I really miss the customizability of Win 95, I ran OSR 2 until i upgraded to ME. This was partly because my Cyrix processor really needed some help to perform decently.
Should probably go back to Linux again, the only thing holding me on Windows still is games and more of them are able to run on Linux now.
I hated Win 95 and 98. The first Windows I actually really enjoyed was Windows 2000. I had a dodgy Pro key that worked until the end of life of 2000. I have dabbled in Linux over the years. First time was APUS on my PPC Amiga. Oof!, I am so old!, and wasted so much money on my Amiga. Putting it in a tower. Had the PPC and also BVision graphics card as well. Then I started building my own PeeCees, until I got fed up with that. Been on a laptop since 2006. Latest one has a 3060 in it. More than enough for my needs.
Windows 11. Hmmm. Dunno what to do. I Run 10 Pro so don’t have to have a M$ account (I think) and all the security things are fine. I’m just not happy with the road we’re expected to travel on.
Nice! I bought a used Amiga 1200 in '96 that i ended up putting in a tower with a 24x cd drive, an old HDD (maybe 800 MB), upgraded ram and a network card. A lovely machine. I also had som old handed down PC’s at around that time, upgraded with parts gotten free or bought used. Including a lovely Voodoo monster 3dfx graphic card.
As for linux i have run a few distros, such as SuSe, Redhat, Gentoo and Ubuntu. Gentoo was my favourite, but that was back in '05.
For those wondering and those who may read this later, yes TPM 2.0 is a requirement, but that does not mean you need to buy a chip. Scalpers have already bought out ALL stock of every kind of physical TPM module and are selling them for obscene prices. Chances are your motherboard has firmware based TPM 2.0.
You will need to go into your bios and enable it if you did not buy a prebuilt desktop PC or a laptop. Things to look for are discrete TPM, firmware TPM, dTPM, PTT, fTPM, or something similar.
The naming scheme for this seems to change between motherboard manufacturers. If you have a search function in your bios, you can search for the setting. If that doesn’t return results, you’ll want to sift through your settings, specifically looking for security settings.
I went through my parents computers and enabled this already to make sure they didn’t need to do any updating. Both computers are about 3-4 years old. The laptop already had it enabled. The desktop (which I built) needed PTT enabled.
It doesn’t hurt to turn this on now, it’s just extra security, but I would recommend at the very least verifying that your motherboard is ready and doesn’t need a bios update or replacement if you plan to get Windows 11. Prices on motherboards is likely going to start going up. Hopefully we don’t see shortages like we do for GPUs right now.
Apparently Microsoft has seen the backlash to this decision and will “look into it”. It’s their way of saying we caught them goofin’ and now they are trying to back track on something they didn’t think most people knew was a BS “requirement”. Hopefully this means the TPM + SB requirement, or at least TPM.
There is absolutely no logical explanation to end support for millions of people simply because they aren’t on Gen 8 Intel CPUs of Zen AMD CPUs. This is obviously done to incentivize more buying. That’s why they advertise their Microsoft PCs right after on the official page. This is a joke, really. lol
I agree completely. I understand why they want to make it a requirement, but they failed to realize how many people it would impact.
I figured I would post just in case they don’t remove the requirement because I really don’t want people to start looking into buying the physical chips that are being scalped for as much as 10x their normal cost when they might be able to just enable the firmware based in their bios.
Hopefully Microsoft walks back that requirement because like you said, it would end support for millions of people. Which means millions of people would be forced to get a new computer or hardware only further impacting the already extreme chip shortages.
They are already lowering at least one of the requirements: CPU.
Honestly I’m sure there will be nice improvements. I just wish they would stop constantly making drastic changes to the UI. A slightly inefficient system that remains constant can be better than optimized systems in a constant state of change (this is why most of us use QWERTY keyboards after all - despite imperfections, there’s no cognitive load to using them).
For those who don’t think about about UIs, here’s a strong example: why in the world did they move the start menu to somewhere in the middle of the taskbar?! This is a decision made by a graphic artist, not someone with interface experience. It breaks the first rule of graphical interfaces: place your important buttons in the corners. A button in the corner has “infinite” size. That is, you direct your pointer in one of the four corner directions and you literally cannot miss the button. Contrast this with anywhere else on the screen and you start to wonder what kind of clown is running the show over there.
The fact that they can lower it proves they did this for 2 reasons, and no one should let that slide. At all.
Yes! If I wanted a Mac UI I would buy a Mac or install some sort of UI mod. For me, the UI is the change I hate the most.
These are far too similar for my taste. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple tried to sue Microsoft over some sort copyright/patent/trademark type thing with the UI.
You can change the UI back to Windows 10 format, thankfully.
Oh really? I had not seen that. That’s great news for people like me who hate UI changes 
And I wish they would stop playing around with the normal numeric keypad layout on some of the new 17.3" gaming laptops. I rely heavily on the proper layout of that for non-gaming activities, and some manufacturers are losing my business and probably a lot of other folks too. 
EDIT: (sorry I just realized my response is about hardware, not OS)
Don’t worry, @markwr , Chrono usually let the first infraction pass. It’s the second one they send @delenn13 to sort. Oof! 
Well, when you talk about Windows it’s inevitable to talk about hardware, specially because of this TPM controversy. Speaking of which:
Windows 11 comes with a new optional feature called ‘TPM Diagnostics’ that allows administrators to query the data stored on a device’s TPM security processor.
When it comes to Windows 11, Microsoft is placing all its bets on the TPM 2.0 security processor as a requirement for the OS to power some of its security features.
“PCs of the future need this modern hardware root-of-trust to help protect from both common and sophisticated attacks like ransomware and more sophisticated attacks from nation-states. Requiring the TPM 2.0 elevates the standard for hardware security by requiring that built-in root-of-trust,” explains Microsoft in a new blog post.
“TPM 2.0 is a critical building block for providing security with Windows Hello and BitLocker to help customers better protect their identities and data. In addition, for many enterprise customers, TPMs help facilitate Zero Trust security by providing a secure element for attesting to the health of devices.”
Yeah, it seems they won’t let this go anytime soon. 
Thought this was pretty interesting.
And there’s already tricks to bypass the TPM 2.0 requirement.
Wow thanks for sharing! I think I may install Windows 11 just to test how this works out.
