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Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

As the owner of a 1st generation Threadripper I'm pretty pissed off that my 4 year old CPU is unsupported.

My guess is that Microsoft will backtrack on this within 6 months of release because basically nobody will upgrade their processor just to use Windows 11. They have a history of doing stuff like this and then backpeddling when fewer people put up with their shit than they expected.

Then again, lately they've been doubling down on stupid shit nobody wants so who knows. Either way, I know I won't be upgrading to Win 11 any time soon and the company I work for certainly isn't going to rush out and buy all new workstations for it either.

I'm not sure it will be basically nobody, but they will figure that most people who will do it will have done it by then. This release even seems to say that they will lower requirements early next year. Then I guess there will be lawsuits when the old CPUs run it just as well as the new ones because there haven't really been major CPU changes (other than integrated GPU improvements).

Windows 10 isn't going away so they have no need to backtrack.

The purpose of Windows 11 is to sell new hardware. New releases of Windows always caused a jump in OEM hardware sales. When Microsoft went to the Windows 10 forever model, Microsoft and the OEMs lost this huge marketing opportunity.

I wish Greta Thunberg (or another environmentalist like David Attenborough) would say something about the fuckery of how this upgrade is going to generate significant e-waste. Shame the companies that do this.

I say this as a Windows 7 on Ryzen 2 user.

Is Win7 still secure?

No, especially not for non-technical users. I support a popular software package and we run integrity checks on our own binaries - in recent months, the number of people that contact us and send us samples of our binaries infected with some common trojan on Windows 7 has skyrocketed. And that's just infectious malware.

IMO, Windows Defender is the greatest thing Microsoft has done with Windows 10.

> Windows Defender is the greatest thing Microsoft has done with Windows 10

I have not worried about an anti-virus in a long time, granted I have adblockers/use VMs but idk maybe that's just WD being good. I remember doing tech support work a long time ago and how Malware Bytes was one of the good ones (free) to use/actually worked.

It's Microsoft Defender. There are a lot things that are turned off by default, otherwise you computer would slow down. Windows 11 is going to turn those things on by default.

Someone has made a tool that downloads and applies the patches that MS is still giving to the extended support customers and he is pirating. Although I'd like to see people's faces when I tell them that someone is Russian^W Ukrainian...

Windows 7 still receives security updates under the Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscription program. It's unlikely, but possible, that the poster has such a subscription. I have Customers who do because they needed more time to migrate away from legacy applications that functioned under Windows 7 but not under Windows 10 (or, more often, functioned fine but were "unsupported" by the application "manufacturer" under Windows 10).

First gen Ryzen is unsupported? That's hilarious.

My 1800X goes like a bat out of hell for everything I need it to do and I have zero intention of upgrading it.

They can keep Windows 11.

> They can keep Windows 11.

For 4 more years, then Windows 10 is EOL.

I simply don't understand how technical users have not all switched to LTSC at this point. LTSC 2019 will receive security updates until 2029. In the future, you may have to use the IoT LTSC version to get the full 10 years of support, but I assume someone will work out how to do this (my understanding is that it is still a full version of windows, with some built in "kiosk" features).

LTSC is amazing, Windows as it should be. You can pretty easily disable any telemetry and disable unneeded features (and many of the annoying ones don't even come installed by default). I am using Linux 99.5% of the time, and I still use LTSC whenever I need to use Windows for something.

I agree. Once you try it, you see that it is truly Windows 10 as it should be. Very small install, with minimum extraneous junk. Works on most, even older laptops etc. Controllable update, telemetry, etc.

How would one actually (legally) hey ahold of an LTSC key?

90% of the linked article is trying to peddle laptops and tablets that support Windows 11 so it's pretty obvious that they are just trying to milk the OEM OS market with a new OS.

You really shouldn't be. It's hot steaming garbage that requires a frickin Microsoft Account to even activate (unless you buy the $$$ Pro License). And it doesn't even allow you to switch the panel position away from the bottom of the screen, which every version of Windows since 95 could do. Just avoid this.

As someone who always gets the pro version because home has always had arbitrary restrictions and as someone who has never changed the taskbar position, neither of those are reasons to avoid Windows 11.

The reason to not care about it for me is that it doesn't actually improve anything in any notable way. There's no compelling reason to upgrade.

Time to switch to Linux

> Time to switch to Linux

Windows 10 and 11 can run that app. It's called WSL2

Can they do that without sending any telemetry without you having to resort to firewalls, domain control or other stuff not available to the average user?

No. But they can run Windows-only programs as well. Linux is objectively better that Windows in the privacy (and package management) department, but Wine just doesn’t cut it sometimes.

I tried a year ago to switch to Linux, with Windows in a VM, but it just wasn’t good enough for my liking. I wanted Windows program support but with the power of the Linux command line (such as building C and C++ programs from source). and WSL does that really well. I ended up switching back a few months ago…

Lastly, there’s the aspect of online school. Proctoring systems such as ProctorU and Examity mandate Windows or macOS.

Can they do it on a 1st generation Threadripper?

Windows 10 and WSL on Windows 10 run fine on 1st generation Threadripper and the OS is supported till 2025.

Linux can also run Windows. In fact ironically Windows used to run faster inside a VM on Linux than it did on bare metal.

>n fact ironically Windows used to run faster inside a VM on Linux than it did on bare metal

Any sources for this? I don't think it's true.

It's not that crazy a statement if you have a virtual disk. Linux would cache that disk image and thus file system operations in Windows (which are known to be slower than in Linux) runs much faster because they're not getting stalled by slower hardware operations. It's worth remembering just how slow the old mechanical drives were -- the difference might not be as distinct (nor even exist at all) between virtualised and bare metal now that SSDs are the norm.

As for why file system operations are slower in Windows than on Linux, there's quite a lot of discussion around that from WSL. I don't really recall the internals of Windows fs operations but there is something about those syscalls generating events that trigger other processes (eg so you can attach a virus scanner) vs Linux's approach of optimising the syscall for performance. The Linux approach does have it's disadvantages in that often you'd want to write software that is triggered upon a file system event and there's no way to watch a nested directory. But overall I'd take the win with fast reads and writes.

I run a windows VM in my Linux host for work every single day. When I leave that org, I just delete the VM and its files.

WSL Doesn't support CPU performance counters (PMU) or systemd the last time I checked. It's fine for some things but it's more of a simulacrum of Linux.

WSL2 is Linux in a VM.

Apparently not if you're using a four year old CPU, at least for Windows 11.

Which comes with it's own host of issues, particularly involving networking.

I'd love to. Linux supports Quicken, AutoCAD, and Affinity right?

I'm almost positive that everyone still using Windows is doing so because they have some Windows-only workflow they don't want to give up. Everyone else has either moved to Linux or given up desktop computing altogether.

My desktop is a bit older - but can handle everything other than the security chip changes. Also pretty pissed off.

Are you sure your CPU doesn't have the required security chip? On Intel systems it is called PTT and is present in almost all CPUs over the past decade IIRC. But often disabled in the BIOS. I thought AMD CPUs have also had it for a while.

Sadly not. i5-6600K doesn't support it, and my motherboard is literally one version short of having the chip.

I have the regular i5-6600 in my game system and it does have it so I am almost certain that chip does as well (and a quick search shows up someone with the k version who was able to enable it). For some reason the setting is under "peripherals" for me, I guess most likely the setting is hidden somewhere for you as well.

It looks like for CPU/firmware TPMs, not all motherboard manufacturers supported it on their 100/200-series models.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/motherboards-that-su...

I think people are blowing the "unsupported" word out of proportion.

MS have already said you can install Windows 11 on whatever you want with the media creation tool.

Being unsupported just gives them an out to not deliver drivers or do QC for obscure or really old hardware configurations.

Since Threadripper is a new enough platform I wouldn't expect that to happen for quite some time.

The people being really stung by this are larger organizations like schools and hospitals who _need_ that support. This seems like it's throwing a bone to HP, Dell and co.

MS also said that unsupported PCs won’t be entitled to receive Windows Updates, including security updates.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/28/22646035/microsoft-window...

Right, not being entitled to provide them doesn't mean they won't provide them. I addressed this in my above comment:

> just gives them an out to not deliver drivers or do QC for obscure or really old hardware configurations

As others have mentioned they've already done this with Windows 10 and received a bunch of backlash for it. I have an old tablet (that shipped with Windows 8) that can't run the latest Windows 10 builds because there isn't a supported graphics driver. I had realistic expectations about niche hardware like this but many people assume that if they successfully install the OS it'll just work/be updated indefinitely. They're making it clear with 11 this isn't the case.

My Surface Pro 4 won't be getting Windows 11 either. However, Windows 10 will stay supported until 2025 which by then I will have upgraded. I'm not happy about it but it is what it is.

Yes reports suggest you will be able to download the Win11 iso and manually install or upgrade the system, but I haven't seen any guarantees that those systems will continue to receive security updates or support.

Same with my 4 y/o i7 Kaby Lake. This is simply unacceptable.

me too, I wouldn't consider first gen Ryzen as something unsupportable either. But at least they're still allowing for installations and well, I'm not so sure if a CPU from 2017 needs to be supported for new Operating Systems. Either way I hope they achieve something special with the new OS given they are putting the bar so much higher.

I'm not. It just means Microsoft has entrenched me further into the free Unix ecosystem even than I was before.

I sort of buy that they're not supporting CPUs without a TPM chip, but it's absolute nonsense that they're also obsoleting a ton of new CPUs for really obscure reasons.

As the owner of a 6? year old i5-6600 I’m … ambivalent.

I have a rock solid i7-920. It's aged well.

Just stop using Windows.

> Just stop using Windows.

As a happy user of i5, I don't feel any need to upgrade to Windows 11 from Windows 10.

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