Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

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Making Win 11 even harder to install is a bold move from Microsoft. Most average users are content with using the OS that comes with their PC and upgrading it when necessary. But if the option is to either buy a new PC or fiddle with registry settings in hope that Win 11 will work, I think a lot more people will start looking at Linux instead.

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It’s like they forgot that their monopoly is ensured by their lenience towards piracy and industry leading backwards compatibility. Being consumer hostile this way is unusual from Microsoft but I guess they hope to make it up by making Windows subscription based in the longer term.

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Nah, just us tech heads that are willing to put in the effort (and I'm not, Linux on the desktop has a long way to go, and I use Linux for all sorts of services).

99% of users can't be bothered to understand the concept of a web browser, and that there are different ones. Switch them to any Linux distro and they'd freeze like deer in headlights.

Source: decades of providing support.

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This is just going to push people who aren't locked into Windows, away from Windows, and Linux is making a pretty good argument for itself as a viable alternative atm, particularly for gaming.

Although another option would be to virtualize Windows on a Linux host too, that's what I'm doing right now /w Win10 LTSC for general apps that aren't entirely WINE-friendly, and then Win8.1 for some older games that aren't entirely WINE-friendly, and the Win8.1 VM has my R9 270 being passed through to it over vfio-pci for graphics for that reason.

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Linux on the desktop has a long way to go

What do you perceive is missing? I've been using Linux exclusively since 2006 (while supporting Windows users at work), there's never been a time when I felt like I was missing a particular Windows feature. Mostly I just find Windows' lack of user-friendliness to be extremely maddening.

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Switched my mum to Mint, and encouraged her to attend outreach meets put on by local Linux groups. She's well pleased with it and has been recommending her friends to switch.

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How is this cracking down? The article says the documentation for the registry edits have been removed and an automated approach of removing restrictions is now a false positive for windows defender.

I'm assuming the registry edits still work (article doesn't say) in which case where am I meant to point my outrage?

Now if they block windows 11 from running and the registry entries do nothing, that would be a worthy news article.

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Let's not kid ourselves, most people will not start looking at Linux. They should, but they won't. They'll continue to use the version of Windows their machine came with, becoming a botnet petri dish in the process, forever, until it breaks or becomes unusable. If Microsoft actually forces their machine to become unbootable they'll rush off to the mall and replace it with a Mac.

And in the meantime they'll click off any nags and warnings Microsoft sends them without reading them.

Just like happened with XP.

Just like what happened with Vista.

Just like what happened with 7.

Etc.

Most users are clueless, barely understand how to use their computers except by rote, and therefore are extremely afraid of change. Microsoft could offer a free puppy with your updrade to Win11 and I think about 75% of users would still refuse to take it.

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To be fair, if you've been using Linux exclusively for nearly 30 years then yeah, you wouldn't be missing any Windows features because you don't daily it. That's a no-brainer.

I'm a daily Windows user but I do sometimes dabble in Linux both out of curiosity and also for challenge reasons. I used to use it for my school laptop(s) and at one point I had a 2nd desktop rig running it. I can gladly say it has come a long way and improved in many ways since the early days, but it still has a ways to go. Unfortunately one of the biggest obstacles is the Linux community itself which is both resistant to change and exceptionally hostile to new users.

About two years ago I was troubleshooting an audio driver that refused to work and I was asking in several Linux communities for assistance. The responses ranged from standoffish to indifferent to several people outright saying "If you can't even figure this out then maybe you shouldn't use Linux lmao". And I agree. Maybe I shouldn't. Because I was tired of spending so much time screwing around in a terminal while talking to people that think I am trash for struggling to use the operating system they claim is so good.

Linux can be an extremely polished, smooth, and effective experience but that experience is like the frozen surface of a lake. Once something goes wrong and you break through the surface - you are screwed. That has been my experience, at least.

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This isn’t the story. All that’s changed is that a 3rd party script is being flagged my Defender as malicious. You can still update unsupported machines like always.

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Ugh that's terrible about the experience with the audio driver, and unfortunately I have to agree... there ARE some really elitist linux communities out there. My last bad experience was on Digg, I was trying to ask a question about changing the resolution on the console from the grub config. The admin of the group was so hung up on insisting that I couldn't have a "real" server because I had a monitor connected to it, that he wouldn't even let anyone else try to answer the question (and it's actually a simple setting). He actually deleted the post because he was so disgusted by the idea that my rack of servers has a kvm switch attached.

The communities here on lemmy have been so much better with helping people out. Yeah there is definitely still hardware out there that is impossible (or nearly so) to get to work under linux, but those are usually the "software" devices (like the 56k modems we saw just before broadband become widespread). I've also run across issues trying to get a soft keyboard to pop up on a 2-in-1 Dell laptop (where you can flip the keyboard to the back and use it like a tablet), but I didn't really poke at that for long. On the other hand I've run into similar issues on Windows over the years, trying to reinstall it on a machine and discovering even the manufacturer no longer has the drivers for the hardware they sold, so I don't feel like linux is unique in this problem.

As far as fixing problems goes... Have you ever had Windows break so badly that you had to burn an install disk, boot up to a command prompt, and perform a series of cryptic commands trying to get the system up and running again? I've had to deal with that both from viruses and from Windows breaking itself. Meanwhile linux has such tools built in from the boot menu, and yeah the commands are still cryptic to most people, but at least you don't have to visit pirate bay from another machine to get back online.

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And here I am with windows 11 compatible hardware refusing that upgrade. I'm primarily in Linux on my desktop these days, but it dual boots into windows 10.

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I can safely say that over 20 years of mainly Windows, I have never had any crashes or bugs. Ever.

I was using the same install of Windows since 2017, up to 2021, without a single issue. Why I had to reinstall it was because of a foolish mistake on my part, late late at night, trying to install Linux on a spare SSD I had lying around thanks to a laptop was really struggling to do anything any longer. Again, this was my fault 100% as I didn't understand SDA/SDB/etc. I do now though!

With Linux, there is always something that prevents me from using my computer in a manner that I would consider "normal". I mainly game. I use save editors, WeMod, and love to use mods on games that support it. I like how easy it is to set up my NAS, through Windows, without any extra fussing around in some config file somewhere. I like that I can just do what I'm planning to do with the computer that day, unlike in Linux where sometimes I can't even do something basic like set a jpg as a poster for a downloaded YouTube video on Plex that is all hosted on my NAS. On openSUSE, apparently I can't just do that. There is some arbitrary permissions issue preventing me from doing that, while on Windows, it just works.

Sometimes I wonder what actual programs Linux permanents use on the daily. I truly find it hard to believe it is a lot of applications, because most of the applications I like/need to use, will not work on Linux through Wine/Bottles/Proton. Nor do they have a Linux alternative. It makes me sad, because I truly want to get off that OS, but the wide amount of things I like to do always get snagged up on something in Linux.

All this to say that I absolutely fucking LOVE Linux, what it stands for, and the idea behind it. Just a counter argument, is all.

P.S. I've been an on and off again Linux noob since at least 2010, and even today, I am still trying to make the move. It's just not as simple as the Linux evangelicals like to say it is.

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I work in IT, run Mint on my travel laptop, and yet at home use the desktop I got 10 years ago, still with Win 8.1. And I use my current desktop quite extensively. There's still a lot of perfectly fine hardware with outdated OS floating around, and I'd argue that a significant portion of it is used by people experienced enough that they know what they are doing. Much of that will shift towards Linux. Not most of it, I'll grant you that, but more than people expect.

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This is so cursed i have to ask why? Windows 8.1 is riddled with vulnerabilities and its ugly.

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Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware