CPU requirements are holding many systems back:
Windows 11 has been known for its onerous system requirements since before it launched. A new report claims those requirements are keeping a significant number of systems from upgrading and that Windows 11 adoption is lagging. Other reports are far less dire but still not optimistic.
[...] In the initial run-up to Windows 11's launch, much controversy centered on its requirement for TPM 2.0 and a relatively recent CPU. Microsoft wants users to have at least an Intel 8th gen or AMD Zen 2 processor, but the company is considering allowing some Intel 7th-gen chips and Zen 1s. According to Lansweeper, those requirements are the main roadblock for ineligible systems.
The RAM requirement[*] isn't a problem – 92 percent of surveyed workstations meet it. Conversely, only 57 percent of systems meet the CPU requirement, and 64 percent have the necessary TPM. Many of those workstations may be compatible with TPM 2.0 but might not have enabled it since some systems must engage the feature manually. While not great, these numbers represent a 12 percent improvement over 2021.
Microsoft's system requirements for Windows 11 aren't ironclad, however. Users may install the new OS onto ineligible systems, but they might not receive automatic updates.
[* Edit: 4GB of RAM apparently -- Ed.]
Related Stories
The KDE community has an outreach campaign encouraging the use of the Plasma desktop by people with older, but usable, laptops. Vista10 support will come to an end and Vista11 has been designed not to run on many still viable models of computer due to several factors including Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) requirements centered around TPM-2.0. GNU/Linux can not only keep the old system working, it can improve its performance, ease of use, and general security. KDE Plasma can be part of that.
Even if you agree to this tech extortion now, in a few years time, they will do it again as they have done many times in the past.
But things don't have to be this way...
Upgrade the smart way! Keep the machine you've got and switch to Linux and Plasma.
Linux can give new life to your laptop. Combined with KDE's Plasma desktop, you get all the advantages of the safety, stability and hi tech of Linux, with all the features of a beautiful, modern and powerful graphic environment.
Their campaign page covers where and how beginners can get help, what the differences are, the benefits gained, and more.
[Editor's Comment: This is obviously a KDE/Plasma centric promotion - which doesn't mean that it is bad but there are lots of other options too. Which Linux OS and desktop would you recommend for someone wanting to make the move from Windows to Linux? Which are the best for a beginner, and which desktops provide the most intuitive interface for someone who has never sat down in front of a Linux computer before?--JR]
Previously:
(2025) Microsoft is Digging its Own Grave With Windows 11, and It Has to Stop
(2023) The Wintel Duopoly Plans to Send 240 Million PCs to the Landfill
(2023) Two Security Flaws in the TPM 2.0 Specs Put Cryptographic Keys at Risk
(2022) Report Claims Almost Half of Systems are Ineligible for Windows 11 Upgrades
(2021) Windows 11 Will Leave Millions of PCs Behind, and Microsoft is Struggling to Explain Why
(2019) Microsoft's Ongoing Tactics Against Competitors Explained, Based on its Own Documents
(2016) Windows 10 Anniversary Update to Require TPM 2.0 Module
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 19 2022, @04:33AM (5 children)
"Please do not use our software."
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Wednesday October 19 2022, @05:09AM (2 children)
"Please don't use our software either."
More seriously, both the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative need to be exploiting this advantage to maximize attention on the advantages of Free and Open Source Software. Since this is really about Digital Restrictions, via the TPM2 requirement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation needs to be getting active again. The EFF's new owner, Google, probably wouldn't object to them covering that topic, but perhaps would still wish for the EFF to stay low key and on the way out.
Since such a campaign would keep lots of expensive materials out of landfills, even many environmental groups are stakeholders in the uptake of FOSS. This should be the one topic on which they all can agree and could work together on for a few months. If they can't speak up as a group, then they could at least speak up individually, instead of the deafening silence we are experiencing at the moment.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday October 19 2022, @09:23PM (1 child)
I’m guessing you were sarcastic about EFF being owned by Google now. Couldn’t find anything to verify that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday October 20 2022, @06:47AM
More like sarcasm about the relationship being new [bbc.co.uk] as it goes back over a decade. However, the EFF's public financial reports tend to be sanitized and remove details about corporate donors, making such claims harder to show.
Money is money, but it also always comes with strings attached whether those strings are ever mentioned out loud is another matter and the EFF sure has backed off from the topic of software patents.
So, yeah, it's sarcasm, but there is an eel under that rock.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:00PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, I must use Windows at work. But I am not responsible for maintaining it or keeping it secure. We have a small army that does that. And it's not cheap.
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday October 20 2022, @07:04AM
Unfortunately, I must use Windows at work. But I am not responsible for maintaining it or keeping it secure. We have a small army that does that. And it's not cheap.
That small army is the reason M$ is used at all: it helps empire builders build their fiefdoms into kingdoms while throwing sand in the gears of political competitors who have to get actual work done. Going from 5 m$ flunkies to an excess of 200 m$ flunkies over 10 years is not an uncommon company story. It has also become a classic example of The Parable of the Broken Window[s] [bastiat.org]. Money wasted on that software and that empire have been bled from the financial and staffing budgets which would have produced real work.
Many people in that situation just carry around the Windows-infected company laptop for playing Outlook, Minesweeper, or Teams. Then they either 1) get used to not getting anything done during the course of each week or 2) carry around a second laptop, paid out of pocket, with Linux or MacOS loaded with their own software to get actual work done. Group 2 there often also pays for "cloud" services out of their own pocket to facilitate transfer of the deliverables to the company Windows laptop and from there to the pretend infrastructure.
If it were an energy system, a lot of energy goes in, but only heat and very little work are produced.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Wednesday October 19 2022, @05:11AM (1 child)
They have a couple of tricky "force you to upgrade" menus that will pop up occasionally to upgrade.
I was tricked a couple of times to try to install it. I had to reboot to get out of the menus. Clearly something where if rand(10)=1 Windows11();
I thought I had the confusing wording figured out from the first time. My guess is that all roads lead to a new install.
Not excited about Windows 11.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 19 2022, @06:40PM
My guess is that all roads lead to a new install.
That's a very good guess, considering their track record. A few iterations back the "install Windows n?" window's close button installed it! Microsoft has never been an honest or ethical company.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2022, @05:20AM (1 child)
(Score: 5, Touché) by kazzie on Wednesday October 19 2022, @06:17AM
Maybe Windows 9 was the good one, but missing it out messed up all the subsqeuent ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2022, @06:59AM
All the new stuff will be more than compliant, won't boot anything but Windows
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:01AM
Only less then 50% of current Win10 systems are safe from drive-by infections with Win11.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2022, @08:57AM (2 children)
Won't get an OS upgrade either. Go figure.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday October 19 2022, @06:31PM (1 child)
In this day and age, define OS upgrade.
Windows 11 is a hog that requires TPM. Tell me how this is an upgrade, rather than planned obscolescence. Because nobody in their right mind would install the damn thing if they weren't forced to eventually.
In fairness, it's been that way with almost all versions of Windows, save for a couple of really inspired ones. No-one wants to change something that works unless they have to, and the only need is artificially created by Microsoft each and every time.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:04PM
"No-one wants to change something that works unless they have to, and the only need is artificially created by Microsoft each and every time."
The Firefox devs and various *nix devs do this all the time as well, and I HATE them for it. But, those fucktards think that CoCs are more important.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday October 19 2022, @10:42AM
Windows/MS free since 1999.
Stop playing with feces!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rodxit on Wednesday October 19 2022, @12:42PM (17 children)
There are no Windows 11 requirements.
Only plenty of stupid people.
Install on ANY computer with 4 GB RAM:
Click next to show-up the "Install now" button; when you see the installation button, press
"Shift+F10" on your keyboard at the same time to launch a command prompt. At this command prompt,
type "regedit" and press enter to launch the Windows Registry Editor.
Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup",
right-click on the "Setup" key and select "New => Key".
Enter "LabConfig" and press enter.
Now right-click on the "LabConfig" key and select "New => DWORD (32-bit)" value and create a value named "BypassTPMCheck", and set its data to "1".
With the same steps create the "BypassRAMCheck" and "BypassSecureBootCheck" values and set also their data to "1"
You may also like to create:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup
New DWORD 32 Bit key "AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU" = 1
Exit regedit.
"Install Now"
- No min. RAM
- No TPM
- No SecureBoot
F U Microsoft.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Rodxit on Wednesday October 19 2022, @12:54PM
FOR̺BI҉D̼͚DE͇̣N KN͟O̦W͚͙LEDGE
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday October 19 2022, @01:57PM (5 children)
Or just install linux.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:10PM (4 children)
*and then suffer being told to learn the absurd and nonsensical language of navigating the CLI to make your box simply work by some dog on the internet who despises having to advise someone who wants to avoid the CLI considering it's CURRENT YEAR!
I've been installing various *nix flavors since Red Hat 5 and it has always been thus. I'm currently using Ubuntu which claims to be the easiest to use and I still have to use it for simple things like install software because the two different "stores" often wont load their catalogs when I'm connected through my VPN, which is pretty much always. I'm sick of it all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday October 20 2022, @08:03AM
I agree somewhat. My problem is linux GUI stability where my experience of stability of the ecosystem is mediocre at best.
OTOH I just updated my old win7 box to linux mint (yeah yeah, late I know) and it is successfully running the kids' video games. I even managed to get roblox, which is windows only, to run under wine with only a moderate amount of faff. No need for CLI, but I did have to install the proprietary graphics drivers from AMD website which meant I needed to know (a) what a graphics card was and (b) that graphics card drivers are a thing. Most people probably don't know about that stuff nowadays.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday October 21 2022, @12:28AM (2 children)
Ubuntu, which is supposed to be for the masses.... Gnome makes me long for Win10.
I like PCLinuxOS with KDE-Plasma desktop. Stability has not been an issue (mind you I am spoiled, I'm typing this on an XP box that hasn't been restarted in over a year). I think I've used the CLI once in about five years. Devuan-KDE now uses PCLOS's custom setup, almost as good.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by HammeredGlass on Friday October 21 2022, @02:09AM (1 child)
I'll check it out. Thanks. I don't have much choice at this point but to stick with *nix and I'm still hoping that some dev team will decide to make *nix for the masses who still want to be power users i.e. Burger King me, please.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday October 21 2022, @03:19AM
Yeah, it's become... which one is the least irritating?
Only the KDE desktop is sufficiently complete for me, and behaves as I wish (I like Trinity but it's not as stable), and I appreciate the user-centric consistency of the K-Apps. So nowadays I seldom look at distros that don't offer a reasonably-native KDE. (KDE as the poor relation doesn't cut it.)
Took me a long time and a lot of distro-trawling to find a linux I can live with, to wit: I liked Mandrake's way of doing things, consequently tend to prefer its descendants. Have also become quite partial to rolling updates. Performance-wise, PCLOS runs rings around everything that isn't Puppy (and takes five minutes and two clicks to install even on shit hardware), and it's full of good usability and user-controlled choices, but it's a one-man-band and the day may come when it dies and I need another distro, so I keep an eye out. I dislike Debian, but Devuan having adopted PCLOS's way of life makes it okay for me. Fedora is not as stable (I have to restart it about once a week, whereas I never restart PCLOS unless it's done a big update) and performance is not great, but otherwise it works; however I hate Discover's update method so on Fedora, I use the CLI for updates. But it stays in the terminal buffer so it's just uparrow, Yes, and done. Mint/Cinnamon reminds me of Windows 8, and I loathe the launcher to the point that it's a deal-breaker, but I gather there are now proper start-menu replacements, and performance is much better than Ubuntu.
So that's my current opinion. Next spasm of distro-testing may have different results. But I like PCLOS enough that nowadays if some system won't instantly play nice with the desired Windows (ie. usually an older one) ... I just shrug and install PCLOS (either my custom ISO, or the latest preinstalled-kitchen-sink version). Other than some visual tweaking, I don't do anything special with it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday October 19 2022, @03:31PM (2 children)
Goes to great lengths to install Microsoft crapware on your computer.
Acts like you're sticking it to Microsoft.
Methinks you're a bit confused.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Rodxit on Thursday October 20 2022, @11:20AM (1 child)
I would never let Windows run without a hypervisor.
https://leduccc.medium.com/improving-the-performance-of-a-windows-10-guest-on-qemu-a5b3f54d9cf5 [medium.com]
We are done MS.
Windows never ever gets direct hardware access.
We are done MS.
All network access is whitelist controlled firewalled, or
at least proper blacklisted. https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/tree/master/data/hosts [github.com]
One too much call home.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Rodxit on Thursday October 20 2022, @11:43AM
Get your free copy from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 [microsoft.com]
Install Windows 11 in a single BIOS partition. https://www.ccboot.com/single-partition.htm [ccboot.com]
How to Install and Set Up Windows 11 Without an Internet Connection. https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-set-up-without-internet-connection/ [makeuseof.com]
Get rid of all that MS crap. The real PowerToys for Windows 11. https://github.com/builtbybel [github.com]
Mimic a upgrade from a imaginary Windows 7. Get a legit copy. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=KMS+Tools+by+Ratiborus [duckduckgo.com]
Mount your Windows image after install and delete that MS Defender crap. 'rm -Rf /Program Files/Windows Defende*'
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday October 19 2022, @04:03PM (1 child)
Good info, but why would I jump through hoops to do something I don't want anyway?
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:13PM
I'm waiting for the day when they claim, for the sake of safety and security, that we have to use only sanctioned(non-general-computing i.e. an x86 desktop/laptop)platforms to connect to all of the systems you need for daily life.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2022, @04:59PM
Where, pray tell, is this information to be found in, on, or with installation media (or linked to from a download)?
"Stupid" is not the same as "not informed on purpose."
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday October 19 2022, @07:02PM
Here's the way I read your post:
"Unscrew the carburetor, change the jets one size down and bend this rod a little: now your Ford can take that newfangled unleaded fuel without buying a new engine. F U Ford"
You don't spent that much time and effort "fixing" the product of a company you genuinely want to fuck. You buy another brand of car instead. Ditching a brand is the real fuck-you, not working around their artificially-imposed restrictions.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday October 19 2022, @09:52PM
That has been the entirety of the Microsoft user base from Day 1.
What I find amusing about your posting is how it was modded up to +4 Informative, when it was clearly supposed to be a joke. You mention stupid people, then post a hopelessly convoluted series of steps that no common Windows user will be able to complete. It's rather funny that this has become so normal in Windows world that people completely overlook its humor.
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Wednesday October 19 2022, @10:54PM
How intuitive. It's almost as if Microsoft didn't want people to do it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday October 20 2022, @03:06AM
Hilariously, out of a couple dozen semi-modern PCs in my house, thanks to the above-described stupidity the only one that will run Win11 is the LEAST capable hardware... the glorified-netbook with a bottom-end Celeron and 4GB RAM. Win11 came on it and runs just fine.
When I do fire up Win10 on the big-ass Xeon (8x faster than the Celeron) with 64GB RAM, it mournfully informs me that "this PC cannot run Win11."
IOW, the hardware requirements are a Big Lie, and it's really all about the TPM.
Thanks for the fixinfo; I'm tempted to use it just to stick a thumb in Microsoft's eye.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.