In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft has reversed its decision to enforce the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 requirement for installing Windows 11. This policy, recently defended just a week ago, sparked widespread frustration as millions of otherwise capable systems were arbitrarily deemed incompatible, leaving many users feeling alienated. This backpedaling showcases yet again […]
You can still do that, the article is fucking stupid. If you don’t have the correct requirements you will never get Windows 11 officially. You can however create a custom install of Win 11 using tools like Rufus to bypass the TPM requirements.
The point of the change is that now if you install it on an unsupported machine, you won’t get any official support; they’re not stopping you from messing with the OS installer but you will still NOT get the upgrade officially and if you do upgrade and find some issue they ain’t helping you.
IIRC they used to pester users with this unsupported setup to upgrade to a correct setup and they won’t do that any more.
Many people are going to say Linux. It’s probably annoying to hear, but its just the truth at this point. It probably seems daunting to switch over, but let me give you a very brief suggestion from a beginner on how to smooth over the transition.
Load up youtube and watch a few videos reviewing linux distributions for beginners just to see what’s recommended. My personal recommendation is to stick with a distro that uses KDE Plasma as the desktop environment since it will be very familiar coming from Windows. Once you decide what looks best for you…
Check and see if your computer has an available SATA port on the motherboard. If it does, grab yourself a SATA SSD and put your choice of a Linux distribution on it. Once Linux is up and running, set your BIOS to boot into Linux by default. Use Linux for everything you can and slowly migrate your workflow over to the new OS. Keep Windows as it is on its original drive and boot into it whenever you encounter something that doesn’t work or you haven’t set up on Linux yet. Don’t stress about rushing through this part. You have almost a year before Win10 is unsupported. Take your time and enjoy the process.
Over time, your Linux OS will become very useful for you as you uncover more ways to use it instead of Windows and Windows will be reserved for those infrequent edge cases where your needs are not met by Linux. This decouples you from the Microsoft ecosystem, making their enshittification less impactful on your life. I followed this exact path and I’m now a near full-time Linux user with Nobara as my chosen distribution and I could not be happier. I love my PC again.
The only thing I use Windows for now is sim racing games, as I haven’t yet dedicated time to find out how to get the expensive sim racing peripherals I own working on Linux yet. Apparently it’s possible and some people have had great success with it. This is something I will be actively working on over the coming year. Everything else I own runs perfect on Linux. I run a home studio so that means a lot of audio peripherals and specialized software. For 95% of my use case, Nobara just works.
The transition will take some work, but in the end if you can get yourself away from dependence on Windows, the options and freedom available to you expand like crazy. Its worth it just to show Microsoft that no, they no longer have a stranglehold on desktop PC users. The more we engage with non-mainstream options, the more the mainstream has to behave itself.
Well there goes my strategy of turning off tpm to prevent a sneaky upgrade.
What’s the current best way to prevent an unwanted Windows 11 upgrade?
Installing XP? I don’t think you’ll get any upgrades.
You can still do that, the article is fucking stupid. If you don’t have the correct requirements you will never get Windows 11 officially. You can however create a custom install of Win 11 using tools like Rufus to bypass the TPM requirements.
The point of the change is that now if you install it on an unsupported machine, you won’t get any official support; they’re not stopping you from messing with the OS installer but you will still NOT get the upgrade officially and if you do upgrade and find some issue they ain’t helping you.
IIRC they used to pester users with this unsupported setup to upgrade to a correct setup and they won’t do that any more.
I don’t want Windows 11. It performs like shit. But I guarantee this will lead to sneaky upgrades.
https://www.opensuse.org/
Uninstalling that fucking malware?
Many people are going to say Linux. It’s probably annoying to hear, but its just the truth at this point. It probably seems daunting to switch over, but let me give you a very brief suggestion from a beginner on how to smooth over the transition.
Load up youtube and watch a few videos reviewing linux distributions for beginners just to see what’s recommended. My personal recommendation is to stick with a distro that uses KDE Plasma as the desktop environment since it will be very familiar coming from Windows. Once you decide what looks best for you…
Check and see if your computer has an available SATA port on the motherboard. If it does, grab yourself a SATA SSD and put your choice of a Linux distribution on it. Once Linux is up and running, set your BIOS to boot into Linux by default. Use Linux for everything you can and slowly migrate your workflow over to the new OS. Keep Windows as it is on its original drive and boot into it whenever you encounter something that doesn’t work or you haven’t set up on Linux yet. Don’t stress about rushing through this part. You have almost a year before Win10 is unsupported. Take your time and enjoy the process.
Over time, your Linux OS will become very useful for you as you uncover more ways to use it instead of Windows and Windows will be reserved for those infrequent edge cases where your needs are not met by Linux. This decouples you from the Microsoft ecosystem, making their enshittification less impactful on your life. I followed this exact path and I’m now a near full-time Linux user with Nobara as my chosen distribution and I could not be happier. I love my PC again.
The only thing I use Windows for now is sim racing games, as I haven’t yet dedicated time to find out how to get the expensive sim racing peripherals I own working on Linux yet. Apparently it’s possible and some people have had great success with it. This is something I will be actively working on over the coming year. Everything else I own runs perfect on Linux. I run a home studio so that means a lot of audio peripherals and specialized software. For 95% of my use case, Nobara just works.
The transition will take some work, but in the end if you can get yourself away from dependence on Windows, the options and freedom available to you expand like crazy. Its worth it just to show Microsoft that no, they no longer have a stranglehold on desktop PC users. The more we engage with non-mainstream options, the more the mainstream has to behave itself.
Linux.
I say this as someone using Win11. I’m okay with using it, but if you don’t want to, then just go to Linux.
Using something other than windows as your primary OS, and interfacing with windows through a virtual machine where necessary.
Not really a real solution, though, but some folks make it work pretty well.
Do not use Windows :D