It’d ultimately be better for everyone if no PCs could boot windows 11.
I have a laptop that runs Win11. I have had no issues with it since I did the upgrade when it first came out and as far a Microsoft products go, it’s OK. But with the addition of the AI, I know at some point it will piss me off and I will wipe it and chose a distro to take it’s place.
I’m retired now, and I no longer really need the Fusion360 install that one customer requested I use for their designs nor do I play games beyond a little mahjongg and solitaire in the evenings if I feel the need.
Windows is merely a tool and a means to an end. It’s NOT the end in itself. Use the tool you want/need to and feel the best with and just get on with the job…
You got downvoted, but that’s literally who’s catch phrase it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Welcome to Lemmy - where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
I think you’re thinking of that show, Whose Line is it Lemmyway?
God, I love game changer.
OH NO anyway.
Maybe this will convince more people to switch to linux.
With the work that Valve is doing on Wine, and Proton, it’s really becoming easier and easier to justify the switch.
With the work that Valve is doing on Wine, and Proton, it’s really becoming easier and easier to justify the
switchdeck.FTFY
Almost all I play on now.
Having less personal time and rising electricity costs has made the Deck my primary gaming machine lol.
I don’t support games with DRM, so pretty much everything I play works flawlessly on it (as well as “unsupported” titles via Proton GE)
Tried getting PCVR working with the Quest 2, unfortunately support is still a hot mess and leaves the system with a super janky flood of audio devices, in addition to legendary stutters that make it unplayable. Win11 still better for VR.
Only pita setback is things like fortnite and other multi-player games insisting on only using anticheat software that isn’t Linux compatible.
I’m okay with this. I don’t support those publishers anyways. People should stop supporting them altogether.
Issue is, a lot of people still using Windows, and Linux pro-audio is still questionable at best (lack of drivers, etc.).
I don’t think the venn diagram for people relying on pro-audio and using 20 year old computers has a large overlap.
Also there’s lots of industry tools where you can’t really use anything but Windows. Even if you could technically make it work, it isn’t a good idea because of how critical the system you’re interfacing with is.
Could be. If you’re running a core 2 duo I am fairly certain Linux will run markedly faster than Windows 10+…
I actually still have some old servers with chips from that period, one of them is still being used as my firewall but until last year I was using others to run multiple VMs for email and web sites. Not as power-efficient but they do still work.
I’ll be sure to inform my whole company and I am sure they will be on board
Don’t you wish… 😜
People on the fence may be convinced. Most will just buy new computers.
That’s not a guarantee on the Linux world either, but at least you do have the option of recompiling your distro to not use those options.
There’s talks from some distros to start dropping support for such old CPUs because it’s holding back newer CPUs that could run even faster by using those instructions.
Is it really that hard to include a fallback though? Obviously there’s a way to collect the information without that flag. I suppose if you didn’t want to take a performance hitting checking the flag all the time it could become a compile option (I would think anyone running that old of hardware would be willing to learn how to compile the kernel anyway), but there should be options available to keep the support available some how?
That’s pretty much exactly how it works already. You compile with
-march=x86-64-v4and it’ll use SSE and AVX all over the place.glibc does the runtime thing, but only once on application startup where the dynamic linker will link the version of the function optimized for your CPU. But it’s a manual process on glibc’s part, the variants are written by hand.
Not every project cares enough to do it dynamically like that and it would be a nightmare that way.
The fallback is, recompile with
-march=x86-64which will only use the base set of instructions. Or-march=i486if you want to run on absolutely ancient hardware.
Just ordered a system76 laptop, can’t wait to use it!
Oh I’ve set up a couple of those at work! Their systems seem to be rock-solid (at least I’ve heard no complaints over the last few years), and their tech support is outstanding. Good luck with your new shiny!
The actual oh no is the amount of ewaste this will create as people buy completely new systems as they think that’s their only option
One man’s ewaste is another man’s etreasure.
Sure, but only a fraction will be saved. It’s criminal how much ewaste Apple and Microsoft are responsible for. That’s what happens when people are taught that profits can only increase year on year.
At this point Microsoft should just be buying me the computer since they make all their money on collecting my data
In modern x86 CPUs, POPCNT is implemented as part of the SSE4 instruction set. For Intel’s chips, it was added as part of SSE4.2 in the original first-generation Core architecture, codenamed Nehalem. In AMD’s processors, it’s included in SSE4a, first used in Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron CPUs based on the K10 architecture. These architectures date back to 2008 and 2007, respectively.
That effectively bars mid-2000s Intel Core 2 Duo systems and early Athlon 64-era PCs from booting Windows 11 at all, not that they officially supported it in the first place. This means the change should mainly affect retro-computing enthusiasts who spend their days making YouTube videos in the “we installed Windows 11 on a potato, let’s see how it runs” genre rather than users of actual systems.
You can check if your CPU has SSE 4.2(Intel) or 4a(AMD) but it sounds like unless you’re running some real old stuff you shouldn’t have to worry.
But isn’t Microsoft just so evil for making it so their operating system doesn’t function flawlessly on twenty year old hardware?
Except there’s no reason for not supporting it beyond greed. It worked previously.
Greed? How does Microsoft profit from not supporting twenty year old hardware?
Nadella has a side gig, dumpster diving for old electronics
do hack to make software run on unsupported hardware
software stops working with update
surprised pikachu
“this is why i switched to linux” no shut up lol. this is not an issue for any average user and if you had the ability to hack the TPM requirements you have the ability to fix your borked install. this issue affects no one else. 🙂🙂🙂
No, the issue is that Microsoft officially supports only two versions of Windows. And support of the older one is ending next year. They are forcing users that are using perfectly capable hardware to artificially switch to - for many - needless new hardware.
Yes, this is bad, and should be called out as such.
However, tweaking the software to run against the intent of Microsoft is still just asking for pain. Versus voting with your feet, so to speak, and saying “fine, Microsoft, if that’s how you want to play it, then I’m going elsewhere”. Of course the number of people doing that will be negligible so as not to make a difference, but it’s better than forcing Windows 11 to run against Microsoft’s intent. That’s just asking for a fight that you won’t win.
In order for this update to have any effect on you you would have had to have failed to upgrade your computer for basically 20 years in a row. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that support for older processors is dropped
edit: pls see jj4211s comment for an actual rebuttal. the below is just me being curious and probably ill-informed. i do appreciate your help if you are feeling helpful tho.
please identify the material changes that come with an end of support that force users to artificially switch.
in general i am entirely on the position against ms, but i genuinely do not see any concrete evidence of a “force”; ms’s own lifecycle policy even notes that products will continue to get “security and non-security updates.”
again i am anti-corporate, but i’d very much like to be accurate in my criticism, so any insight into the forces at play are appreciated 🙂
“this is why i switched to linux” no shut up lol.
This is why I switched to Linux.
You lot think that the solution to everything is Linux except you have absolutely no understanding of corporate IT. It’s hilarious. No wait, it’s annoying.
I agree with you, but did you read the article? This is about a specific CPU instruction, not TPMs.
In modern x86 CPUs, POPCNT is implemented as part of the SSE4 instruction set. For Intel’s chips, it was added as part of SSE4.2 in the original first-generation Core architecture, codenamed Nehalem. In AMD’s processors, it’s included in SSE4a, first used in Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron CPUs based on the K10 architecture. These architectures date back to 2008 and 2007, respectively.
First generation Core i# line, the Core name itself goes back 2 gens before that.
Makes sense, I didn’t write that, it’s a direct quote from the article
yeah i did read the article. to clarify for anyone confused, folks are already bypassing the TPM requirement to get these windows installs working in the first place. the POPCNT instruction issue is only affecting installs that are already using this workaround to force W11 to run on a device it doesn’t want to work on.
Ah I see what you mean. No install would be possible without a TPM but hacked installs allow it, however now the update is explicitly using a CPU instruction that only works with CPUs that support TPM. Makes sense, thanks for clarifying
Gen-1 through Gen-7 CPUs also still work despite lack of TPM. If it was about trying to force the TPM thing, even just using AXV2 instruction requirement would have limited it to only Gen4-7 running without TPM. I’m sure there’s other ways they could try to limit installs with the TPM-check disabled.
“Hack” the TPM. Ha!
Itt: Use Linux Spam. This is not feasible for most users. Not all applicatopns are posted to Linux and some explicitly do not work. In particular for people that play games socially this just does not work. That being said they are unaffected by this change.
Lol. Every Windows article gets spammed to death with yOu ShoUlD uSe LiNuX.
Seriously, it’s all you see on these posts. I’m not against people advocating for it, but it’s getting annoying.
lol
Post a picture of shit on your carpet, get mad when people say “You should clean that up.” The big brain am winning again.
Seems like this is a constant spam on Lemmy and it’s starting to drive me away from the platform. So much Linux spam.
The Linux proselytizing combined with the rabid impractical political hive mind have combined to slowly take my usage of Lemmy from “increasing and replacing Reddit time” to “flattened out, going back to Reddit a bit” and now it’s moving solidly into the territory of “definitely using and visiting Lemmy less, spending more time back on Reddit”.
This platform has so much potential, but the community sucks. Which is saying something, given that the chief comparison is the reddit community.
I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to make something that filtered out all posts/comments containing the word “Linux”, what software do you use to interact with Lemmy?
Exclusively Voyager for Lemmy. I’m also not really interested in making custom tools.
There’s also the problem of that filtering out half of the active content on the platform.
At this point the only games that don’t work on Linux are games using kernel level anti-cheats, and these are the largest games out there.
If you don’t play any of those games then your game most likely works just fine on Linux.
This is simply not true. I recently tried Linux for gaming after several years because I read that Valve made some great progress. Installed Crusader Kings III and didn’t get Paradox Launcher to run which is necessary for any DLC.
This was literally the first game I installed from my huge library and it simpl didn’t work so I had to do two hours of research, trial and error and reading error logs to conclude that I wasn’t able to solve this problem.
This is the exact reason why I use Windows for gaming. It simply works 99 % of the time. And I don’t have the time to troubleshoot my games all the time.
By recently you mean this year? The paradox launcher was broken on the steamdeck a year ago, should be working now.
Also iirc that game has a native linux version.
No, not this year but maybe last fall, early winter. The game itself was running fine but without DLC (which neede the launcher to work) was useless to me.
Maybe I have to give it another try but this experience was the worst possible advertisement for “gaming on Linux” 😐
Maybe I have to give it another try but this experience was the worst possible advertisement for “gaming on Linux” 😐
I mean there isn’t much more that can be done, these days that is usually the issue with gaming in linux, either the game has anti cheat which you cannot fix or the launcher of the application changes and you have to wait for it to get fixed.
The good news is that more studios are starting to release native versions of their linux games, so hopefully in the future this isn’t as much of an issue.
Its certainly not as likely to run a game as windows, but I also think you just go INCREDIBLY unlucky with your first attempt at a game. The vast majority of games buyable on Steam can be run at this point out of the box (some might be a bit jank for the Steamdeck though)
Play Stellaris and problem solved. It works on Linux through steam. Besides you won’t be stuck within a single primitive planet
more than 99% of the hundreds of games i’ve ran on linux have worked, it sounds like you got unlucky.
Obligatory link https://areweanticheatyet.com/
I’m finding out that particularly complex modding can be a bit of a pain as well, but thats a more niche category than gaming in general
(I’m having a TERRIBLE time trying to get Bannerlord Script Extender to work on my Steamdeck)
Let me know, or make a big post if you solve it. I haven’t played Bannerlord since switching to Linux and don’t want to dive into a quagmire quite yet.
I’ll tinker with it more over the weekend, but I’m fairly new to linux myself, so we’ll see if I can figure it out!
This isn’t even true all the time anymore, helldivers 2 has a kernel anti cheat on windows but runs fine under proton!
You just described this entire site.
I’d suggest Arch Linux, btw. 😜
Just kidding, Debian.
So, we just gotta make people play games in non social ways
Sudo switch to linux
May I ask - why is anyone bothering to install Windows 11 on old hardware in the first place?
Old hardware is better for Linux. Either install Linux or you can get used to having your old hardware be used as a paperweight.
In this context an unsupported cpu would be an i7 7700K for example. Hardly e-waste and can perform quite well…
Those aren’t supported but they’re not affected by this specific change. The latest chips that won’t be able to boot are Core 2 Duo and the Athlon X2 chips that predated AMD Phenom. Old old.
My poor Athlon II x64 6400 isn’t that old 😭
I am actually surprised my nostalgia build still works TBH
Laughs in 3770k just until a few months ago
My 3930k is still alive and kicking. Just need it to hold out until Gen 15.
It also runs Windows 11 just fine.
i7-950 here. I don’t use it every day, but it still runs very smoothly. Even though the memory is a little slow at times
7700K supports popcnt.
I finally upgraded from a 3rd gen i7 to a 6th gen i7. There was no actual performance difference besides my gpu vram getting hotter, I just did it because the motherboard wasn’t as shit. I’m sure the difference between a 6th gen i7 and an 8th gen i7 is equally unnoticeable. I didn’t want to ever boot Windows again anyway.
Edit: huh, I’m intrigued by the downvotes. Is it because I used the wording “no actual performance difference” rather than providing benchmarks and proof? Is it because computer technology isn’t improving at the rate it used to and people are in denial and/or easily triggered about it? Or maybe because I’m “probably a troll” based on my username?
It’s probably because running such old hardware means your daily usage wouldn’t show much difference between the 2 setups. If you mainly browse the internet or play gpu boumd games, you simply wouldn’t notice a huge difference.
Change that use case to cpu bound games or other cpu intensive tasks and you would likely see a not insignificant difference.
Also newer hardware is more efficient(used to at least), so you should see lower power draw for the same performance or better performance for the same power draw.
So just because you don’t see a difference, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Or just… Stay on Windows 10? There’s nothing wrong with it compared to Windows 11 (though Linux is usually a better choice).
Windows 10 sucks as well.
Like seriously, it freaks out when I try right clicking on anything on the left hand panel of Windows Explorer.
And I have to keep restarting periodically, just to use not only my internal disc drive but also my external too.
Windows 10 is just as garbage.
For all it’s shortcomings this sounds more of something on your end and also something quirky that you will any OS really…
Not really.
So you think that what you have described above is something all Windows 10 users deal with?
Definitely really. Your’s is not a widespread case. I have personally never seen the issue and I oversee a network almost exclusively made up of windows 10 machines. I have no love for W10, but this is a you thing.
You can’t even prove that it’s a me-thing. Goes to show how little you actually know. Get off your little armchair and try to demonstrate some level of knowledge.
You are the one claiming to have the issues. I’m saying I have never had them, and over the entire lifecycle of windows 10 and working on hundreds of computers, I have never seen or heard of anyone else having this issue. The proof that it’s a you-thing is that you admitted to having those issues.
I’m not even sure what you mean by, “… and try to demonstrate some level of knowledge.” I didn’t present any information that requires more knowledge than being able to read my comment. My experiences, and based on other comments, other’s experiences, and a cursory Google search show that yea, this is a you-thing and not a widespread Windows 10 thing.
Maybe if you yourself weren’t so unknowledgeable, you’d have been able to fix your unique issues. It’s a bad carpenter that blames his tools.
Because people will click on the YouTube video you make trying it.
Be me
Teach intro to it-support/devops Course is relatively cheap for the school, as we only use the stuff that the IT dept has obsoleted
Currently getting 4th gen core i7 machines Life is good, every student has a few i7 machines for clients (win 10) and windows server
Microsoft announces end of life for win 10 Hate win 11, but if we must…
MFW Microsoft announces the requirement of CPUs 4 gens newer than the newest machines we’re receiving. And I now have to tell my boss that the otherwise cheap course, with not enough students otherwise, will need an investment of at least 18 new desktop machinesAnybody hiring?
I’ve got a solution but y’all will not like it🐧
But my anti-cheat :(
I wanna like Linux but I like my games more
Honestly apart from newer COD i dont really miss any of my library but deffo always ways to improve for Linux gaming
The only game that I keep Windows around for is Destiny 2… I know, but it’s the game my closest friends are often playing - but I’ve been playing it less and less so I might actually end up removing Windows completely if the next expansion doesn’t go well.
Now that I have a Steam Deck, I have zero reasons to get into Windows-only games anymore.
I play rainbow six on a lot of JRPGs that require windows
Install Linux? Nah, you’ll love it! Just dump that Microsoft trash with the garbage already
You’re not really convincing anyone.
Like 90% of everyone here already uses Linux, and those who do use Windows only use it because they are forced to because of work or some proprietary program that Linux doesn’t currently have.
I use Windows because I prefer it over Linux. I mainly play games on my PC and Windows never gives me any issues. I don’t need to have any compatibility layers and overall there is no hassle.
Linux gaming seems to be always a bit behind with driver support. Last time I tried it there was no HDR and it was a dealbreaker for me. This time I’d expect FSR snd frame gen is not at the same level they are on windows. My work laptop is still Linux, I boot to Linux on my personal computer if I’m doing my own projects. My homelab server is naturally Linux and so is my personal laptop… but I still do basically zero Linux gaming.
I went to Linux for all private use years ago. And man - I wish so very hard I could simply switch to a non win-native CAD at the job.
Ditto. Decade & a half but video games rather in the beginning.
CAD is one of those hold-out areas for windows which is actually kinda strange because when it comes to non-CAD 3D software a lot of the big names are UNIX-native and got ported to windows at some point: Houdini, Maya and Blender all got their start on IRIX and run perfectly fine on Linux, 3dsmax… well, Autodesk. Somehow they started out writing their software for DOS and became dominant in the CAD market despite that.
Speaking of Blender did recently get its feet wet with some CADish constraint modelling but I’m sure it’s nowhere close to where it’s usable for engineers. If you’re an artist modelling something mechanical it’s damn useful, though, and it might be sufficient for some light hobby usage, that is, to feed a 3d printer.
Even within the CAD space, I was running CATIA natively years ago under Linux.
Ditto. Seems like everyone uses AutoDesk or Bentley. Although I use them both regularly, they both fail pretty hard in some areas. Now there’s talk about BricsCAD. I’ve got my reasons to hate it that I don’t want to get into, but it is platform independent (as every piece of professional software should be). It’ll run on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
when they say “older” PCs they’re talking about machines with CPUs that are over 14 years old now.
You’d need to have replaced that CPU by now anyway.
Hard disagree. If this was the 80s or the 90s, you would have a case. But nowadays? 14 year old PCs are quite capable for many everyday uses.
The only people trying to convince you that you have to upgrade things every other year are the ones who sell them.
IDK, it’s a far cry from “dropping support for stuff 14+ years old” to “we’re going to coerce you into buying new hardware every other year”.
I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2010 and used it until spring of 2021. It was long overdue for replacement by then, so even that wouldn’t have been affected by this.
What made it long overdue for replacement, though?
Because I bet a mom or pops who only browse facebook could (technically) still use it for five more years*.
*Though facebook is not the best example because they are constantly bloating their own product.
For me: I like to play games. It was still fine for games like Dwarf Fortress or Civilization, and it could handle Factorio decently well (enough to launch a rocket, not enough for a megabase, heh).
For my mom? IDK, I was already pushing it with how long I stayed on Windows 7. I’m not sure that this particular laptop would have been a good hand-me-down in 2021.
Finally…I have to repeat: I bought the laptop in 2010. I got eleven years out of it for a type of device that most people replace every 2-3 years. Why isn’t that good enough for you?
You’re right. 11 years is a good run.
Thank you!
I was pretty thrilled at how much use I got out of that laptop. I originally picked it up as a companion machine to a desktop, but about a year later, I switched over to using the laptop almost exclusively. I got a docking station and hooked it up to my desktop monitors, and all was well. It did limit the games I could play, but hey, I guess you could call me a “patient gamer”.
I did have to repair it a couple of times – I replaced both the cooling fan and the hard drive around 2015-2017.
It was funny, what finally spurred me to start looking for a new machine was a free giveaway of Total War: Shogun 2 on Steam back in 2020. Free game? New computer!
You can have it, but expecting modern windows to run seems a bit silly. It’s a for sale product not a community supported hobby project.
If it was worth supporting for old ATMs or POS terminals, Ms probably would. But the people with those systems aren’t paying for windows updates.
I never said 14 year old PCs have to support modern Windows as it stands now.
But anyway. With all the billions Microsoft has as its operating budget, why can’t it launch a Windows tailored to low spec machines? Not profitable enough. That’s why.
My old system was starting to run like shit anyway I had it for over 10 years
Hardware doesn’t last forever and older hardware is vulnerable to more things.
It certainly would be nice if you never needed to upgrade anything and could just run the same hardware forever, but we don’t live in that world.
I get it, there’s that old saying “what Intel giveth Microsoft taketh away” but I’ve said it several times in this thread, you need to periodically upgrade hardware anyway to stay safer from certain kinds of malware
The malware part is the sad truth. You’re right.
14 year old PCs are quite capable for may everyday use
I got a core 2 duo (3gb of ram and a HDD as a boot drive, really ancient I know) computer, it’s the only computer I have and I absolutely hate it since it sucks, even with Linux (xfce as a desktop) it takes so long to boot (usually 3 to 4 minutes, windows took like 6 to 7) and not to mention it being so laggy it struggles with launching Firefox and for example a file browser at the same time, and loading a webpage also takes a long time (around 20 seconds for Google, YouTube about 30 s)
Yeah, these computers are really just unusable even for really lightweight work, yeah “upgrade to a SSD, it will be blazing fast”, wouldn’t that just speed up the boot time? The least important thing? Since like I can just walk somewhere and then come back before it boots, but when I’m waiting for a webpage to load or a program to load up it’s really that I do have to wait there, doing nothing in the meantime
An SSD really is the solution. You believe it just speeds up boot time, but it does speed up nearly everything else too.
Your Webpage? Your Browser loads it, stores new data into the cache and stalls while waiting for the HDD. Or it knows elements are in the cache and stalls waiting for them.
You click on the application menu? You PC tries to load 20 icons, tiny amounts of data an SSD has ready in a microsecond. Your HDD takes a full second because the seek between the 20 places where the icons are on the HDD takes so long.
I have some very old PCs I manage (mainly for relatives) and one couple uses a Core 2 Duo E6400 which should be quite similar to your PC. This PC is very usable for daily browsing with Ubuntu 22.04, boot time is about 25 seconds, then about 10 seconds to load up ebay. (I admit I optimized boot time quite a bit) The other PC they have is even slower than that, I just do not remember the exact CPU right now. That one is even used for old browser games similar to candy crush.
Of course it is not what I would use given the choice. I want to compile code in seconds, watch videos in glorious 4k and play a 3D game from time to time. But for them it works perfectly well, so well that they deny my offers to upgrade them
What makes you think that an SSD won’t help with the rest of the operations?
Every time I upgrade a computer from HDD to SSD, it injects new life to it.
IMO, it’ll probably still be slow at a lot of things. The gen-6 i5-U laptops we at my job use have SSDs and 8GB ram (granted, also running windows because required for some software) and they’re still really slow compared to things like my personal desktop and laptop. Boot times are fine at least, but web browsing isn’t as quick and responsive as I’m used to (<2 seconds per page). They probably take more like 10 pages to load pretty basic pages (no videos).
Still, probably a ton faster with an SSD than without one.
It sounds like your machine is full of crap. Or maybe the hardware you’re using is shitty.
Or maybe you’re giving your machine too much to do at once. Or maybe the antivirus you have is shitty, I don’t know I haven’t seen what you do with your system. I don’t have any problems with my windows machine, because I know how to use it and take care of it.
It would help the boot time but also loading software. But I agree a Core 2 Duo is pretty much cooked at this point.
I just replaced a Core 2 Quad in my server, which mostly is a file server and database, that sort of thing. It was doing fine until I started trying to do virtual machines on it (running Home Assistant), and that just killed it. But as a machine I’d be using directly? Nah.
My desktop machine was an i5 from about 2015 and was fine, but I recently upgraded the desktop and put the guts of that in the server.
Firefox is full of bloat now try using librewolf instead
Well, no. There’s no reason you should, plenty of uses for a 14yo Linux PC around the house
Yeah you could just switch to Linux on an old PC like that
The stuff that Microsoft is making mandatory for Windows 11 is hardware security features older hardware is more vulnerable to malware that runs at deeper levels of your system
If you want to be secure at the hardware level…or at least more secure at the hardware level, you need newer hardware
Core isolation for example won’t work on hardware that’s incompatible with windows 11
A lot of malware can’t run on a Windows machine once core isolation is enabled. Like I always say, if it won’t run with core isolation enabled, it’s probably malware
Why?
Progress mate. Shit gets old because we came up with better shit (thats gonna get old too) so you toss it and forget about it. Repeat until planet fucked.
harvest all the gold and copper from your old hardware.
So if you got Win11 to install on an “unsupported” CPU it might not boot now?
Backward compatibility is a big selling point for me. It bugged me for years when Windows got rid of 16-bit compatibility.
Looking forward to Linux instead of Windows 11/12, I know it will be a learning curve but Linux is getting better and easier.
Honestly, it’s easier to keep my Debian machine from killing itself than any Windows install.
It seems like Windows actively sabotages itself for no reason.
Classic Debian stability issues i.e. borrrrring.
Might I recommend Manjaro? In case you want to add some spice back into your life.
How’s Manjaro and Steam working?
Spicey
Perfectly.
It’s only CPUs lacking a specific extension. Nehalem or newer for Intel or Phenom or newer for AMD will still work. Those CPUs aren’t even officially supported by their weird restrictions.
So this is anecdotal I know, but I work on a Mac, so I’ve only ever held on to Windows for gaming. (Sidenote: The Mac isn’t my choice, either, but it has a terminal, and it does the job)
I’ve definitely tried to go fully Linux in the past, but it was always gaming that killed it for me. Wine was just never very consistent for me in this area.
Long story but, I recently lost my gaming machine, and was gifted a friends old one. Also a long story, but he ended up putting Linux on it for me. I figured I’d use it as is until payday before buying a key for Windows.
Holy shit gaming on Linux become has easy! Steam/proton is amazing!
I won’t lie, it’s not always as simple as install and run, but the tweaking that’s been required has been orders of magnitude simpler than what it used to be. Click a box 90% of the time, Click a box and add a run parameter for another 5%.
The only games that haven’t worked for me are Starfield and Cyberpunk (accounting for the last 5%.)
Starfield might just be too much for this old machine, but Cyberpunk I have no idea. Neither are a huge loss to me when Balders Gate, and Elite Dangerous are running fine. Also long standing favourites like Just Cause 3/4 work perfectly too.
I’m thrilled and a little shocked to say I think I’m finally done with Windows
Starfield worked on Linux for me, albeit it with some graphical glitches.
I installed in dual boot configuration save for the fact that I haven’t yet booted back into Windows since.
Generally my games just work. More than that, the performance is great and the tweaks are few and far between where necessary. It’s an absolute world of difference in usability compared to a few years ago.
I’d recommend everyone switch to Linux! I only had to go back because of a very niche problem with head tracking support. Linux is ready for most people though.
Freetrack in my simulation games is why I still have Windows on my old gaming desktop - the tracking protocol that those sims use isn’t supported under Linux 😔 as well as another that specifically looks for the Logitech G hub to interface with the wheel.
Aside from the simulators, I’ve been gaming on Linux on my deck and haven’t run into any issues at all, especially with Proton-GE handy to run “unsupported” titles
Same experience!
Do it. I made the switch a few months ago, and it’s gone better than I’d expected. Now running Linux Mint on my desktop and laptop. I set my laptop up with dual boot, just so I can easily and natively run Windows apps if needed.
It’s penguin time
I would not count on all major distros maintaining support for processors as old as Core 2 forever.
RHEL 9 in particular (and by extension CentOS Steam, Alma, Rocky) already dropped support for all of the processors affected by this breakage since 2022.
Linux systems often group these CPU feature set generations into levels, where “x86-64-v2” requires SSE4 and POPCNT (Nehalem/2008 and newer) and “x86-64-v3” requires AVX2 (Haswell/2013 and newer).
Ubuntu and Fedora are already evaluating optimized package builds for both v2 and v3 but haven’t announced any plans to drop baseline x86-64 yet; I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen within the next two years. Debian is a relatively safer bet for old hardware.
That’s why we have the freedom to create different distros.
Good to know
For real. With the improvements to running windows applications(games) on Linux over the last year it’s perfectly fine for the majority of pc users.
So why don’t Windows users switch at this point?
Because Windows is also perfectly fine for running Windows applications & games. It can also be a royal pain in the arse to set up Windows emulation on Linux depending on your graphics card and some other factors.
It’s actually easier to get Linux running on Windows since it has WSL. I have Ubuntu running under Windows with IntelliJ open at the moment and postgres running in the background right now.
I guess that’s a fair compromise.
Inertia.
I don’t know what physics have to do with this.
Get ready to downvote.
I think it was a way to say the trend is still in favor of using windows. It takes time for these sorts of trends to slow down and go in another direction.
Got it
Because they haven’t ascended and continue to scrabble about like pigs in shit.
You’re not helping with traction either, that’s for sure.
What do you mean? I’m an Arch Priest! I help the scutters find Truth.
Because some very important applications (microsoft office, adobe suit, some very popular multiplayer games, cad software etc etc) still don’t work.
Including a lot of corporate stuff like the Citrix application suite which admittedly barely even works on windows, and a whole load of telephony systems that require windows.
So not having enough software is due to not having many users, and not having many users is due to not having enough software, and the cycle repeats.
This is how Windows Phone got killed, ladies and gentlemen. But since Linux is open source, it’s basically invincible.
Others have given a lot of good reasons but those mostly have to do with more business related reasons than casual computer usage. Biggest reason people don’t switch is that the average computer user, who only needs it for casual usage, has no clue how to install an operating system. They simply use what is available at the time of purchase and big box chain stores predominantly sell windows machines. Now and then you may see someone offering a system with a flavor of Linux but that is few and far between. The fact that there are so many variants of Linux is both a benefit to why tech savvy people love it and a hindrance to mass adoption because people like consistent convenience. That is why the iPhone has done so well, each device has the exact same OS and experience. And that consistency with mass adoption means there is a certain level of support that the general user expects. They can go to most PC repair shops and get their windows system fixed no problem but with Linux not every shop is willing to touch the machines so there needs to be more self reliance. So when I say most casual users would be fine with Linux it’s true but for adoption it’s a tricky uphill battle of mass availability of a single user experience that has broad in person technical support.
Yeah, that explains all I need to know.
Specific software requirements for work is the main reason for me.
Also, last time I used linux, it kept breaking, so I had to reinstall the OS about once a month and I had no clue what kept breaking it.
the big thing is active directory. That is one thing Windows has made very easy to setup and maintain.
God damn.
I am in the process of changing before W11 is the only W choice. Many of my steam games work on nix, using the latest Ubuntu now but may need to shop around for another distro, including VR. Except my OGVive won’t display, the steam client loads and the mirror comes up and if you move the headset you can even see it move in the environment but… no video on the screens. No VR is a hard deal breaker and I do not have $1000 for a newer headset. Once I get over this hurdle on my laptop I can begin to migrate my desktop.
Good luck on that.
With all due respect, that sounds very much like what something unsupported would do.
