The writer clearly understands that something isn’t adding up with Microsoft’s claims about TPM, but nowhere do they address the accusations that Microsoft plans to use it as DRM (and potentially spying).
Similarly, only supporting certain CPU’s is suspect as hell. Between all this and Recall, it really feels like the driving design focus behind Windows 11 was to build the best spying machine they could.
I’m grateful to Microsoft for Windows 11 providing me a bunch of free machines to stick in my basement and put Linux on.
Debian user here. All people have a doorkey. Some people have an alarm system as well. Infosec is about ’ what do you have and what do you know '. So in principle TPM is a defencible argument. You should absolutely bail from MS products for different reasons. Like privacy. Your PC isn’t yours anymore. Your NPU will reduce THEIR costs. Etc.
Don’t enter Linux thinking its a drop in replacement. Go slow and do ‘ships in the night’. Move data over to the new ship. Start embracing OSS on windows, it’ll be familiar when you finally bail. G luck.
TPM is the wedge to put a cryptoprocessor in your computer so program can finally operate under the tyrannical scrutiny of users and the pirates using ghidra !
It may be a bold of me to say, but I hold the controversial opinion that I don’t really give a shit which computer OS you use. If you can use a mouse and keyboard to navigate a desktop environment then 🤙 you are ahead of the curve at this point.
ROFL no. I once knew someone who got offered an upgrade from whatever to Windows 10, only for it to fail half way through because their CPU was some weird corner case that the OS thought it supported but when it was time to boot… didn’t.
Also if you want to talk e-waste, look no further than Chromebooks.
Windows 11 has problems, this is hardly one of them.
Chromebooks sound good in theory but fall short because kids are great at breaking them and there is a lack of repairability.
There is also chromeos being kinda ass
Idk about the lack of repairability, those things are really easy and cheap to fix in my experience. They are at least no less repairable than 95% of laptops on the market.
what a bizare take to suggest hoping for ReactOS to mature before using Linux as daily driver. A lot of the current reactOS app compatibility depends on WINE implementation anyway.
ReactOS is a very fun project, but anyone expecting it to be a real useable OS is absolutely mad. It’s been going for almost 30 years, and they’re almost at the point of binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003…
Last I checked it didnt play very nicely in real hardware, and required running it in a VM
I had a Windows 10 laptop that has a CPU not supported by Windows 11. It’s not e-waste, though. It just runs Ubuntu now.
Fucking Christ, you have choices people. If windows won’t meet your needs anymore, USE SOMETHING ELSE! Why do these people pretend there are no alternatives to windows?!
Think about all the people with computers that don’t know about Linux.
Why do these people pretend there are no alternatives to windows?!
They’d have to admit they were wrong.
Most people are incapable of doing this unless they literally have no choice.
There are no alternatives to Windows. You will join us. Embrace ☀️. Extend 🌈.Ȩ̷͙͙̺̰̦͊̏͜x̷̱̹̃t̶̡͉̍̋̌̿͗̈́͘í̴̡̼̱̫͚̺͙̉ň̶̛̮͠ģ̴̛̹̮͎̏̓u̷̢̢̜͊̆̈̉͐̑i̸̛̪͔̤̰͚̾͌̈̍͜ͅs̶̳̜͎͓͚̣̼̖͌̇̈́͊̌͋h̷͉̹̄͐̋̐͛🌚.
Where’s Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer on this one? Too busy looking the other way on Copilot’s massive energy usage?
Microsoft: BUT WE’RE THE MOST ECO CONSCIOUS COMPANY WE KNOW!!!
You can’t say they’re not. The even have a Chief Sustainability Officer! /s
OK I’m sold…they are officially the most eco efficient and conscious company in the WORLD and bill gates is not about to garrote me agent 47 sty-
DON’T TURN ON DISPLAYING SECONDS IN THE TASKBAR BECAUSE THAT’LL USE MORE ENERGY!
I can’t wait for the surge in cheap PCs available to buy and install Linux on. Please, Microsoft, lock down Windows more.
Switch to Linux, today. It’s always been the better option, but for the last decade it’s been the easier option as well. Installing Linux is a walk in the park whereas windows is a Hilarious clown show from hell with no end.
That reminds me that now in the office we’re dealing with windows machines where the network card just stops working, drivers are suddenly gone. Don’t ask, it’s windows, it’s Microsoft abd this is just considered normal. If a Linux machine has a bug it’s “oh my god Linux sucks sooo hard, it’s impossible to get it to work!” but this Microsoft bullshit just gets handwaved away with “well computers are complicated, let’s just reinstall this”
Yes, there is still a limited set of specialty hardware that may not have drivers available for Linux, but the vast majority of people can easily run Linux and have a much MUCH better experience than windows, and that is ignoring the spyware, the adware, the ads, the plain security nightmare of having a windows machine…
Switch to Linux, it’s easy, it’s beautiful, it’s fun. Come to Linux, come to the dark side, we have cookies
Seriously. If you’re used to fiddling with Windows and especially if you have installed Windows recently, go try something like Linux Mint. Just the install process will blow your mind. And then wait until you get a system update and it doesn’t affect what you’re doing!
And you can say no if you want to!
Yeah I guess I left that part out! It’s funny because like so many things in Linux, you have all the power but you often don’t need to use it because the same problems just aren’t there.
You get to decide when to apply the updates, but they are so quick and unobtrusive that I choose to apply them immediately!
But what if we already use Linux? Can we still have some cookies? Or is this new users only?
You can have them, just click accept all on the cookie pop up.
Installing Linux is a walk in the park whereas windows is a Hilarious clown show from hell with no end.
As a server maybe. Switching everything on my desktop to Linux has been a constant fight against all kinds of problems and there’s several things I haven’t been able to get working at all. Microsoft’s constant enshittification is closing the gap and it’s currently a tossup between which one I’m going to land on but that’s not Linux improving so much as Windows getting worse.
It’s very hardware dependent with a few problem’s like Nvidia. For Best results go established brands that support Linux like thinkpads.
Exactly, I have a bunch of weird issues when running Linux on my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with an RTX3060. So unfortunately I w9nt be switching until the situation improves.
It’s not even about gaming either, virtually all animations are like 2fps, no matter the drivers or power management. I wasted days on this with some guys from the Lenovo Legion Linux discord server, and some with exactly the same laptop don’t have the same issue, but windows runs fine.
It’s a real shame that, maybe on the next laptop!
Is your model covered by a NixOS module?
https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/tree/master/lenovo/legion
Could give one of these a twirl and see if it fixes the issues you’ve been seeing.
Thanks for the lead, but I’m afraid I don’t know what to do with these modules. Do they only work with NixOS?
That advice doesn’t help much when I already have all the hardware. The whole point is not having to buy new shit.
I want giving advice, I was describing the situation. 🤷
Quick glance on my installed programs, and I count 7 apps I heavily use in windows 11 with no linux version, nor a clear equivalent that could replace them without extensive hacks that may or may not work and be a total waste of my time.
Also a funny thing: I installed Debian with KDE and then GNOME last year on another PC, and guess what? KDE & GNOME came bloated with a bunch of apps, games, office suite, code editor and other shit.
I thought the whole shtick of Linux/FOSS was that it didn’t make any default choices for you. That’s what I always read here when people cry about windows bloat.
The same cleanup & customization did for windows 11 I had to do to Debian KDE and then GNOME.
Point is: it’s not that easy and being and insufferable jerk about it its not gonna solve it. Let people use what they want.
The whole schtick is you have actual ownership and control of your software. You literally just have a Windows license and in that license you have no power or control over your OS. Microsoft is definitely spying on you at this point, no question about that anymore.
I am sensing some serious anti-linux projections. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If you don’t like people talking about it, don’t use Lemmy and go to Reddit where there are tons of Windows bros who dunk on Linux all day.
Point is: Your full of it and you probably want to ruin Lemmy like Reddit got ruined so you can feel comfortable in your chosen OS. Follow the granny rule, if you don’t have something positive to say just shut the fuck up.
If you don’t like people talking about it, don’t use Lemmy and go to Reddit where there are tons of Windows bros who dunk on Linux all day.
Nice gatekeeping… people like you are why these platforms are never taking off.
My home server runs debian, my main PC runs windows 11, and I have an iPhone and it all works very well. I don’t like circlejerks, they’re stupid, specially when they’re loudly incorrect.
Lemmy has a massive circlejerk problem to the point that you can’t even mention using proprietary stuff because you get screamed at by keyboard warriors.
I think you’re confusing Lemmy’s alignment to freedom and the common good with a circle jerk. Most of us are here because we don’t want to be bound by the limits of centralized, proprietary social networks, how can you be surprised that the people here try to make the same choice in other aspects of their lives?
Quick glance on my installed programs, and I count 7 apps I heavily use in windows 11 with no linux version, nor a clear equivalent that could replace them without extensive hacks that may or may not work and be a total waste of my time.
if you tell us the names, maybe someone can help
Also a funny thing: I installed Debian with KDE and then GNOME last year on another PC, and guess what? KDE & GNOME came bloated with a bunch of apps, games, office suite, code editor and other shit.
that’s the decision of the distribution, not KDE/Gnome. often it is configurable in the installer, even in debian to some level.
The same cleanup & customization did for windows 11 I had to do to Debian KDE and then GNOME.
to be fair if uninstalling unneeded programs is the only thing you do on 11, you’re leaving in lots of things.
Let people use what they want.
I agree that insufferable jerks are insufferable jerks, but I don’t think most people want to use windows 11, but that’s what they can use, for one reason or another, some of which have a solution, some of which not yet. if anything, I would bet money most would rather just stay on 10.
That reminds me that now in the office we’re dealing with windows machines where the network card just stops working, drivers are suddenly gone. Don’t ask, it’s windows, it’s Microsoft abd this is just considered normal. If a Linux machine has a bug it’s “oh my god Linux sucks sooo hard, it’s impossible to get it to work!” but this Microsoft bullshit just gets handwaved away with “well computers are complicated, let’s just reinstall this”
Ah, yes, that. I switched in 2011 and the first impressions were about how flawless everything is compared to Windows.
the plain security nightmare of having a windows machine…
Eh, about that - Linux really isn’t immune to that. Just right now Windows is still by far the more profitable target.
Linux security is not perfect, nothing is. But compared to windows security? Come on, seriously? Is .exe still the extension that’ll automatically execute a program?
I’m not sure this is anywhere near what a security comparison would look like.
And the fact that the traditional Unix security model is being augmented with ACLs and selinux and what not hints, that it’s not sufficient. And what these things are being used for is, well, similar to Windows security model.
It’s better now but twenty years ago some Linux distros were so insecure out of the box that you could be fully owned if you logged into the wrong network.
Even still, I don’t see most distros leverage the security capabilities that running Linux enables. Linux runs the server side of the internet, being a niche os isn’t the security silver bullet it once was.
Pretty sure this guy didn’t use Linux twenty years ago. Outside of very basic computing, Linux wasn’t very useful.
I’ve been running Linux exclusively since 2001 or so. It was rough around the edges back then, but it was useful enough for what I needed.
You had to choose a good distro on that note; redhat, mandrake, etc broke on me so many times, and I was only able to fully switch after finding slackware, which was rock solid.
I remember suse and Debian where ahead of the curve back then. Package managers really changed the game when they started showing up around then. I will admit I’m probably a little too cynical. But I had to run windows through college for various software, and until recently playing most games on Linux was quite the challenge. Steam has truly cracked the code. So I’m dipping my toes back into Linux for daily use. I’ve been running my truenas server for a few years now and run several Linux VM’s so I’m not starting from scratch.
consider linux instead of throwing functional shit away
I have a custom built PC running on Windows 10, which has no TPM and therefore cannot update to Win11. I might consider Linux as an alternative on some regular laptop, but I’m afraid that my games might no longer be running if I switch the OS from Windows to Linux.
try them out. the only real exceptions are some multiplayer games that are specifically blocked on linux. anti cheat itself is working, its up to the companies to let us use it.
a lot of games run faster, even through proton.
Linux is fantastic for gaming. You’ll even see performance improvements. The only games that have problems are those that intentionally block linux, like Destiny 2, but they’re not worth playing.
The places you are likely to run into problems is with certain desktop apps. For example, the Affinity suite or software designed to support specific devices or peripherals. But if gaming is your focus, Linux is genuinely a better choice than Windows all around.
For what it’s worth, I switched 2 years ago and have yet to run into a game I wanted to play and couldn’t. There are some glaring holes, mostly around “serious e-sports” games that have overly invasive anti-cheat (or devs that specifically choose to block linux) that won’t work. Riot and Epic both seem to have a hard on for blocking linux users, as an example.
But here’s the neat part. You can make the switch and see, and it costs you nothing. If you are in the minority that it just won’t work for and have to switch back to windows, you are in the exact same spot you are in now, with nothing lost but a bit of time.
What games? Even games with EasyAntiCheat work in Linux nowadays, but it depends on the devs.
Almost every single modern game runs on Linux, i always thought it was an issue but in reality it just works out of the box most of the time.
Proton has come a long way.
The only game I can’t play is fortnight, and that’s because Epic won’t enable the anti cheat to run on Linux, not because the game doesn’t work.
What is “Proton” in this context?
Adding to what the others were saying, proton has an unaffiliated website for reporting purposes, protondb.com. It tallies user reports of the games working or not. The data is associated mostly with steam libraries.
I don’t have a lot of games in my steam library, relatively speaking, barely over 100. But there are zero games that would not work on Linux for me:
In this context Platinum means it works out of the box, Gold means some users experienced minor issues (mostly older reports by nvidia users) that required some tinkering with launch options, such as setting an environment variable. Silver and Bronze mean gradually more tinkering required but still works. This excludes native apps (which do not use wine/proton) and borked apps (of which I own zero).
Note, that this is a translation layer, not emulation, and often games can have better performance under Linux thanks to the system not getting bogged down by the OS itself.
Also note, that 99% borked games are due to kernel level anticheat and DRM being implemented improperly by the game developer, which proton can’t handle. You can still make it work under Linux, but you’d actually require emulation for that, instead of proton.
Edit:
Another screenshot of the top50 played saturation to show you what to expect.
OK, thanks for the information, that sounds really interesting. I was playing Doom Eternal and Metro Exodus some time ago, but I made a bread and didn‘t pick it up anymore due to a lack of time. Many years ago I was also trying a bit of Linux on a Netbook (small notebook). By then it was really a different world than Windows.
However, I am not sure how easy that is to manage with getting the right Linux distribution, then Wine, then Proton and then getting all tricks and tweaks right… - I am not a tech expert, so leaving a system that works out of the box is a bit of a hurdle for me.
What would be the best Linux „Distro“ (I guess that‘s how it is called) to start with? I would prefer if I would not have to deal with command line stuff… ;-)
Luckily, Steam handles all of that for you.
People keep saying Bazzite now for distro. But as a relatively new linux user (since last summer) I’ve managed to make things work with Linux Mint, arch and Fedora no hassle.
Heroic launcher (GOG, Epic) or Steam will handle proton&wine for you. Just need to check a check-box in the game’s config on whether you want to run native or proton.
Which Distro would you recommend for a relative newcomer? My PC was once “high-end” but is already a bit older (2016/17?). Still quite powerful, I guess.
As another person mentioned Proton is Linux’s compatibility layer for Windows applications, from my understanding it installs necessary .NET frameworks and other dependencies into a fake C:\ drive an then utilizes that fake C:\ to trick the game into thinking it’s running Windows.
Every windows applications I put through Proton has not once failed to open. Now the claims that Anti-Cheat for games isn’t supported is purely false, most popular anti cheat’s do support Linux however, it’s entirely up to the publisher to tick the checkbox to allow Linux users to play.
Battle eye, Punk Buster, Easy Anti-Cheat all support Linux natively.
It’s an extension of WINE, a compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Linux, with better support for games. It’s what the Steam Deck uses.
I’ve converted a ton of my older family to Linux, it does everything they need as far as web browsing and some basic office applications, and it offers a polished enough UI these days that most barely tell it apart from windows, some even prefer the UI more. Even 2/3 of our home systems have gone full Linux now too (no more dual booting) and handle all my own gaming, audio and programming needs. I really hope this message keeps getting out there and we can cut back on ewaste and forced obselence.
also that most of us don’t actually need microsoft!
You can argue all you want about TPM and its ‘security’. I ALWAYS thought that forcing users to use TPM 2+ hardware is planned obsolescence and nothing/no one will convince me otherwise.
The only thing affected users can and should do is to leave that PoS of an ‘operating system’.
It’s not PoS. At its core Windows NT is very cool, and the Windows subsystem for it is not terrible.
What’s PoS is that the only way you get it is with such a heap of garbage, that you can’t see the good parts behind it.
And even its developers seem to have forgotten those good parts, I wonder if they ever change anything there other than “closing” vulnerabilities with yet another condition in some long-long switch … case … statements.
It’s not really a TPM problem, my Dell has TPM2.0 which is perfectly compatible with win11. My problem is the CPU (i5 6th gen) missing some stuff for modern device drivers or something, that is preventing me from upgrading win10 to win11.
Yes I dual boot MX Linux on it :)
