same, I stuck with Win7 for years after its support period ended because I didnât want to lose Aero đ„ș
msage@programming.dev
on 04 Dec 14:59
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It has KDE, which I believe has something close to it.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 17:50
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Yup, Linux can look like whatever you want. I made my old Ubuntu install look like Windows 7 for the lulz once, but now Iâm too lazy to change the defaults.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 18:52
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Linux but with windows xp installation music
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 19:04
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Iâve seen someone with that on their Steam Deck. Donât let your dreams be dreams.
There is a KDE windows aero theme. The panels wonât mimic the start menu and bar perfectly. But it absolutely gives it an overall flavor.
megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 05 Dec 07:48
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KDE Plasma + Klassy can do that. I think you can pull off a Win7 look with just those two.
KDE Plasma can get you far with its customization options, and Klassy adds more customization on top of that, and adds the translucent/transparent effects you need to emulate the Win7 look.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Dec 11:44
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Old Gnome2-era themes will always win out imo. I tried looking for neat Plasma themes but a lot of em are just very basic colour swaps, nothing out there
megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Dec 13:53
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KDE themes are a mixed bag for me. On one hand, they can potentially provide theming for little to no effort on my part (provided I do find a pre-made theme to my liking), but on the other, I had more luck with mixing and matching (and a lot of tweaking) different theme components (that is: color theme, application style, plasma style, window decorations, icon theme, cursor theme, etc). Itâs a lot of work, and the result might not exactly be coherent, but you can really tweak quite a lot.
I havenât really tried emulating the win7 look and feel by customizing KDE Plasma, but I think itâs possible. Someone in this comment chain claimed thereâs a Win7 theme available, albeit not pulling it off perfectly. I guess that can be used as a starting point.
Just a heads up while the look might be easy to emulate the feel part will at best be close. Which is actually good because a lot about that is rather shoddy in windows⊠and focussing on getting what you had with windows might make you miss stuff you didnât think you wanted. Like MMB click on scrollbars, or dragging and resizing windows with Super+LMB/RMB
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Dec 11:37
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Thanks. Iâve been a daily Linux user since 2013, distro-hopping between every environment and whatnot, these days mostly on i3/tmux/vim on Kali for HackTheBox.
I use Windows 10 on my main PC for media/flight/race/milsimming with an Aero skin that gets pretty darn close, without using WindowBlinds, using SecureUxTheme tool, cracked StartIsBack and some theme I got off the Frutiger Aero subreddit, looks great with WACUP, 8Gadgets, Aerochat and some Windhawk mods like the old Win7 Taskbar Clock (instead of the W10 XAML one)
My dadâs bringing his PC to my house when they visit for Christmas so we can setup Linux as a dual boot for him to see if he can switch from Windows 10 to Linux instead of buying a new PC
My dad (in his mid 80s) told me proudly that he had just bought Linux and installed it on his computer. Itâs great that he wanted to try Linux but I wonder what malware-riddled scam distro he found, and how Iâll sort it out on my next visit.
Not sure if it was Mint or Ubuntu, but one of them shows a donation box with a default amount when you click download. Itâs already downloading when the box shows up, but maybe he misinterpreted that.
Doesnât Ubuntu and a few other distros still sell physical install discs?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 17:47
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They used to, but I donât think they do anymore. In fact, I think they used to send one to you for free. I got an official Ubuntu install disk for free at college (someone was handing them out), and Iâve been on Linux ever since.
I do see Ubuntu install USBs on Amazon, but I wouldnât trust those.
You used to be able to buy physical media. And that may be what theyâre talking about? Hard to say. For a long time this whole write it to a USB stick and install it was newfangled and not at all common. I 100% have a version of red hat in a box that I bought off a shelf of a local Best Buy back in the 90s. Yes you could have just downloaded and installed it or created your own install media. But having your own CD burners even werenât that common at the time. I remember 1999 being when I got my first CD burner and how special that was lol. It seems almost quaint by todayâs standards. And downloading wasnât really an option either. 56 kilobits per second if you were lucky would have taken days and days. Now itâs just minutes over most broadband.
I think my retiree parents (and in-laws) are going the same way. They only use their computer for email and search, and the options are just better.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 17:49
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Iâll have to ask my parents about it. They mostly just use a web browser, but they also occasionally use Word for writing Christmas letters and whatnot. I could probably get them to switch to LibreOffice, Google Drive, or Office365, but not completely sure about that. They are interested in getting a Chromebook, so I guess weâll see what they end up needing.
I try not to force Linux on anyone, but I have brought it up before as a suggestion (they were complaining about their computer being slow, and ended up buying a new one). My dad really likes Windows, but they really donât use anything Windows-specific other than Word anymore.
âincompatibleâ hardware will be dirt cheap, and 8th gen or newer will sell for more than it would have otherwiseâespecially if tariffs jack prices up on new hardware.
i have a couple dozen older systems here. most were given to me before win11âs requirements were known. fixing and flipping them for a few bucks was a small but relatively steady income stream, but not anymore. hardly anyone wants them.
the couple that are new enough to be blessed by microsoft will be kept, and iâll hang on to the better ones of the rest (like skylake, kaby lake) to put linux on. everything else will end up at ewaste recyclers even though thereâs absolutely nothing wrong with any of them other than the fact that a profit and âshareholder valueâ driven megacorp says they canât be used anymore.
Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 04 Dec 15:42
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Itâs fairly trivial to bypass Microsoftâs hardware requirements for windows 11 afaik. Just install via Rufus and click the relevant options. I agree with you that MS should have made these optional recommendations though, we shouldnât have to use third party tools.
Maybe the tariffs will serve to cull a bit of the consumist impulse the US suffers of.
Regarding if a machine is desirable or not: Iâm still seeing Windows XP machines being sold today for over 100âŹ. No monitor, no peripherals, no nothing: just the machine. And people needing a machine to type a report, do a spreadsheet, do basic office work, with no other option, pay for it.
i run my machines until they stop working, period.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml
on 04 Dec 13:57
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Love Linux and steam deck, but AS IS, steam os is a horrible choice for a desktop general use computer.
Itâs immutable without layering, so there are things that you canât install/keep after an update. Case and point, printers. You canât print, period. Valve knows, they donât need a gaming device to print so they donât care.
Hopefully they will do something about this, but I donât hold my breath for 2025
I think printers is kinda going the way of having to support winmodems for Linux⊠Just not as important as it used to be.
Last time I printed something was for a pistol permit. 3 years ago. And I just sent that to Office Depot to print it, and picked it up on the way to the permit office.
Students at the local uni donât really need printers, either. Generally, the few times they do, thereâs public printers to email the doc to, and go pick up (Or, QR code and a phone, etc).
Personal printers just arenât that big of a deal these days.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 04 Dec 18:17
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They wont do anything about it because SteamOS is not and will never be a general purpose desktop OS. Its a gaming distro designed to do one thing and one thing well, game. It can do other things but its not meant to, kinda like a reverse MacOS.
Currently, youâre right. But itâs a bad move, I think, moving forward for valve.
They have already confirmed they want steamOS to be a distro everybody can install on any computer. Being more limited than most distros is going to make it a hard choice to pick. On the deck, itâs fine tuned to that hardware. What is going to offer that Bazzite wonât replicate a few months afterwards, while offering a better general OS experience?
I think that just having layers and a recovery partition that can restore the system while preserving steam games (even if removing all configs) would increase the appeal a lot.
Sounds like 2025 is gonna be a good year for PC manufacturers.
atrielienz@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 14:41
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With sales from companies? Yes. With sales from average consumers? Maybe not. Depends on what they can afford. Thereâs people out there still using things like windows 7. If the computer still works theyâre unlikely to upgrade unless they care about having the newest stuff.
A friend of mine just messaged me, that we cannot play a few selected games anymore, as his notebook was acting up. Upon further investigation I found out, that he is still running Windows 8.1 and cannot use Steam anymore, since Steam support on Windows 8.1 ended about a year ago and a Chrome update âfinallyâ broke Steam on windows 8.1 a few weeks ago.
My mom only upgraded from her original surface pro running windows 8 when my siblings and I bought her a surface pro 7. She watches Netflix and checks her email and plays like plants vs zombies and solitaire. Some people really do live by the rule of âif it ainât broke donât fix itâ.
I still donât know what you are talking about and Iâm not trying to be stubborn
Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
on 06 Dec 21:40
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My bad, I thought you were making a joke about Pika saying âplanned obsidenceâ instead of âplanned obsolescence.â I did not realize you were making a genuine inquiry.
Planned obsolescence is when businesses intentionally design a product to become useless after a period of time.
For example, imagine a high end camera company that also sells replacement parts. They change their lens shape every model, and only keep the most recent modelsâ lenses in production. When an older modelâs lens inevitably breaks, the customer cannot buy a replacement, and thus has pressure to buy s new camera, and the company hopes that most customers will buy from them again.
We see this in tech with smartphone companies only giving OS updates for a few years, causing older phones to go end of life, so even if the phone is fully functional it needs to be replaced. Again, the company hopes the customer will again buy from them rather than going to a competitor (who is likely running the same scheme.)
OP suggests Microsoftâs TPM requirement is there to force new computer sales, which will include a purchase of a Windows 11 OEM license bundled with the PC.
Which is on the market for more than six years now. That was my point. It does not only need TPM2.0, it also needs CPU and RAM in regions that are way more recent than TPM2.0
I feel that this is diverging from your original comment, but okay, Windows 11 â as with all prior releases of Windows â has minimum CPU and memory requirements. That isnât what the article text is discussing, but fair enough.
But I donât see any association with that and AI. This isnât parallel processing hardware being discussed.
But I donât see any association with that and AI. This isnât parallel processing hardware being discussed.
The one big eater of CPU power in future Windows will most likely be AI. Most of which will probably be useless for the user, which is a common problem with Windows âfeaturesâ in recent years.
I can easily see a Microsoft AI engine churning the users data in order to determine which ads to serve - in the start menu, the screen backgrouns, the login screen, or as blatant popups. If people notice that such a thing is seriously eating into their machinesâ power, they will try harder to kill this. Therefor it is the interest of Microsoft that the user has more than enough power. And this is just one example.
The CPU is due to instruction set requirements. The first version of W11 is technically compatible (with hack to pass the checks) with older CPUs than the newer versions. And itâs not Gustyâs guaranteed that there ones that currently can run it will do it after a few updates.
I hate it, and they could have done things to allow more compatibility, but itâs not without a technical reason.
⊠This is bait right? You want somebody to tell you thereâs a simple and free solution, and then youâre going to say itâs a bad solution?
FINE! Iâll bite: Pirated copy of Windows Enterprise LTSC. Itâs less useful, more resource hungry, privacy invasive and has worse support for older hardware than Linux though.
Working class people at large donât know about these alternatives, Iâm certain you know that. IT folk and nerds alike do, but anyone outside of these circles donât necessarily see the choice they have
Those people that donât know options exist are also people that donât care about or know about support life for something like the OS - they just see it as what the computer comes with. Most of them probably wouldnât have upgraded from 7 to 10 without it just doing it itself. A lot of them will just keep using 10 well past the end of support.
Also, I really enjoyed Railcarâs subversion of expectations with all that lead up to what we all assumed was a Linux recommendation to end up being pirated windows. That got a chuckle out of me. I feel like the haters didnât get the joke.
Working class people at large donât know about these alternatives,
You mean only the elite know about Linux? Preposterous!
*proceeds to clean monocle
Jokes aside, it might be a good time to teach and learn. Or pay, or have less security moving forward.
It was a staple of the âworking classâ to be resourceful, to know to repair stuff. Itâs on Microsoft best interest that you change the computer, that you pay another OEM license, that they can drop support for older hardware⊠And this will happen again with windows 12.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 04 Dec 18:14
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Objectively speaking Linux is not a Windows replacement, its a minix replacement and competes with FreeBSD. Not everyone wants Linux and tbh I wouldnt reccomend Linux to most people.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 18:49
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Objective is a very strong word there. â[OS] Replacementâ could mean any number of things.
Theyâre âtechnicallyâ correct. Thatâs what Torvalds initially created it as. But what it initially was, and now is are very different things. Iâm sure they would call OSX a BSD replacement and not a Windows replacement. Despite many people replacing windows with it. Itâs pedantically obtuse.
Right now the biggest wall from wider consumer adoption of Linux. Is honestly, simply the lack of systems offered to consumers with it. Outside of a few games with kernel level anti cheat. Or highly proprietary specialized softwares. Thereâs very little that you cannot currently do on Linux that you can do on Windows.
Your Average user/consumer doesnât install any operating system. Whether it is Windows Linux or Mac OS. They simply run what the computer came with. And thatâs always been windows unless it is an Apple computer. Thatâs part of what the 1999 antitrust suit would have sought to remedy. Microsoft punished any company that had dared to even offer systems with Linux for a long time. And nothing was ever really done to stop it.
No they wouldnât. Thatâs Linux, among other things, because when it was gaining popularity, BSDs were defending from lawsuits and rewriting litigious parts belonging to AT&T (that is, preserved from original Unix sources).
Right now the biggest wall from wider consumer adoption of Linux. Is honestly, simply the lack of systems offered to consumers with it. Outside of a few games with kernel level anti cheat. Or highly proprietary specialized softwares. Thereâs very little that you cannot currently do on Linux that you can do on Windows.
No. Actually no, thatâs not the biggest wall.
Under modern Windows you can run software compiled for Windows XP. Under Linux youâll have a lot of sex with your system before achieving that kind of backwards compatibility.
Since you mentioned BSDs, and they are similar to Linux in daily usage, with FreeBSD you may install compat4x, compat5x and so on packages and run rather old binaries. FreeBSD version of Opera browser (yep, they made a FreeBSD version), which was a binary from Opera Software, didnât receive an update since 2013 and till 2021 and it was in working condition.
This wall for your typical Windows user is hard to describe. They are doing something the only normal way they understand and are told that they are holding it wrong. Say, they install a package for the previous major version of their distribution. Or just try to run some binary downloaded from somewhere and it tells them angry things about libc version and possibly other libraries.
Also the âadvancedâ things under Linux are not usable for many people, and the âuser-friendlyâ things are complex and buggy.
Of course, Windows users also would really like to use their familiar Windows applications, but thatâs not as important, Wine solves a lot of it.
Iâm very interested on a longer explanation of this take, considering how many people use Linux as a replacement for windows.
And if the argument is ânot everything that runs on windows works on Linuxâ, remember that can be said with windows vs Mac, iOS vs android and even windows 10 vs windows 11.
bitwolf@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Dec 01:08
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Written from a mobile phone powered by a minix replacement.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 05 Dec 11:37
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Also from my laptop thatâs running on Alpine Busybox/Linux
Working class doesnât have the money to change to machine either.
So, whatâs the advice that you would give you working class? Pay, pirate or learn?
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 15:16
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Yay!
blessing in disguise. at least you can build a system so poorly that 10 wonât be forcefully upgraded on you.
twisterpop3@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 15:59
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Why have we stopped talking about how the $15 TPU TPM can make upgrading older systems possible? Does that not work anymore?
2pt_perversion@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 16:09
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I think they also prevent most CPU released before 2017ish from installing as well so computers just missing the proper TPM are few and far between anyway. You can still get around all the requirements pretty easily though.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 17:43
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My Ryzen 1700 system was prevented from upgrading and it met the TPM requirement, it just wasnât whitelisted. That CPU was released in 2017, and that whole gen was pretty popular (1600 sold like hotcakes). I think anything newer should work though.
That said, my primary OS is Linux anyway, so it doesnât matter, this is just an install on my other disk in case I need something Windows-specific (havenât needed it in years).
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 17:57
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I think anything newer should work though.
Iâve got a Ryzen 3700X and my computer told me it couldnât do the upgrade, either.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 18:01
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Dang. Is your board in the 300-series? Maybe itâs that?
I havenât checked, but I think my 5600 is compatible. Maybe Iâll check sometime, but Iâm not looking forward to the mountain of patches Iâll need just by booting into it again.
1Fuji2Taka3Nasubi@lemmy.zip
on 05 Dec 03:04
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Your CPU is supported. Itâs probably just a matter of enabling the fTPM (firmware TPM) option in your motherboardâs BIOS settings, which would satisfy Windows 11âs TPM ârequirementâ.
I have a Ryzen 7 5800x with a 4070ti running windows 10. I could move it to windows 11 but fuck that. Iâve been slowly switching PCs to Linux for months already.
That's fine, I've closed the door on supporting Microsoft. They could have just charged for the 'upgrade' and that would have been better since it wouldn't result in the colossal amount of e-waste that this is creating. Even without the forced obsolescence, their products have become hostile, invasive and generally just a PITA to use. Meanwhile Linux distros are knocking it out of the park lately.
I really don't know what Microsoft are thinking. They haven't made particularly good strides towards gaining any kind of goodwill, so once it becomes common knowledge that alternatives not only exist but actually show them up, those lost customers are people that they will never get back. Look how pathetic their marketshare is for Edge for example, even though it's the default browser on Windows. They still haven't been able to shake off the bad stigma that Internet Explorer had (and to be fair, they aren't doing people any favours with Edge either).
I installed Linux Mint on my wifeâs ageing Thinkpad (2016, new battery is en route but everything else works fine). Windows would struggle to even start its own file explorer (lol), so I said no more of that bullshit.
She is happy with it, apart from ProNote not working (she uses the web client instead).
I know everyone here foams over Linux, and for good reason⊠but please remember the average user is a techno-fobe who struggles to find the start menu. Linux just isnât an option for a lot of people. Windows has been around so long and feels familiar. Until there is a major demographic shift and ECE training on general computer use an basic troubleshooting⊠the majority of the population will stick with whatever arrives when they turn it on because âItâs what they knowâ.
If Linux is to take over it must come PRE-installed, Must be fully compatible (read: plug-n-play); even with the weird printer your aunt found in a garage sale, at-least feel familiar to the majority of users⊠and for corpos⊠run MS office (read: excel) natively.
Some random old printer is much more likely to be plug and play on Linux these days than it is on windows.
Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
on 05 Dec 23:07
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Seriously, Iâve had way more printer issues on Windows than linux.
itsJoelle@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 20:35
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Iâd argue it will be Android/iOS/ChromeOS over Windows, for better or for worse. This fucks over companies and governments than it does the average user, in aggregate.
I spend a few months here and there just using my iPad for everything I can (I got through my college degree with one a long time ago and itâs nostalgic for me), and itâs crazy to me how feature complete it is for most work flows. Exactly programming is an issue, for me, but I can create an STL to printing it all on device! Much less office and what not.
Yeah, youâre right. Also, how bad Windows 11 is is massively exaggerated, once my machine was set up, all Iâve done is remove a few programs like One Drive from loading on start, and itâs been fine.
I do need to figure out how to get rid of the news and weather thingy on the start menu, to be fair.
Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Dec 23:48
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Itâd take a fresh install, but W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is how all current Windows should be. Only has Edge + Defender.
You can find it on massgrave.dev
aesthelete@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 21:38
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If Linux is to take over it must come PRE-installed, Must be fully compatible (read: plug-n-play); even with the weird printer your aunt found in a garage sale, at-least feel familiar to the majority of users⊠and for corpos⊠run MS office (read: excel) natively.
Or we could just not care if it âtakes overâ?
Even if Linux was and did all of those things â and many of them are already crossed off of the list â it may not âtake overâ and despite some corporate spend from some of the backing corporations, itâs not really a profit driven ecosystem. Linux doesnât have to take over and do exactly what Microsoft does, Linux is just fine as is.
It actually is a profit-driven ecosystem, otherwise Mr Poetteringâs creations would still be something as weird and unpopular as Leechcraft, if somebody remembers that software, and so would Gnome after 2.* and KDE after 3.*, and we would probably have something more interesting instead of Wayland as the coming X11 replacement, but you are right, waiting for the rest of the world to move to Linux before you do is an illogical position to say the least.
The more of us that buy computers with it preinstalled the more it signals that there is interest.
Popular brands offer it. Iâm not saying you have to go buy, but you can also let people know itâs an option.
I bought an XPS Developer edition and when asked I explained that when Linux had support from the manufacturer it can be as reliable as their Macs, often even more reliable.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 04 Dec 21:04
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As a W10 user,âŠOh no donâtâŠ
âŠCome back.
cliffracerflyyy@lemm.ee
on 04 Dec 21:28
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Tech illiteracy?
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
on 04 Dec 21:51
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Non negotiable sounds fine with me. Because we donât negotiate with terrorists.
Iâd like to give a heartfelt thank you to Microsoft management though, for furthering the cause of Linux adoption. We couldnât have done it without you. đ
Its a Media access control address, AKA MAC address that he bought ofc. It lives inside his ethernet card.
Iâm up too early, sorry.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz
on 05 Dec 08:16
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They bought a Mass Accelerator Cannon from the UNSC
rottingleaf@lemmy.world
on 05 Dec 09:37
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Because they donât know that MAC is media access control, and Mac is Macintosh.
I suspect itâs the âMac vs PCâ stereotype, and they think C stands for computer and MA stands hell knows for what. Because a PowerPC PC is not a PC, and an ARM PC is not a PC, and a SPARC PC is not a PC (OK, itâs a workstation, of the noble blood, not like the rest), and I think Iâve lost my thought.
My reaction would not be switching to MacOS, because for something the users of which look down on Linux and FreeBSD, with all that âjust worksâ and âmade for Terransâ pathos, it surely is frustrating to use.
Iâve got a full screen ad for Windows 11 one day, despite having TPM 2.0 turned off. Not sure what exactly was written there, as I have turned it off immediately, but fuckers probably advertise their shitty âWindows 11-compatibleâ computers or some other shit.
As far as Iâm aware TPM 2 pretty much does with hardware, what is otherwise software emulated. Itâs more efficient and secure when using something like bitlocker etc. Everything should work, just is more suspectible to tampering and malware.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
on 05 Dec 15:29
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I bet in 3 years theyâll require an AI accelerator.
threaded - newest
Thank you Microsoft god bless I will stay on core 2 duo forever đđ
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/be6f1b87-fadc-4124-99a5-6530ae046040.webp">
It would be safer to use a Linux flavor and run the apps you need using Wine/ProtonâŠ
Does it have Windows Aero?
The important questions. I miss aero so much.
same, I stuck with Win7 for years after its support period ended because I didnât want to lose Aero đ„ș
It has KDE, which I believe has something close to it.
Yup, Linux can look like whatever you want. I made my old Ubuntu install look like Windows 7 for the lulz once, but now Iâm too lazy to change the defaults.
Linux but with windows xp installation music
Iâve seen someone with that on their Steam Deck. Donât let your dreams be dreams.
I use this as my ringtone, have for several years
youtube.com/watch?v=WJPjdNpA-aE
Aww yeah
But can it sort by penis?
Length or girth?
There is a KDE windows aero theme. The panels wonât mimic the start menu and bar perfectly. But it absolutely gives it an overall flavor.
KDE Plasma + Klassy can do that. I think you can pull off a Win7 look with just those two.
KDE Plasma can get you far with its customization options, and Klassy adds more customization on top of that, and adds the translucent/transparent effects you need to emulate the Win7 look.
Old Gnome2-era themes will always win out imo. I tried looking for neat Plasma themes but a lot of em are just very basic colour swaps, nothing out there
KDE themes are a mixed bag for me. On one hand, they can potentially provide theming for little to no effort on my part (provided I do find a pre-made theme to my liking), but on the other, I had more luck with mixing and matching (and a lot of tweaking) different theme components (that is: color theme, application style, plasma style, window decorations, icon theme, cursor theme, etc). Itâs a lot of work, and the result might not exactly be coherent, but you can really tweak quite a lot.
I havenât really tried emulating the win7 look and feel by customizing KDE Plasma, but I think itâs possible. Someone in this comment chain claimed thereâs a Win7 theme available, albeit not pulling it off perfectly. I guess that can be used as a starting point.
Just a heads up while the look might be easy to emulate the feel part will at best be close. Which is actually good because a lot about that is rather shoddy in windows⊠and focussing on getting what you had with windows might make you miss stuff you didnât think you wanted. Like MMB click on scrollbars, or dragging and resizing windows with Super+LMB/RMB
Thanks. Iâve been a daily Linux user since 2013, distro-hopping between every environment and whatnot, these days mostly on i3/tmux/vim on Kali for HackTheBox.
I use Windows 10 on my main PC for media/flight/race/milsimming with an Aero skin that gets pretty darn close, without using WindowBlinds, using SecureUxTheme tool, cracked StartIsBack and some theme I got off the Frutiger Aero subreddit, looks great with WACUP, 8Gadgets, Aerochat and some Windhawk mods like the old Win7 Taskbar Clock (instead of the W10 XAML one)
My dadâs bringing his PC to my house when they visit for Christmas so we can setup Linux as a dual boot for him to see if he can switch from Windows 10 to Linux instead of buying a new PC
My dad (in his mid 80s) told me proudly that he had just bought Linux and installed it on his computer. Itâs great that he wanted to try Linux but I wonder what malware-riddled scam distro he found, and how Iâll sort it out on my next visit.
Canât be that bad. Some distros accept donations. It just could be that he felt he was making a purchase rather than just a donation.
Hopefully itâs just something like this, not a scam.
Come back and let us know what you find out, please. If itâs a malicious distro, let us know the site so we can warn others.
Maybe elementaryOS? There is a Purchase button on the site, with a pay-what-you-want option. If possible to enter 0 though.
Not sure if it was Mint or Ubuntu, but one of them shows a donation box with a default amount when you click download. Itâs already downloading when the box shows up, but maybe he misinterpreted that.
Doesnât Ubuntu and a few other distros still sell physical install discs?
They used to, but I donât think they do anymore. In fact, I think they used to send one to you for free. I got an official Ubuntu install disk for free at college (someone was handing them out), and Iâve been on Linux ever since.
I do see Ubuntu install USBs on Amazon, but I wouldnât trust those.
I ordered one years ago, still got it in the display cabinet but Iâm sure itâs long rotted at this point.
Yeah, I wish I still had mine, it was from before I started hating Canonical. What a great piece of history that wouldâve been.
But no, I threw it out like I did so many other things at the time, because having less stuff makes moving a ton easier.
I gave my distro dev $20 for the bragging rights. More than I ever paid for Windows.
You used to be able to buy physical media. And that may be what theyâre talking about? Hard to say. For a long time this whole write it to a USB stick and install it was newfangled and not at all common. I 100% have a version of red hat in a box that I bought off a shelf of a local Best Buy back in the 90s. Yes you could have just downloaded and installed it or created your own install media. But having your own CD burners even werenât that common at the time. I remember 1999 being when I got my first CD burner and how special that was lol. It seems almost quaint by todayâs standards. And downloading wasnât really an option either. 56 kilobits per second if you were lucky would have taken days and days. Now itâs just minutes over most broadband.
Zorin has a pro tier that costs money but itâs supposed to have the look and feel of classic Windows - maybe itâs that?
I think my retiree parents (and in-laws) are going the same way. They only use their computer for email and search, and the options are just better.
Iâll have to ask my parents about it. They mostly just use a web browser, but they also occasionally use Word for writing Christmas letters and whatnot. I could probably get them to switch to LibreOffice, Google Drive, or Office365, but not completely sure about that. They are interested in getting a Chromebook, so I guess weâll see what they end up needing.
I try not to force Linux on anyone, but I have brought it up before as a suggestion (they were complaining about their computer being slow, and ended up buying a new one). My dad really likes Windows, but they really donât use anything Windows-specific other than Word anymore.
The used market is going to bomb if older machines canât be setup with newer windows version.
All the better for us running Linux!
I think I can see 3 ânewâ laptops in my future!
I just bought a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 with an R7 4750U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and put Linux Mint 22, no regrets here!
yes!
âincompatibleâ hardware will be dirt cheap, and 8th gen or newer will sell for more than it would have otherwiseâespecially if tariffs jack prices up on new hardware.
i have a couple dozen older systems here. most were given to me before win11âs requirements were known. fixing and flipping them for a few bucks was a small but relatively steady income stream, but not anymore. hardly anyone wants them.
the couple that are new enough to be blessed by microsoft will be kept, and iâll hang on to the better ones of the rest (like skylake, kaby lake) to put linux on. everything else will end up at ewaste recyclers even though thereâs absolutely nothing wrong with any of them other than the fact that a profit and âshareholder valueâ driven megacorp says they canât be used anymore.
Itâs fairly trivial to bypass Microsoftâs hardware requirements for windows 11 afaik. Just install via Rufus and click the relevant options. I agree with you that MS should have made these optional recommendations though, we shouldnât have to use third party tools.
You can do that, but then the major updates MS pushes out twice a year wonât install via Windows Update anymore.
microsoft keeps tightening the screws; thereâs no guarantee a loophole to do that will remainâbut rather the opposite: they will disappear.
Maybe the tariffs will serve to cull a bit of the consumist impulse the US suffers of.
Regarding if a machine is desirable or not: Iâm still seeing Windows XP machines being sold today for over 100âŹ. No monitor, no peripherals, no nothing: just the machine. And people needing a machine to type a report, do a spreadsheet, do basic office work, with no other option, pay for it.
i run my machines until they stop working, period.
Iâll see you all on SteamOS in six months
Love Linux and steam deck, but AS IS, steam os is a horrible choice for a desktop general use computer.
Itâs immutable without layering, so there are things that you canât install/keep after an update. Case and point, printers. You canât print, period. Valve knows, they donât need a gaming device to print so they donât care.
Hopefully they will do something about this, but I donât hold my breath for 2025
I think printers is kinda going the way of having to support winmodems for Linux⊠Just not as important as it used to be.
Last time I printed something was for a pistol permit. 3 years ago. And I just sent that to Office Depot to print it, and picked it up on the way to the permit office.
Students at the local uni donât really need printers, either. Generally, the few times they do, thereâs public printers to email the doc to, and go pick up (Or, QR code and a phone, etc).
Personal printers just arenât that big of a deal these days.
They wont do anything about it because SteamOS is not and will never be a general purpose desktop OS. Its a gaming distro designed to do one thing and one thing well, game. It can do other things but its not meant to, kinda like a reverse MacOS.
Currently, youâre right. But itâs a bad move, I think, moving forward for valve.
They have already confirmed they want steamOS to be a distro everybody can install on any computer. Being more limited than most distros is going to make it a hard choice to pick. On the deck, itâs fine tuned to that hardware. What is going to offer that Bazzite wonât replicate a few months afterwards, while offering a better general OS experience?
I think that just having layers and a recovery partition that can restore the system while preserving steam games (even if removing all configs) would increase the appeal a lot.
You might like Bazzite. Its like a general purpose version of SteamOS with layering and printers
My desktop is Bazzite and my htpc is Aurora (the non gaming version of Bazzite), so I have to agree with you haha
learn.microsoft.com/âŠ/windows-10-home-and-pro
Sounds like 2025 is gonna be a good year for PC manufacturers.
With sales from companies? Yes. With sales from average consumers? Maybe not. Depends on what they can afford. Thereâs people out there still using things like windows 7. If the computer still works theyâre unlikely to upgrade unless they care about having the newest stuff.
A friend of mine just messaged me, that we cannot play a few selected games anymore, as his notebook was acting up. Upon further investigation I found out, that he is still running Windows 8.1 and cannot use Steam anymore, since Steam support on Windows 8.1 ended about a year ago and a Chrome update âfinallyâ broke Steam on windows 8.1 a few weeks ago.
My mom only upgraded from her original surface pro running windows 8 when my siblings and I bought her a surface pro 7. She watches Netflix and checks her email and plays like plants vs zombies and solitaire. Some people really do live by the rule of âif it ainât broke donât fix itâ.
Iâm waiting for the planned obsidence lawsuit myself
the wut?
The planned obstinance lawsuit.
I still donât know what you are talking about and Iâm not trying to be stubborn
My bad, I thought you were making a joke about Pika saying âplanned obsidenceâ instead of âplanned obsolescence.â I did not realize you were making a genuine inquiry.
Planned obsolescence is when businesses intentionally design a product to become useless after a period of time.
For example, imagine a high end camera company that also sells replacement parts. They change their lens shape every model, and only keep the most recent modelsâ lenses in production. When an older modelâs lens inevitably breaks, the customer cannot buy a replacement, and thus has pressure to buy s new camera, and the company hopes that most customers will buy from them again.
We see this in tech with smartphone companies only giving OS updates for a few years, causing older phones to go end of life, so even if the phone is fully functional it needs to be replaced. Again, the company hopes the customer will again buy from them rather than going to a competitor (who is likely running the same scheme.)
OP suggests Microsoftâs TPM requirement is there to force new computer sales, which will include a purchase of a Windows 11 OEM license bundled with the PC.
đ
They donât need the hardware to run an OS. They need the hardware to run their AI shit for reasons nobody ever needs - except Microsoft.
So maybe it is not Microsoft closing the door for older hardware, but older hardware closing the door for Windows 11?
The requirement is for TPM, not parallel processing hardware. It provides trusted hardware, facilitates things like DRM.
There are tons of low and medium boards that provide TPM, and they donât suffice, IIRC.
Did you read the article text? Itâs specifically discussing how Microsoft will not relax the requirement for TPM 2.0.
Which is on the market for more than six years now. That was my point. It does not only need TPM2.0, it also needs CPU and RAM in regions that are way more recent than TPM2.0
âŠ
I feel that this is diverging from your original comment, but okay, Windows 11 â as with all prior releases of Windows â has minimum CPU and memory requirements. That isnât what the article text is discussing, but fair enough.
But I donât see any association with that and AI. This isnât parallel processing hardware being discussed.
The one big eater of CPU power in future Windows will most likely be AI. Most of which will probably be useless for the user, which is a common problem with Windows âfeaturesâ in recent years.
I can easily see a Microsoft AI engine churning the users data in order to determine which ads to serve - in the start menu, the screen backgrouns, the login screen, or as blatant popups. If people notice that such a thing is seriously eating into their machinesâ power, they will try harder to kill this. Therefor it is the interest of Microsoft that the user has more than enough power. And this is just one example.
The CPU is due to instruction set requirements. The first version of W11 is technically compatible (with hack to pass the checks) with older CPUs than the newer versions. And itâs not Gustyâs guaranteed that there ones that currently can run it will do it after a few updates.
I hate it, and they could have done things to allow more compatibility, but itâs not without a technical reason.
This feels like such a fuck you to working class. People canât afford another layer of these costs right now.
⊠This is bait right? You want somebody to tell you thereâs a simple and free solution, and then youâre going to say itâs a bad solution?
FINE! Iâll bite: Pirated copy of Windows Enterprise LTSC. Itâs less useful, more resource hungry, privacy invasive and has worse support for older hardware than Linux though.
Working class people at large donât know about these alternatives, Iâm certain you know that. IT folk and nerds alike do, but anyone outside of these circles donât necessarily see the choice they have
Those people that donât know options exist are also people that donât care about or know about support life for something like the OS - they just see it as what the computer comes with. Most of them probably wouldnât have upgraded from 7 to 10 without it just doing it itself. A lot of them will just keep using 10 well past the end of support.
Also, I really enjoyed Railcarâs subversion of expectations with all that lead up to what we all assumed was a Linux recommendation to end up being pirated windows. That got a chuckle out of me. I feel like the haters didnât get the joke.
Their computer didnât come with sense of humor pre-installed, and itâs too hard to do it themselves.
You mean only the elite know about Linux? Preposterous!
*proceeds to clean monocle
Jokes aside, it might be a good time to teach and learn. Or pay, or have less security moving forward.
It was a staple of the âworking classâ to be resourceful, to know to repair stuff. Itâs on Microsoft best interest that you change the computer, that you pay another OEM license, that they can drop support for older hardware⊠And this will happen again with windows 12.
Objectively speaking Linux is not a Windows replacement, its a minix replacement and competes with FreeBSD. Not everyone wants Linux and tbh I wouldnt reccomend Linux to most people.
Objective is a very strong word there. â[OS] Replacementâ could mean any number of things.
Theyâre âtechnicallyâ correct. Thatâs what Torvalds initially created it as. But what it initially was, and now is are very different things. Iâm sure they would call OSX a BSD replacement and not a Windows replacement. Despite many people replacing windows with it. Itâs pedantically obtuse.
Right now the biggest wall from wider consumer adoption of Linux. Is honestly, simply the lack of systems offered to consumers with it. Outside of a few games with kernel level anti cheat. Or highly proprietary specialized softwares. Thereâs very little that you cannot currently do on Linux that you can do on Windows.
Your Average user/consumer doesnât install any operating system. Whether it is Windows Linux or Mac OS. They simply run what the computer came with. And thatâs always been windows unless it is an Apple computer. Thatâs part of what the 1999 antitrust suit would have sought to remedy. Microsoft punished any company that had dared to even offer systems with Linux for a long time. And nothing was ever really done to stop it.
No they wouldnât. Thatâs Linux, among other things, because when it was gaining popularity, BSDs were defending from lawsuits and rewriting litigious parts belonging to AT&T (that is, preserved from original Unix sources).
No. Actually no, thatâs not the biggest wall.
Under modern Windows you can run software compiled for Windows XP. Under Linux youâll have a lot of sex with your system before achieving that kind of backwards compatibility.
Since you mentioned BSDs, and they are similar to Linux in daily usage, with FreeBSD you may install compat4x, compat5x and so on packages and run rather old binaries. FreeBSD version of Opera browser (yep, they made a FreeBSD version), which was a binary from Opera Software, didnât receive an update since 2013 and till 2021 and it was in working condition.
This wall for your typical Windows user is hard to describe. They are doing something the only normal way they understand and are told that they are holding it wrong. Say, they install a package for the previous major version of their distribution. Or just try to run some binary downloaded from somewhere and it tells them angry things about libc version and possibly other libraries.
Also the âadvancedâ things under Linux are not usable for many people, and the âuser-friendlyâ things are complex and buggy.
Of course, Windows users also would really like to use their familiar Windows applications, but thatâs not as important, Wine solves a lot of it.
Iâm very interested on a longer explanation of this take, considering how many people use Linux as a replacement for windows.
And if the argument is ânot everything that runs on windows works on Linuxâ, remember that can be said with windows vs Mac, iOS vs android and even windows 10 vs windows 11.
Written from a mobile phone powered by a minix replacement.
Also from my laptop thatâs running on Alpine Busybox/Linux
AcKsHuAlLy!!!!!
Drag would recommend Linux to everyone, except for the very small minority who plan to install a non-Linux OS on their android phones.
Working class doesnât have time to do this research and just needs a working machine
Working class doesnât have the money to change to machine either.
So, whatâs the advice that you would give you working class? Pay, pirate or learn?
Yay!
blessing in disguise. at least you can build a system so poorly that 10 wonât be forcefully upgraded on you.
Why have we stopped talking about how the $15
TPUTPM can make upgrading older systems possible? Does that not work anymore?I think they also prevent most CPU released before 2017ish from installing as well so computers just missing the proper TPM are few and far between anyway. You can still get around all the requirements pretty easily though.
My Ryzen 1700 system was prevented from upgrading and it met the TPM requirement, it just wasnât whitelisted. That CPU was released in 2017, and that whole gen was pretty popular (1600 sold like hotcakes). I think anything newer should work though.
That said, my primary OS is Linux anyway, so it doesnât matter, this is just an install on my other disk in case I need something Windows-specific (havenât needed it in years).
Iâve got a Ryzen 3700X and my computer told me it couldnât do the upgrade, either.
Dang. Is your board in the 300-series? Maybe itâs that?
I havenât checked, but I think my 5600 is compatible. Maybe Iâll check sometime, but Iâm not looking forward to the mountain of patches Iâll need just by booting into it again.
Your CPU is supported. Itâs probably just a matter of enabling the fTPM (firmware TPM) option in your motherboardâs BIOS settings, which would satisfy Windows 11âs TPM ârequirementâ.
I have a Ryzen 7 5800x with a 4070ti running windows 10. I could move it to windows 11 but fuck that. Iâve been slowly switching PCs to Linux for months already.
Linux adoption intensifies
Maybe in a decade from now Linux will achive 7.5% market share, maybe
You only need about 15% for commercial support.
Microsoft really playing into the bit. This is all just hype for Windows 12
That's fine, I've closed the door on supporting Microsoft. They could have just charged for the 'upgrade' and that would have been better since it wouldn't result in the colossal amount of e-waste that this is creating. Even without the forced obsolescence, their products have become hostile, invasive and generally just a PITA to use. Meanwhile Linux distros are knocking it out of the park lately.
I really don't know what Microsoft are thinking. They haven't made particularly good strides towards gaining any kind of goodwill, so once it becomes common knowledge that alternatives not only exist but actually show them up, those lost customers are people that they will never get back. Look how pathetic their marketshare is for Edge for example, even though it's the default browser on Windows. They still haven't been able to shake off the bad stigma that Internet Explorer had (and to be fair, they aren't doing people any favours with Edge either).
The new Outlook is fucking awful.
How did they fuck up email? Just put them all on the left and let me read and move them in the fewest clicks possible.
If you go to Google and search for xview mailtool screenshots, you might realize just how fucked up todayâs email UIs are.
i used to use gmail and i still havent forgiven google for scrapping the plain html version :/
also trying to add more emails to outlook. How do you fuck that up. You only get the options for suggested emails or new email creation.
I keep hoping they will Classic Coke their whole Office suite
I installed Linux Mint on my wifeâs ageing Thinkpad (2016, new battery is en route but everything else works fine). Windows would struggle to even start its own file explorer (lol), so I said no more of that bullshit.
She is happy with it, apart from ProNote not working (she uses the web client instead).
I know everyone here foams over Linux, and for good reason⊠but please remember the average user is a techno-fobe who struggles to find the start menu. Linux just isnât an option for a lot of people. Windows has been around so long and feels familiar. Until there is a major demographic shift and ECE training on general computer use an basic troubleshooting⊠the majority of the population will stick with whatever arrives when they turn it on because âItâs what they knowâ.
If Linux is to take over it must come PRE-installed, Must be fully compatible (read: plug-n-play); even with the weird printer your aunt found in a garage sale, at-least feel familiar to the majority of users⊠and for corpos⊠run MS office (read: excel) natively.
Windows isnât supporting that anymore either.
Start menu is at the bottom left of the task bar, you can start Chrome from there.
Some random old printer is much more likely to be plug and play on Linux these days than it is on windows.
Seriously, Iâve had way more printer issues on Windows than linux.
Iâd argue it will be Android/iOS/ChromeOS over Windows, for better or for worse. This fucks over companies and governments than it does the average user, in aggregate.
I spend a few months here and there just using my iPad for everything I can (I got through my college degree with one a long time ago and itâs nostalgic for me), and itâs crazy to me how feature complete it is for most work flows. Exactly programming is an issue, for me, but I can create an STL to printing it all on device! Much less office and what not.
Yeah, youâre right. Also, how bad Windows 11 is is massively exaggerated, once my machine was set up, all Iâve done is remove a few programs like One Drive from loading on start, and itâs been fine.
I do need to figure out how to get rid of the news and weather thingy on the start menu, to be fair.
Itâd take a fresh install, but W11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is how all current Windows should be. Only has Edge + Defender.
You can find it on massgrave.dev
Or we could just not care if it âtakes overâ?
Even if Linux was and did all of those things â and many of them are already crossed off of the list â it may not âtake overâ and despite some corporate spend from some of the backing corporations, itâs not really a profit driven ecosystem. Linux doesnât have to take over and do exactly what Microsoft does, Linux is just fine as is.
It actually is a profit-driven ecosystem, otherwise Mr Poetteringâs creations would still be something as weird and unpopular as Leechcraft, if somebody remembers that software, and so would Gnome after 2.* and KDE after 3.*, and we would probably have something more interesting instead of Wayland as the coming X11 replacement, but you are right, waiting for the rest of the world to move to Linux before you do is an illogical position to say the least.
Itâs not solely a profit-driven ecosystem is probably a better phrasing.
Weird printer on windows 11, thatâs not a thing. A weird printer in your CUPS server in Linux, totally a thing
I have never connected a printer to my network or via USB, clicked the add printer button, and was able to print on my first try.
Then I tried to add a printer on Fedora Linux.
Cant say never anymore.
Also Brother printers have their shit together for Linux drivers.
To Brotherâs credit, this is also true for their windows drivers. As an IT admin, anytime I need a new printer theyâre my preferred brand.
The more of us that buy computers with it preinstalled the more it signals that there is interest.
Popular brands offer it. Iâm not saying you have to go buy, but you can also let people know itâs an option.
I bought an XPS Developer edition and when asked I explained that when Linux had support from the manufacturer it can be as reliable as their Macs, often even more reliable.
As a W10 user,âŠOh no donâtâŠ
âŠCome back.
Tech illiteracy?
Non negotiable sounds fine with me. Because we donât negotiate with terrorists.
Iâd like to give a heartfelt thank you to Microsoft management though, for furthering the cause of Linux adoption. We couldnât have done it without you. đ
And closes the door on market share as well
What i wonder, is:
Ram canât run their blackbox code. The goal is a full processor running non inspectable code. The end of the PC.
Thank you Microsoft after being a windows user since the 3.1 days your recent changes to Windows makes me happy to announce I bought my first MAC.
I would have installed Linux, logged into MSN.net, and then told them to eat shit on their support forum.
Why do people capitalize all of Mac?
Its a Media access control address, AKA MAC address that he bought ofc. It lives inside his ethernet card.
Iâm up too early, sorry.
They bought a Mass Accelerator Cannon from the UNSC
Because they donât know that MAC is media access control, and Mac is Macintosh.
I suspect itâs the âMac vs PCâ stereotype, and they think C stands for computer and MA stands hell knows for what. Because a PowerPC PC is not a PC, and an ARM PC is not a PC, and a SPARC PC is not a PC (OK, itâs a workstation, of the noble blood, not like the rest), and I think Iâve lost my thought.
My reaction would not be switching to MacOS, because for something the users of which look down on Linux and FreeBSD, with all that âjust worksâ and âmade for Terransâ pathos, it surely is frustrating to use.
Just some well-supported enough Linux would do.
Mac/PC is kinda a silly dichotomy now that theyâre both actually EFI/ARM.
Theyâre all PCs they just arenât IBM (compatible) PCs. Anything from a Workstation to a Smartphone is a Personal Computer.
I know ; just mocking the marketing terms
Itâs like in Unpretty, that 90s song by TLC:
So close. You could have gone to Linux.
I bet itâll still try to install itself on that hardware though and break it.
Probably how theyâll force upgrade down the track, upgrade or we brick your shit.
Iâve got a full screen ad for Windows 11 one day, despite having TPM 2.0 turned off. Not sure what exactly was written there, as I have turned it off immediately, but fuckers probably advertise their shitty âWindows 11-compatibleâ computers or some other shit.
afaik that ad was sent regardless of TPM. I got it.
Another shitty decision from Redmond.
Fyi you can install it without TPM 2 hardware, if using Rufus to create the installer, you can just tick an option to remove tpm forcing.
Thatâs if you want to keep using Windows after 2025 on a 7+ year old hardware.
Not endorsing it, just saying you can, at no extra cost.
Thatâll work until they actually make it do something with the TPM.
I bet in 3 years theyâll require an AI accelerator.
As far as Iâm aware TPM 2 pretty much does with hardware, what is otherwise software emulated. Itâs more efficient and secure when using something like bitlocker etc. Everything should work, just is more suspectible to tampering and malware.
Youâre right, better get out now!
if you want to risk random update potentially bricking your computer or at least your os breaking, not worth it