Microsoft is threatening to withhold Windows 11 updates if your CPU is old
theverge.com
theverge.com
I think it's because they're planning on supporting Windows 11 for 10 years. Supporting 20 year old hardware in 2031 would be a massive pain, both in terms of testing and in terms of still not being able to depend on platform features and needing all kinds of kludgy fallbacks (e.g. virtualization or the TPM).
The cost of allowing installation on older hardware for now is basically zero, and is an easy concession to make to help with the negative PR. The cost of promising updates on that old hardware is impossible to estimate, but could be quite high.
If you are a newbie, try PopOS.
Any unavailable W11 drivers install manually by pointing to "D:\WINDOWS\INF and D:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS" or wherever your w10 files are.
Works on an old Dell W7 business desktop with a Core2 Duo E8400.
Do you have your firmware TPM enabled in UEFI?
However, 8th/Zen 2 means i3-8xxx and Ryzen 3xxx or later, respectively, which contradicts Microsoft’s requirements which allows Zen+ Ryzen 2xxx/3xxxG. So it’s a bit of mystery.
2, some kind of DRM scheme that doesnt work on older hardware
Curious about term "winter" here. I sounds like GPUs are not progressing in performance, which is definitely not true. It is a scarcity though.
Yep, it is a winter. Supply winter.
On the other hand, the current process is natural and works well: people get frustrated with their old system, look for something new, try a few distros and if they like them, they stay with Linux, otherwise they go back to their system. In this way the popularity of Linux is increasing steadily, and in a vast majority of cases you use Linux on your personal machine because you want it, and not because you are forced to (because, say, the manufacturer of your previous system is user-hostile). This is how things should be.