I haven't had Windows on my computer since Windows 7. Instead I've been using modern Linux distributions. This is freedom. My computer doesn't slow down, is lightning fast, and just works, year after year.
In this case, Windows 10 will continue to run on your computer perfectly fine. Microsoft are not changing anything about Windows 10, or the way people use Windows 10, or removing any Windows 10 'ownership' that people have right now.
The complaints are that Windows 11 has additional requirements (a modern CPU with a TMP 2.0 chip), and that older computers don't have that. Essentially people are sad that they can't upgrade because their computers don't meet the minimum spec. TMP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module) is a bit controversial, but you can run Windows without it. Just not Windows 11.
Secure boot does not prevent a user from installing Linux. That’s just FUD.
Secure boot or TPM can make sense for the cloud, since you might want to check if the provider changed your OS. MS used ransomware to justify secure boot. That is FUD. Boot and Bios trojans have become extremely rare and it doesn't provide enough protection anyway.
This is for vendor lock in and nothing else.
But if you ask me, "they" essentially want an un-tamperable and un-recordable pipe between hosted server and the monitor that emits electrons to your eyeballs.
Secure boot was introduced for Windows 8, ages ago. Microsoft and PC vendors promised that on all Intel PCs the user can install their own certificates. I have not heard that this would have changed. So the problem affects only ARM PCs, which aren't particularly common.
As a Linux user I use secure boot. On some machines with big distros that have shims signed by Microsoft. On others with Arch or Yocto with my own keys.
From a security standpoint secure boot is hard to justify to be honest. When did you encounter the last boot or bias trojan?
Sure, large distros are signed by Microsoft. Do I want that? They also complained that it takes quite a long time....
Where is the benefit for the user?
Secure boot is simple and lightweight. Should I just wait until some damage happens? I agree it's not the most critical measure. I have at least one machine where it doesn't work and many where initramfs remains unchecked. Have not lost my sleep yet.
There's nothing to stop you from using Windows 10 or Linux on your hardware unless MS goes all anti-competitive and forces OEMs to build hardware that only runs Windows 11.
They didn't force OEMs, but some devices can only run Windows 8.1 with no ability to turn Secure boot off.
> ARM-based Certified For Windows RT devices, such as the Microsoft Surface RT device, are designed to run only Windows 8.1. Therefore, Secure Boot cannot be turned off, and you cannot load a different operating system.
Same for TPM. Not even TPM 1.2 is enforced and that was a requirement for windows 10 already.
For lazy people with win10 already installed use https://github.com/ArkaneDev/WinPass11
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci725s2c/archive/...
This isn't exactly comforting or acceptable. Windows 10 will stop receiving security updates in what, 5 years? I have a desktop computer from 2014 that I use daily, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The amount of (unnecessary) ewaste Microsoft will create by going through with this decision is staggering.
On the other hand every other device on the market now (mobile phone, tablets, everything Apple) are almost completely locked down from the user's perspective so MS probably feels they are safe in joining the rest of the world in tying the user's hands.
I understand the move towards better security but they should also consider extending Windows 10 support beyond the current end of 2025 deadline, given the harsh requirements for upgrade. You could buy a brand new MS device today and see it turn into an unsupported paperweight in just 4 years. The security pros for Secure Boot shouldn't come at the cost of millions of useless and unsupported PCs so early in their (historically long) lifecycle.
I've had personal computers for years and none of them have been on corporate networks so I don't see how MS should care about me in that - and for actual businesses aren't their hardware turnaround times generally less than 5 years? Is this all worth it to shave off that 1%?
Cloud account, cloud storage, cloud applications, cloud content, cloud security, cloud messaging, cloud meeting, cloud moderation.
Everything will be in the cloud and connected with a subscription, paid or with ads.
Your computer will only be client connected to those services, and just as users getting banned from different internet services by breaking the user agreement, you will be banned from your computer for breaking the user agreement. The distinction between the computer and the internet services will be very fuzzy because they will be intertwined.
Also read this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28059074
Doesn't that count as deceptive marketing? I mean, the timespan between Win10 and Win11 is comparable to the timespan between Win8 and Win10. Does Microsoft lack a corporate memory? Have they said anything about this discrepancy between their forward-looking announcements and their actual behaviour?
Do they think it doesn't matter what BS they spin to their prospective customers?
To go through your points, people are still buying new computers today which Windows 11 will not support, so we're looking at a 5 year life cycle for that hardware if those users do not do something like switch to Linux, which we know most people will not.
Using a PC which is no longer receiving security updates is a terrible idea if it's connected to the internet. Continuing to use the device while it is connected to the internet is not a viable option.
Most importantly, even if my computer happens to be 11 years old at that time, if it still works, it still works. I 100% reject the idea that people should retire perfectly fine computers over unnecessary and arbitrary hardware requirements.
What really gets me upset about this whole situation is the marketing around Windows 10, and how it would be the last version of Windows ever.
For example, if we change the version number, we get a slightly different picture: "...Windows 7 will continue to run on your computer perfectly fine. Microsoft are not changing anything about Windows 7, or the way people use Windows 7, or removing any Windows 7 'ownership' that people have right now."
Remember Windows 7 having constant nag screens in it to upgrade? Remember Microsoft pushing their godawful Metro design, alongside a lack of a proper Start menu, before that was patched out? Remember people discovering that their OSes had forcefully upgraded after leaving their computers unattended for a while?
Given all of that, a bit of distrust is to be expected.
You haven't been doing this long enough if you believe that.
Has it been confirmed anywhere that Win10 installations won't be automatically updated to Win11? Given the automatic nature of Win10 updates I'd expect that I'm waking up one morning, and be greeted by Win11 on my gaming PC (and since Win11 is just a marketing name for what's normally a Win10 feature update, this is most likely to happen, at least for Win10 Home users).
That said, I might not really cry myself to sleep if people leave Windows behind.
Though right now the only problem I have is Windows restarting overnight for updates. Closing half the open programs.
Even though I explicitly set it to no auto restart if user logged on. Then again, it ignores the work time, too.
This really annoys me. I mean, why can't they just pop up a warning that I need to reboot? Or perhaps (not so good) at least take note of which apps are running, and re-launch them after the forced reboot?
Windows has been getting suckier with each release since Win2K. None of this suckiness is security, or seriously-cool enhancements. It's all caused by marketing exigencies.
Microsoft's awfulness makes me want to cry.
[Edit: changed "since WinNT" to "since Win2K" - Win2K wasn't suckier than WinNT - as far as I know, it was just WinNT re-skinned]
I think people who complain about this situation are people who know enough about computers to know that an "older" but higher-end computer would run just fine. The random Joe probably isn't running a 6th gen maxed-out i7, but some cheap low-end PC that they're used to having to change fairly regularly because it breaks for no reason.
I'm not defending MS here, but I think their strength is based on enterprise clients, where people change computers much more often, as based on their support contracts, and run-of-the-mill users who don't even think of "Windows" as being different from "the computer".
Power users are either "stuck" somehow on Windows (games, or other software that requires Windows) or are already on Linux. In the first case, it may be an issue, but they'll probably just grumpily whip out their card and upgrade. What else are they going to do?
I'm in the second situation and running a 3rd gen i7 and have no intention of upgrading it as long the computer works. But I only occasionally boot it in Windows to play some game. When games won't support Windows 10 anymore, I'll just play some other game.
But there are plenty of people out there who are otherwise highly educated or intelligent who simply don't have sufficient domain knowledge when it comes to computers, to make more informed choices instead of being herded like sheep by the tech-giants.
And I can't think of a single go-to resource on the net that can explain the intricacies of computers and apps to the average (but intelligent) Joe, with a particular view towards enabling more freedom and privacy for them.
That may be true, but I also get the feeling that they choose to spend their energy worrying about other things, as long as the computer does the job they want it to do.
Hell, I have a friend who's actually a techie, tried Linux, actually even has it installed on his daily driver (dual boot on a single drive in a laptop), he just never uses it. He's a Java dev, so all his stack would probably work on Linux with little or no fiddling.
But he just does not care. Windows doesn't bother him enough to make the change, so he didn't change.
I think this is the most important part: Windows mostly works for most people. Paradoxically, I think that the fact that the OS is less and less important is actually a bad thing for Linux adoption. Because people just don't care about the OS as long as the browser works. And on Windows, it works well enough. So why would they change?
There are of course philosophical reasons, but people don't appear to care. There are billions of Facebook users. This shows people don't care about these issues. I don't know if it's because they intrinsically don't care, or because we've done a bad job of educating them. Maybe a bit of both.
But it sure feels like an uphill battle, even among "techies".
I disagree that it's a bad thing for Linux. If you install Linux on a persons machine where they only browse facebook, they wont notice and they save ~120$. Worked fine enough for a couple of non-techies I know (kindergarten teachers).
This is no longer the 90s, every year there are articles "20?? is the year of the linux"! Linux has actually been around for longer than w95/NT and it is 10-15 years now that user friendly distributions are available. More or less, a laptop with a linux installation will work until it is thrown away.
However, installing an operation system (be it win or linux or OSX) is not sth that everyone can do neither that can be expected of everyone.
So, in my opinion:
1) Linux usage/adoption can not increase unless there are ways to be preinstalled on laptops/supported in a similar way as windows/osx are.
2) The importance of freedom is a personal matter which we can not impose on people.
This is a pretty dated argument. Chromebooks outsell Macs. Tablets (Mac or Android) are another well-known substitute for PCs for many. Macs are not that expensive compared to similar Windows hardware, and there's an entire low end tier of alternatives priced below Windows machines. 15 years ago Macs were expensive and nobody knew about Linux, so they drove to the store and bought a cheap Windows device. That hasn't been accurate for a long time though.
I think that "regular users" don't make a difference between operating systems, as in it's not something they consider and, most importantly, it's not something they change after the fact. As a sibling said, people upgrade when they change computers.
I'm not arguing whether apple's hardware prices are justified or not (I personally consider they were up until a few years ago – I own multiple MBPs). I'm specifically talking about cheap computers. But the fact is I can walk into a random supermarket in my parents' small town and walk out with a windows laptop for a few hundred euros. Not sure where you can find "low end macs priced below windows machines" (or maybe I misunderstood your point). Chromebooks do look like an alternative, though, and can be found just as easily.
Of course, many people are taking up alternatives to windows pcs, like chromebooks or tablets. But I doubt they do this because they can't run windows 11 specifically. They probably realized they only browse randomly the internet, so they don't need a "full-blown" computer. Bonus points for chromebooks being cheap, and for tablets being light. But I think they only make this change when it's time to buy a new computer, not in response to some MS decision.
And more importantly, they won't install some other OS on some PC they have when they realize it can't run windows 11. They'll just keep running windows 10 until the pc won't boot anymore.
Windows 10 was my fav version because that was the straw that broke the camels back for me and I would never even consider installing Windows at this point.
KDE Plasma is so vastly superior to Windows it isn't even close. I don't even work in IT either. A Dev intentionally using Windows is just embarrassing.
That's brave of you, I hope you had installed the latest security updates, which for Windows which hasn't been updated in months can take several hours, multiple reboots and has 1/10 chance to update successfully.
Update mechanism are another reason for someone to run Linux, Especially a rolling release distribution.
Linux for work and development. PS5 for gaming. I am happy that my complete household is Microsoft free.
Valve is working together with AAA publishers to get better Linux support.
WSL2 is a game changer.
You can still create a local account and login to your PC without a callback to Microsoft.
"Johnathan Smith" => "johna" == yuck.
Imagine if Windows had charged every developer who ever built anything on windows 30% of their revenue. They got almost bludgeoned to death for shipping a default browser 20 years ago.
Windows deserves a lot of criticism but we take it for granted that a monopolist basically just sold an operating system and let everyone run and build whatever they wanted on top of it, we could've been fucked way worse.
That doesn't match my experience of modern Linux at all. Plenty of forced "upgrades" that broke things, sometimes leaving me with an unbootable system (systemd).
I switched to FreeBSD and things are much better.
1. Win 10 was promised to be the "last Windows", updated like a rolling distro.
2. Minimum system requirements are raised in a way that leaves behind "as many as 60 percent" of hardware that's otherwise fine.
3. Home edition cannot be set up with a local account.
Can say that about pretty much any OS, highly depending on what exactly it is you do with it, and if you happen to be lucky enough that you're the one which doesnt't have one single problem. Especially the 'just works' bit rings much less bells for me when it comes to Linux than it does for other OS. Which kinda harms the feeling of freedom I get from it.
I had a ton of issues with Windows when my mother used it (despite me being a long time Windows user and offering her remote assistence). At one point I got so fed up with yet another update that fucked things up (=changed the UI she was used to) that I decided to install Ubuntu. My mother was happy with the new system and the number of times I had to support her was one thenth of what it was before.
OSX is also not without pitfalls, especially the updates can break a lot of existing setups (hardware...)
Linux is great for real power users or real beginners, not so great for intermediate people who know enough to fuck a system up for good. But if you are a beginner or a power user it just works unless you fuck it up.
With Windows and OSX it just works till they decide to fuck it up, even if you are trying to actively prevent it.
Well sure, because it is. As mentioned I also worked both in first- and second level support in an enviroment that had Windows, OSX and Linux desktop, with very varying degrees of proficiency between the users of all operating systems.
The anectdote from my mother is mirrored in the many experiences I made at the job. Sure that is still no true evidence, but I never claimed it was more than just my opinion. My opinion that I derived from working at precisely the issues involved.
Btw. there was one particularily bad Windows user (the type that comes with viruses and toolbars, the type that thinks someone can control their computer if you plug their mouse into another computer). We had nothing but hassle with that person until we moved said person to Linux, where a big pain turned into a much smaller pain.
This is again just another annecdotal example, but I could go on.
Just like the sibling comment, some more anecdotes painting the 'it depends' picture: my main Windows 7 dev machine has been running for about a decade now. It's not slower than it used to and just works, year after year. My main Ubuntu (LTS 14 through 18) machine has also been doing pretty well in the roughly same timespan. Same hardware, but took substantially more hours on keeping it running. In the meantime also had an MBP with OSX and the software overall is pretty decent, just got unlucky apparently and the hardware died on me after just 3 years IIRC. Other machines I also use sometimes didn't all do so well, but there's really no clear loser.