Cycle

Ubuntu Life Cycle

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

You bet they make it a requirement again, after most Win10 users downgraded?

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