I installed Linux mint on my laptop the other day because of various sustained long term annoyances with Windows. Despite some minor hiccups it only took about 30 minutes. It’s been such a great experience so far.
I’ve been on EndeavourOS (basically Arch… btw…) for about a year and a half now, and I absolutely love it. I will never use Windows by choice again.
I did the same. Windows 11 ads and one drive forced me out.
If you must use Windows, download it legitimately from MS website. Use RUFUS to burn the ISO image to a USB. Remove the restrictions you hate.
Dual boot a Linux variant, and move over apps at your leisure, until you are no longer Win OS dependent.
I preferred to do Windows as a VM personally. Dual boot cost me a year before my Linux switch BC it was easier to boot Windows when I needed it. With VM I could do mostly Linux with maybe just vm to open a word doc if I needed it.
I just moved to Linux and started fresh.
The big mental change was instead of searching “sony vegas on linux please” I just started searching for “video editing software Linux”, and take any possible limitations and live with them, as I know it’s only temporary until Linux catches on.
What exactly do you mean, Linux had been "catching on’ since decades, you may need to wait for a while…
I mean for the big software boys to actually start caring about it.
This is customer abusive and should be illegal.
Got so angry, that you deleted your own comment, huh? /j
Look at the vote ratio, do you think I got angry that everyone agreed with me or something?
No, I think they are referring to your username.
Indeed I was.
What a clever and original thing to see that I have not seen ever before in my 4 decades on the internet, yes sirree, certainly one of the most fresh and unique takes ever committed to electrons.
Thank you. <3
This is my sarcastic face for future reference: -_-
I just saw a deleted comment, then your username and found it funny.
I know.
A lot of people make similar attempts at hand crafted jocularity. Most fall about as flat as yours.
wants people to use windows 11 make it difficult to use windows 11 people find ways to use windows 11 anyway (what you wanted in the first place) punish them for using windows 11
???
People that are running a windows modified to disable the hardware eligibility checks are probably also disabling/deleting the telemetry and activation checks.
Microsoft doesn’t want you to use windows 11, they want your money and data.
Greed.
Sure, they want you to run Win11, but chances are you’re already running it, or at least Win10, so there’s not much to gain there.
By making higher requirements for Win11 than neccessary Microsoft makes a killing on Windows licences.
OEMs have to pay Microsoft for keys. And for MS to make money off of keys, OEMs need to make more PCs. And how does MS force/incentivise them to do that? By 80% of the Win10 PCs incompatible with Win11.
Oh, and also, now they get to push their Copilot key as well.
Microsoft has a vested interest in PC sales not stagnating any more than they do, and sometimes it takes an artificial push to make that a reality.
More people will be redirect to Linux, cool.
Sorry for disappoint you. But, normies don’t know what is Linux about? hell even higher than average tech-savvy people know little bit Ubuntu as a Linux.
That would be me.
Tried Ubuntu 15 years ago, but couldn’t because Nvidia driver issues, and haven’t tried again
Look, dudes, I’m bootstrapping a small business while trying to manage ADHD. I can barely get two hours of admin work done in an eight hour day. I just need things to work. I’d love to walk away from Windows but I don’t have the mental bandwidth for that shit
And even if I did, my wife and I share a gaming computer/media center. There’s nothing like having her call me in the middle of a workday because my VPN is keeping her from logging into PBS so that she can watch Grantchester. Imagine the headaches if I installed a new OS.
Much like improving my physical fitness, I have the desire, but not the will
I just setup an old friend couple new computer with Windows. We lost a full day as the HP printer didn’t work (yet worked via Android and my linux laptop without installing absolutely anything), Outlook doesn’t save passwords (so we moved to Thunderbird), chrome is a mess (so we moved to Firefox + unlock origin), Microsoft excel is incredibly expensive and refused to open the only spreadsheet they needed (so me moved to libreoffice)…
A fucking nightmare. And everything worked fine with FOSS or on my laptop.
Just stay away from nvidia on Linux and you are golden.
Just stay away from nvidia on Linux and you are golden.
I’m sorry but this is the kind of condescending bullshit that pushes me away from Linux
I got a 3070TI for half off MSRP for open box in the middle of the crypto bubble, and I’m not buying another GPU until I absolutely have to.
You want more people to embrace Linux? Make it work on startup without jumping through a bunch of hoops, on the hardware we already own.
Your lived experience with Windows is yours, and I’m glad you have a system that works for you. I don’t have the time or mental energy to learn, not just a new OS, but also all of the bugs that go with it.
Look, I get it. I’m putting my apprentice in my old work van, and as I’m looking at the old heap I’m remembering all the little quirks it has that I’ve developed blind spots for. Blind spots they don’t have. Quirks that are actually problems. I know there are problems with windows that I ignore because I know how to work around them. I know the workarounds because I’ve been using Windows since 3.11. I didn’t have that experience with Linux, and neither does my wife. A woman who once nearly bricked our computer falling for an Indian call center scam.
When this rig bites the dust, I’ll probably build a Linux gaming box and just tell her to get used to the OS. For now, we’re using Windows
Also HP is shit and I’d gladly put any HP exec in the hospital if I met them
I honestly never had any problems with my nvidia cards on my Linux systems, and these are my daily drivers. I have 1 laptop that only has Windows and the other 6 computers here don’t. 3 of them are equipped with Nvidia GPUs and work without a single thing ever going wrong with them in that regard.
People who keep perpetuating these ideas that Nvidia = trouble don’t seem to understand that it’s scaring people from trying it out.
I’m AMD, but I heard Nvidia is much better now, and open source drivers are coming soon I believe. That should make the GPU excuse another dead one, along with the gaming one. There’s not going to be many good excuses left.
Most distros work fine with Nvidia these days. The ones that don’t are more the exception.
Installation and setup of a windows OS with programs the user wants takes hours.
Installation and setup of linux with programs… Days or weeks due to some obscure thing that didn’t work and nobody seems to know about or because the “configuration” file has many options but it requires you already knowing what you want and what it does (looking at you mpv).I’m still fiddling with mine due to minor but important problems, I can’t picture the people I know even attempting to figure out linux.
Does it take longer? It almost always just works for me. I tell my package manager to install the package I want and then it’s taken care of, and updates are automatically managed. There’s no hunting around different websites for the installer and then going to the website to update every time the application launcher detects an update when it runs, which is the opposite of when I want to update it.
I don’t know what issues you’re facing, so I can’t comment on it directly. I’ve installed three different distributions withing the past 1.5 years, all which use different package mangers. Each one was faster than settings things up in Windows. The difference is my Windows install I installed a ton of things over time, most of which I wanted immediately when swapping. I don’t know how long it took in total for Windows, but I promise it was significantly longer.
Also the distro I’m using now, Garuda, has a tool to install a bunch of common applications that runs at start. You just tick the ones you want and it handles the rest. A lot of distros have something similar, which is really fast.
Just gotta spread the word. I got two people to switch from Windows to Linux recently. When they heard about an alternative they got very interested and jumped on the opportunity. People want an alternative, but like you say they don’t know one exists, so we need to keep spreading the word of Linux.
PS. They both are enjoying the ad free experience and don’t have any big issues or problems with Linux. Just learning pains
Well, they won’t be able to sell as many new computers if they let people keep using their old ones.
They aren’t big in selling hardware.
Except for laptops.
Even then (and with their Surface tablets) they’re not big for MS.
Somewhat ironically the Surface laptops are really great Linux machines.
Microsoft still makes money off the OEM licenses AFAIK. The Linux community had a whole day about this back in the 90s.
Thank god, for a second there I thought they meant “cracking down on people dodging Windows 11 by intentionally disabling TPM,” like I’ve been doing. False alarm, carry on.
but it seems that the Redmond giant has decided that enough is enough.
But why? People who take the effort have their reasons, find other ways.
Btw, Rufus patches the iso, works anyway.
It’s not only TPM. Older chips are missing some actual security features. AMD not patching their old CPUs of their firmware bug will also become a big problem in the long run.
Not for Microsoft.
“Sorry, you’re running an unsupported, deliberately hacked version of our OS. We can’t help you.”
I doubt it, because those bugs require to already have extensive access to the victim PC. Basically, they just expand the trouble on an already compromised system. It’s bad for sure, but at that point you’re already knee deep in shit and this just adds a few buckets on top.
The AMD bug requires the same access that any of serious previous exploits have given. You don’t need physical access. Any exploit that gives root means the payload can be the AMD firmware exploit which will make it permanently undetectable by anti virus and wiping the os won’t remove it.
For example the ssh exploit from years ago allowed root without even an account on the machine. Those affected detected they had been owned, wiped their machines and restored from backup. If something like that happens again, (https://thehackernews.com/2024/07/new-openssh-vulnerability-could-lead-to.html?m=1) you won’t be able to know you are owned.
Any exploit that gives root
Same in green. If the attacker has physical access or root, you have lost already.
This AMD firmware exploit is different. Yes if an exploit gets your computer you have lost. But it happens to thousands every day. A virus scan will detect it and an OS wipe will clean it.
This AMD exploit means the exploit lives inside the CPU firmware. It can’t ever be detected or removed by normal means because the CPU itself is compromised. (Unless you have the hardware to pull physical signals off your dram chips.)
In the past even normal OS patches would clear out any virus’s lingering in the PC population. Now you could be compromised and never know or be able to do anything about it.
A virus scan will detect it and an OS wipe will clean it.
This only works before the malware has been executed and only if the malware scanner knows it. Often Antivirus can block access to the malware, so it can’t be executed.
If it has been executed, the PC needs to be shut down and all writable mediums connected wiped (including boot sectors and EFI), maybe even the BIOS reset, if it can be updated, to be 100% clean. If you can’t do this, you have to toss the PC in the trash.
If the PC is not shut down, the malware could still survive in RAM and re-install its files or download something else, eg. a remote shell or rootkit.
These processor security flaws just extend this to the CPU firmware, meaning you need to reset this too, after malware has been executed on the PC. If you just downloaded it and the antivirus blocked and deleted it, you’re still safe.
If it got executed and you or a technician can’t remove it from the CPU, you have to toss the PC in the trash, just like you already had to if you can’t reset a malware that flashed itself into an updatable BIOS, for example.
Offline virus scanners are standard. That’s always how you detect if you have been infected. Bios viruses are detected and removed by standard anti-virus software.
They aren’t. The article is disingenuous.
Good! The less PC’s that run W11 the better
If it’s just an installer check then people could just use the old installer versions and update afterward right? Or are they planning on stopping updates for unsupported hardware that already installed windows 11?
It’s MS. I wouldn’t be surprised if they bricked systems attempting to bypass the requirements.
If you’re using Windows 11 and not having a great time with it, there are ways to make the experience more pleasant. We’ve covered 14 tweaks to make Windows 11 better and how to remove Windows 11’s junk, which is a good start toward making an OS you enjoy.
There’s another way…
You could install a windows 10 system to replace the windows 11 system!
Imagine having to remove a bunch of shit just so you can use your OS. smh
Luckily, there exists an OS which undermines extreme enshittification. Can’t remember the name, though …
TempleOs
Sadly, your hardware must support Spirit Boot to install this OS.
Haiku?
Plan9?TempleOS
BeOS?
Step one. Install Linux Mint.
Article isn’t that great. The change is in beta, and it’s preventing the installer from accepting a switch that declares the OS to be a server product.
MS hasn’t said it’s going after any upgrades that are running out of spec hardware. This really sounds like they are just fixing an upgrade option.
“By god we have got to stop people from using Windows!”
Uh. Yes. Do that.
Used market is about to have some bargains on very usable Linux machines.
Cool. I can upgrade some of my decade old machines on the cheap.
Hopefully that newer hardware is as stable as what I already have.
Nice I could use a laptop
No problem, I’m just dodging windows.
