Before installing Linux, I had originally planned to dual-boot on my main PC, but somehow a gaming rig from 5 years ago isn’t good enough to run windows 11, which is ridiculous.
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Now genuinely curious, as an ex-Windows-refugee, how did the non-Windows-refugees, the “native” GNU/Linux users, find out about it?
Edit: BTW, started a journey with a laptop in a place with no internet. Luckily I had the foresight to install GNU/Linux on it before I started my journey. I was constantly reminded that I were in the same situation with Windows, the computer would stop working because it had no internet. You need internet for Microshit office, Adobe software, etc. That was the time I said: there has to be a better way. That’s when I started using free software. I’ll take the occasional, inadvertent usability annoyance with free software over the megacorporations trying to constantly gang rape me into submission any day.
I did come from Windows but the story wouldn’t change from anywhere else. The install CD was on a store shelf and I bought it.
Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025.
Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer.
But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again?
Weird, my gaming rig that I built before COVID runs 11 like a champ. Didn’t buy good parts by the sound of it.
I bought a shitty laptop 3 and 1/2 years ago that came with Windows 11 on it and I’ve never had an issue with it I don’t know how all these people are having problems with these supposedly well-built systems
The problem is that Microsoft set seemingly arbitrary hardware requirenents to install Windows 11, it’s not about performance.
If you have a Kaby Lake or Ryzen 2000 system of any specs, you are already out of luck, no matter if you have 32 cores or 128G RAM.
But somehow, magically, a few Kaby Lake Microsoft Surface laptops are fine to run Windows 11, so those specific CPUs are cool. The rest (mostly desktops) is not.
That fan in there is probably bloat.
Installed Fedora on my newish dell with intel integrated graphics. Watching videos in Firefox was nothing but lag, even in 720P.
And also when the lid is closed, it doesn’t go to sleep.
Linux is only good if you have some kind of driver support.
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia?highlight=(\bCategoryHowto\b)
You should install the intel media driver and ffmpeg to have hardware acceleration support on firefox, iirc
I had one of the Macintosh iBook G4s with the notoriously shitty graphics card soldering. Early days of lead-free soldering. Mine started to fail just outside of warranty. The ‘fix’ was to put a lot of pressure on the chip so that all the connections were held in place, but that was quite difficult to do while it was still a laptop.
Dismantled the damn thing, yeeted the plastic shell, and screwed the remains onto a sheet of plywood. Looked a lot like pizza-box PC in the corner there. Got another couple of years out of it. Made it a lot more convenient for watching videos, since you could just prop the whole thing against a wall or whatever. Couple of USB extension leads meant that you could still use a mouse and keyboard in comfort.
God, I love Linux nerds.
That is a glorious pizza box computer.
:) I have an old 2010 network drive, running Debian and OpenMediaVault for music and video shares. It has 256MB of memory and doesn’t need it all to act as a folder share and streaming box. Windows 11 needing such a high end chip to run is just really poor optimization
The thing with Windows 11 Hardware requirements isnt that its poorly optimised (tbf, it is poorly optimised, but computers that have the power to run it can’t) but because windows 11 requires your CPU to have TPM(? Im Not sure), which only newer CPUs have. So even if your PC could run it, it can’t due to the TPM Requirement.
The TPM chip is separate on my motherboard, it dosnt have to be TPM in the chip for the requirement. Also, after months of W11 not getting adopted like they thought, they rolled back the specs on chips to include ones they denied the first time.
Typically, although not always, TPMs are part of the motherboard. The CPU requirement is a separate requirement. Both have caused users issues upgrading to Win11
Win11 is 4,5 years old and still feels like 10 builds away from going gold. It feels thrown together.
I spent probably 5-10 minutes trying to figure out how to get into the old “add a printer” thing from control panel so I could manually install a USB printer for someone yesterday. The new version in settings was presenting a list of every device on the network (corporate environment so 100s of devices) and doesn’t even have a search field. Completely fucking useless.
and if you want to add some old scanner - you might also embrace Satanism because fuck this shit.
Regularly, file explorer just stops being an explorer for me. Window sizing and buttons work, but I can’t select files or folders. I have to exit file explorer and relaunch it.
also - for whatever reason File Explorer occasionally decides to think about life and stuff for a minute or two upon opening random folders - it just keeps loading even if there’s like two files inside 2mb total.
I found when my new system bogs down it is ai.exe hogging resources. Which is part of the Office install. I go into the folders (2 places) and delete ai.exe aimgr.DLL and a few others and the system behaves better till an update from MS restores the files
I’ve got this creeping suspicion that Microsoft really wants everyone to embrace Mint but is too shy to just say it like it is.
With how much effort they put into getting WSL1 and the WSL2 working, it makes me think they will end up switching to Linux and just have Windows webapps as services
I just want to know why I can only click on the date on the main monitor to view the calendar. Why? It’s such a workflow killer when I’m scheduling something and trying to check what day of the week it’s happening on. Takes multiple clicks on the non-main monitor before I realize what’s happening every time
That pisses me off as well. It works fine on Windows 10 so somebody fucked that up along the line somewhere. There’s no excuse for it.
These memes about required specs make Linux look like its primary userbase are bums.
I think it means we like to be able to make full use…
Whether its a couple of servers with 4416+'s with 128GB ram and a pair of rtx 6000s or an 11yr old thinkpad w/8GB ram, its not the OS getting in my way.
Look at this rich guy who’s thinkpad is only 11 years old and has 8GB of RAM. Must be real nice to have been born with a silver spoon.
😉
Business discard pile is my favorite pile!
I have Linux running on a machine with 256 MB of RAM and a single core 700 MHz ARM11 CPU.
I also have it running on a machine with 128 multi-gigahertz cores and a terabyte of RAM. That flexibility is part of why I use Linux.
Linux: the official OS of vagabonds
I’m literally camping out in the woods right now and installed linux on a mini PC last night. No real home, no job, but I’ve got penguins!
Vagabums (idk which, but def a name for a foss project)
I miss the old images of the batshit crazy homemade Beowulf clusters people used to throw together that looked like something straight out of Serial Experiments Lain.
I recently picked up a couple of e-waste laptops, Thinkpad x130e’s with an AMD E-300, 4GB RAM and a 320GB spinner. For the pair I paid $60 shipped. These were low-end semi-ruggedized laptops meant for students released around the time that HBO started showing Game of Thrones.
I’ve put Debian on one and it runs great. All the hardware just works, everything is pretty quick after boot, and I love how rugged and portable it is. Email, writing, basic productivity, hobby development and 2D gaming all work great. Web browsing takes a hit if I open too many tabs, the video card is too underpowered for most 3D games that came out after 2010, and large compiles are slow. I’m a bit worried about the aging HDD so I’m going to replace it with a cheap SSD which should help with boot and compile times.
The other one I’m not sure about. I’ve tried HaikuOS and the video and wifi work well and the whole system feels very snappy, but there’s no audio or webcam support. Redox seems interesting but needs a whole lot more hardware support. I’ll probably just end up cloning the first one unless I can get a better suggestion.
All that is to say, Linux is great on old cheap hardware.
My laptop is also an old e-waste Thinkpad. I run Xubuntu on it and it flies.
E-waste Thinkpads are quickly becoming my favorite laptops.
… I should really start a business selling nice socks …
Attractive thigh-highs with toes are impossible to find in my size. You’d have at least one customer.
Step 1:
Create (foss) app that collects feet pics.Step 2:
Built & test a 3D knitting/weaving machine.Step 3:
Create bylaws that will endure enshitification attempts.Step 4:
Make the world profit/a better place.
Even the cheapest SSD you can find will improve the performance quite significantly.
I had the same on my 5 year old gaming rig. Turns out only thing blocking it was TPM being disabled. I reluctantly upgraded, as I have too many files on my PC needed for my wife’s visa process, as well as a 2 year old toddler, so I really don’t currently have the time to sort through, and backup all the files, and then install Linux.
Ok so important advice: regardless of Win/Linux, back up your data! Hard drive failures happen, and it can happen randomly at any time. So if you have important documents or any data you want to keep, back it up onto another drive, and ideally a second back up off site. And then get in the habit of refreshing those backups regularly,
I have had multiple hard drives failures over the years and learnt the hard way that you need multiple backups.
This is also important as a 5 year old gaming PC means 5 year old hard drives, and shit really does happen.
EDIT: And if you really have 0 time, get a second drive the same size as your hard drive and clone it. It’s better than nothing and can be set up in minutes. It’s not efficient as you will clone data you don’t need but at least you’ll be safe as soon as it’s done.
Totally understandable. I took literal years to finally get a backup set up so that I could do this.
Extra fun: My current gaming laptop has a TPM, but it’s so new that Windows 10 doesn’t recognize it. So when I try to upgrade it says ‘lol nope’.
My work laptop had required CPU, but said can’t upgrade due to TPM chip being 1.2 and requirements are TPM 2.0. So I downloaded the firmware updater to get the TPM to 2.0. Then I reran the checker and it said nope CPU not supported. Lol, just arbitrary nonsense.
The TPM requirement is artificial and can be bypassed in the installer.
Tell me more, I thought TPM was hardware checked?
The amount of misinformation here made me think I’m on the Technology community.
TPM 2.0 is only one of the MANY security features that are now hard-required. Among them is DCH driver support, MBEC support, or HVCI.
No critical part of Windows actually requires the TPM. The limitation is 99% artificial. Which is why people keep finding workarounds.
Windows security is built upon the a chain of trust from boot. If you do not have a chip then that is not there which I’d say is a critical part of Windows missing. You can argue its not required but its part of what windows wants to ship so id say it is.
You realize the post you’re replying in right? Lol
No I genuinely dont understand why my comment would be considered out of place or strange?
I saw someone complain about TPM requirements and someone else say to ignore them because they arent needed but I think if you want windows 11 they ARE needed.
The TPM is mostly used to store bitlocker keys and Microsoft account tokens. If you’re not using bitlocker nor a Microsoft account, the TPM is basically just sitting there doing nothing. The security afforded by the TPM is not needed by most users. The only users whose threat model would be improved by a TPM are users who are at risk of their locked PC being acquired by an advanced threat actor desperate enough for the information stored on it to attempt a cold boot or similar attack. Basically only executives and government officials who travel with their work laptops need TPM and the full secure boot chain. For 99.99% of Windows users it’s just additional hassle and expense for no added benefit
Its used for secret storage all throughout the windows operating system not just microsoft account.
This is true, but most software that could does not yet interface with the TPM, so in real world usage it’s basically only the Microsoft account authentication token and bitlocker keys
Another note related to the TPM being a silly requirement, across a fleet of about 1000 windows 11 PCS, in a six month period I saw about 5 had TPMs corrupt themselves and require a reset and one otherwise perfectly functioning laptop have it’s TPM entirely die. Which isn’t a horrendous infant mortality rate, but for the thing that stores your bitlocker keys you’d hope for better reliability, and it’s sad to see perfectly functioning hardware get replaced due to such an unnecessary component failing
Even if it were true. Windows security is probably the worst part about windows, and that’s saying alot. If you can manage to somehow disable it you will probably improve your frame rates 15%, your battery life by 30%, double your hard drives life, and increase the actual security of your system significantly, since most of the malware will just crash as it doesn’t know how to deal with not having Windows security installed, breaking it’s install process. You will also greatly increase your privacy, and extend the life of good software, because without the spyware, Microsoft has a harder time figuring out which software people install that they want to break in a future update to benefit their corporate partners in crime. You will also greatly improve the responsiveness of the system anytime there is disk IO. There is literally not a single reason to use windows security. The only time it will benefit you is if your cat is walking on your keyboard at night and installing random software or something because you don’t have a lock screen. You will also somehow get laid more because you don’t look like a boomer.
If it were that important to Microsoft then they should just refuse to boot without the chain of trust. I’m guessing they can’t because of backwards compatibility reasons. Maybe they will with Windows 12.
I think Microsoft puts the minimum possible effort into windows. It’s a very small piece of their cloud, investing, data selling, propaganda, and AI company. They just make so much money off of speculation nowadays. Inflation is really high so the stock market grows really fast even if the economy is shrinking. A company like Microsoft is positioned to make so much money just in growth because they hold billions of dollars in the stock market.
They absolutely will ruin windows in every possible way, until people jump ship and start using other operating systems, at which point they will just kill the brand or sell it, and focus on their other sectors that make profits. They like many people know this is the right option. Keeping an operating system going is extremely complex these days and even with all the money in the world, microsoft could never find enough talent to actually pull it off. When you get to that level, most programmers aren’t motivated by money so much as working on projects they like. Most actually intelligent people also would refuse to work for a company that spies on its citizens and sells them out to the worst people on earth, which are politicians. At this point Microsoft probably makes way more money selling servers to the IDF to capture all phones calls from people in Gaza then they make off windows in 10 years.
But I don’t want to install windows
Microsoft are not asking you, they will install it anyway
Then why are you using a Windows installer? I’m so confused.
I’m not
I don’t understand.
*optional (everything in the lower right panel)
Little PCeaser’s.
