My story is simpler. Microsoft dropped the support for Windows 10 and gave me no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently.

So I installed Fedora on that machine, I learned the process, I went through the hurdles. It wasn’t seamless. But, Fedora never said “I can’t”. When it was over, it was fine.

Only if Microsoft had just let me install Windows 11 and suffer whatever the perf problem my CPU would bring. Then I could consider a hardware upgrade then, maybe.

But, “you can’t install unless you upgrade your CPU” forced me to adopt Linux. More importantly, it gave me a story to tell.

There is a marketing lesson there somewhere, like Torvalds’ famous “you don’t break userspace”, something along the lines of “you don’t break the upgrade path”.

I'm in the exact same boat. I was a little unhappy with the ads etc in Windows, but perfectly willing to give Windows 11 a try. But Microsoft decreed that my admittedly a bit old but perfectly workable CPU was incompatible, due to not having a feature I wasn't interested in. I'd need to replace most of my existing hardware to switch. So why not try Linux? It certainly seems reasonable when Windows apparently needs more command-line hackery to maybe work for a while than Linux.

So to Fedora I went! So far, I've been pleasantly surprised. All of the software I want to use installed easily and works, via Flatpak. All of my hardware works fine, and there are actually fewer weird hardware quirks than under Windows. I also appreciate that there are options to turn off behaviors I found annoying in Windows.

It's a bit sad to have to switch due to Microsoft trashing their own OS rather than Linux becoming superlatively awesome, but what can you do.

Apple does this all the time, though, and seems to get a free pass here. I have four Macs in my home, and they are cut off at Ventura (for the 2017 iMac), Monterey (for the 2014 Mac Mini and the 2015 MacBook Air), and El Capitan (for the 2014 iMac). They are all stuck at 3, 4, and 5 major OS versions back. Nobody really seems to complain about this, though.

It's a really bad time for Microsoft to force consumers to upgrade - even computer parts from 5 years ago are price hiking.

Yep. Similar thing forced me off of Apple. They stopped making 17 inch laptops. They started soldering parts into place. Made it so you couldn’t open your own laptop to replace the HD.

Switched to Linux 8 years ago and haven't looked back.

I have a similar issue with Windows. The machine already dual-boots Linux, but it is simultaneously demanding Windows 11 and telling me that it doesn't support it. It's a three year old Ryzen, it plays every game I've thrown at it flawlessly - which admittedly is only just so many things, but if it could manage Oblivion Remastered at launch it should manage a bloody operating system surely.

I hear it might be some TPM thing. If so, it still seems like a bad decision to require this thing, and it's telling that I'm working on speculation here - it doesn't _tell_ me that's what it is.

    .\setup.exe /product server /auto upgrade /EULA accept /migratedrivers all /ShowOOBE none /Compat IgnoreWarning /Telemetry Disable

I've been using Linux for 20+ years, but I was fairly happy with Windows 11. At its core it did exactly what I needed it to do, and it allowed me to run some commercial software that is harder to install and run on Linux (Davinci Resolve).

But my Dell hardware drivers were flaky in Windows. My bluetooth had extremely variable availability. And then Windows rebooted itself, against my wishes, 3x in one week. And then there was the promise of Recall.

That's when I wiped Windows and installed Ubuntu. All my hardware issues went away (yes, I had to fiddle the sound driver a little so it didn't crack when it woke up from sleep, and I had to make one small change so suspend worked properly.. but both were easily solvable). My bluetooth has been flawless since and I was able to use my Logitech wireless mouse again.

I'm never going back.

I do a bit of napkin math on Apple Silicon single-threaded performance, GPU performance, and battery management against non-Macbook Air/Pro specs for same price. I follow DHH (who I otherwise object to) on his adventures with the Asus G14 machines.. but I'm not sure its GPU performance still matches the similarly priced Apple offering.

Less integrated OS, worse battery management, and weaker performance for more money? I'm not sure. But I'll probably still go that way.

The Intel/AMD laptop manufacturers need to get out from under Nvidia's hardware GPU thumb.

Microsoft asking to upgrade hardware reminds me of that old joke (from memory so excuse the bad story telling)

User: hello, my PC smokes and I would like to purchase an anti smoke software

Computer service: sorry it's not possible, you have to replace the hardware

User: no I really want an anti smoke software

(Later)

User: hello I would like to purchase a new computer

Service: see, I told you that an anti smoke software is not possible

User: wrong! I have purchased one from Microsoft. But apparently it's not compatible with my current hardware

Why did you want to install windows 11 anyways? I also have a PC stuck on Windows 10 and it makes me happy that it's now stable and not part of the forced rolling releases in Win11. Im going to run it on Win10 as long as I can.

> “you can’t install unless you upgrade your CPU”

To be fair, I recently had to switch distros for my little Atom-based server because of a similar deal:

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:X86-64-Architecture-Levels#...

Granted, I only had to convert to Tumbleweed (not trivial, but easier than reinstalling), and the open source nature means there will always be lots of other alternatives, too.

I'm sure there's a million reasons not to, but they could even just open-source Windows 10. Leave you alone with the hardware that you rightfully purchased, and let the community police the security gaps that arise. It's beyond me how planned obsolescence especially on perfectly sufficient hardware is even legal.

I am in the same boat. Running Windows 10 on a Ryzen 5 until the cows come home. I run Rocky Linux in my laptop but I am a gamer so I'll hold to Windows 10. Some Linux Distros are bringing AI. Not ready for that.

is there a good windows rdp client for Linux? I went looking for one a few months back but didn't find anything definitely

This was very useful for me. Force install Windows 11: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853012

> because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently.

And yet Nadella writes this:

"For AI to have societal permission it must have real world eval impact. The choices we make about where we apply our scarce energy, compute, and talent resources will matter."

Apparently resources are only "scarce" when Microsoft needs them. When it comes to your consumer outcomes you have to throw away working equipment and buy new.

You can bypass the warning really easily, I googled it the moment I saw it and it was very easy. A keyboard shortcut to open the command window during the install and one cheeky command.

> There is a marketing lesson there somewhere. Microsoft once had the IT world at its feet, because not only was its Windows 9x OSes ubiquitous everywhere, but it had many millions of programmers who had become experts at Visual Basic and Visual C++, so almost all corporates used programs written in these easy to learn, not too difficult to master, fun to program in (yay for Intellisense and Drag-n-drop ActiveX controls), and versatile despite some limitations. This was also the era where many corporates had complicated databases set up in MS Access or MS SQL Server, because they were easily accessible and usable from front-end applications written in VC or VC++.

Microsoft even evolved it all to adapt to and compete with new ideas from rivals, such as COM+ as alternative to CORBA, ASP.Net as alternative to JSP, etc.

Then Microsoft did the unthinkable. It inexplicably threw away all these IT dependencies away, that it had spent decades to build across the worlr.

Microsoft unleashed .Net on an unsuspecting IT world.

And M$ arrogantly expected the world to also throw all their years of efforts of building applications and databases revolving around VB/VC++.

To save their careers, millions of VB/VC++ programmers tried hard to scramble and learn these new technologies, but Microsoft just kept updating and upgrading the .Net landscape with increasing frequency and leading to more chaos and confusions. And as the learning curve steeper and the .Net scope became too hard for sane people to master in a short time, it became apparent that to the entire IT world (except Microsoft) that it had become too difficult and cumbersome to build applications for corporations using Microsoft's new-age tools. Thus, the interest and ambitions of the programmers and corporations quickly waned towards Microsoft tools, especially when they realised that .Net was a mess for installations, and it called expensive licenses to build and ship.

So programmers and SOHO/medium-scale companies, pivoted to alternatives to Microsoft imposed nightmares. Python, PHP, MySQL, Linux, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, JSP, etc. took centre stage, even as the IT world moved away from .Net.

The worldwide chaos caused by Windows Vista and Windows 8, did nothing to improve upon IT people's disdain for all things Microsoft.

And Microsoft's rivals pounced at such golden opportunities, and they slowly ate away at Microsoft's dominance in corporate world.

Yes, there is indeed some lessons for Micro$oft to be learnt from these debacles.

"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started." ~ Mary Midgley

"And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

>no upgrade path to Windows 11 because my CPU was 5 years too old apparently.

Let's be real. It's because new systems support DRM and Microsoft has been captured by the media company lobby.

I saw a vid where they installed a recent version of linux on a Pentium 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DiK5FDpBTg