Lippy

I already did this 2 years ago and I still don’t miss Windows. I want my OS to just work, and that means not having big companies intentionally blocking updates and bullying consumers just so they can profit from artificially induced OEM license sales. It’s pretty wild how quickly Linux has fit the bill in recent years, and how Windows no longer does.

Only hurdle on Linux right now is the transition from X11 to Wayland. Proton doesn’t have good support for it yet so I occasionally have to load an X11 session for some games to run. I can imagine that getting worked out eventually.

Microsoft could have simply dropped official support for older machines and then literally done nothing and that would have still been better than what they did. At least then those machines would still receive security updates beyond next year, provided they could still run the latest version of Windows.

For the record, if the arbitrary CPU block is bypassed, then it’s possible to install Windows 11 23H2 on a Prescott era Pentium 4 or Athlon 64. The true requirements did change for 24H2, but even then you can install that on a 1st gen Intel or a Bulldozer era AMD system. Microsoft can go suck a dick.

Yeah it was pretty terrible until recently. It at least seems to be changing now. The Pixel 8 line and up now get 7 years of support, and Samsung followed shortly afterwards by doing the same with the S24 series (but not their lower end devices). There’s still plenty of other Android devices that get barely any support though, so it’s getting there, slowly.