OSDev.org

Much to my (and I suspect many's) surprise, and in spite of Raymond Chen said, Microsoft announced Windows 11. It has an interesting looking UI. The biggest thing for me as an OS developer is their removal of i386 and ARM32, plus the requirement of a TPM 2 and Secure Boot. Microsoft just has so many bugs, their turning to hardware to stop it. Only one of my machines will be able to run it. I have three UEFI machines, but two are from the 2010 or so, and one is from 2015. I think the 2015 one has secure boot, I'll have to check. Whats your opinion about Windows 11? For me, I'm gonna start running NetBSD . I don't want to deal with Windows or GNU/Linux anymore.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11

I have reasons to believe Macrosoft has ulterior motives to the TPM requirement, considering that it applies only to OEMs manufacturing new hardware. I'll probably be going back to my C64. At least that I can trust.

As to NetBSD, I welcome you warmly . It is a well-designed Unix, and great to work with.

It wouldn't surprise if MS had other motives . Oh well, I'll be enjoying my non-commercialized NetBSD while everyone else is using Windows.
One thing I forgot to mention is Windows Subsystem for Android! Sounds like a pretty cool idea to me, I'm excited to check it out!

mid wrote:I have reasons to believe Macrosoft has ulterior motives to the TPM requirement...

That was exactly the scenario predicted back then in 2003 about the TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Alliance).

One thing to note is that they are only supporting 8th Gen. Intel or later, and Zen+ AMD or later. This seems to be mostly due to Meltdown and Spectre, as those were the generation when the initial hardware fixes for those were introduced. The reasoning seems to be that they would rather require the more modern hardware rather than have to accept the performance hits from the software workarounds.

They've also dropped support for the 32-bit versions, as Nexos mentioned, and (needless to say) all types of Legacy BIOS systems.

Schol-R-LEA wrote:and (needless to say) all types of Legacy BIOS systems.

I don't get why they would do that, as most of my machines are still BIOS based!

mid wrote:I'll probably be going back to my C64. At least that I can trust.

Hahaha, I can totally understand!

nexos wrote:

Schol-R-LEA wrote:and (needless to say) all types of Legacy BIOS systems.

I don't get why they would do that, as most of my machines are still BIOS based!

Maybe yours, but in general, ever since UEFI was finalized (in 2005 if I'm not mistaken) no machines were manufactured with BIOS, only with UEFI CSM and that was more than 15 years ago. And UEFI CSM was phased out as of 2020 by Intel (big friend of M$), so...
By the way the reason why they do this is simple: they want to force the end users to buy new machines, preferably every year, because that makes more profit to the sector (both to the manufacturers and to M$ selling more OEM licenses). They don't care about electrical waste or about the user's satisfaction for that matter, their one and only motive is profit, just like any other big corp.

Cheers,
bzt

bzt wrote:Maybe yours, but in general, ever since UEFI was finalized (in 2005 if I'm not mistaken) no machines were manufactured with BIOS, only with UEFI CSM and that was more than 15 years ago.

I have a Dell Optiplex 380 and HP Pavilion from circa 2010, and neither have any trace of UEFI. AFAIK, UEFI was mainly used on big servers then. I have a Dell Optiplex 780 from circa 2010, and it has UEFI support, but BIOS is the default. I have a Dell PowerEdge T320, same story. I'm sure you can guess what my 2 machines from around 2005 have. In other words, most machines until around 2010 were built with BIOS.

The answer is simple - you don't run Windows 11 on these machines. It's no different to the Apple world, where you can't run newer OSs on older machines. (And the same is true of Linux, BSD, you name it, although the time scale may be a little different.)

It's called progress. But there's nothing to stop you running older OSs on older machines.

nexos wrote:In other words, most machines until around 2010 were built with BIOS.

Okay, but that's still more than a decade old.

iansjack wrote:The answer is simple - you don't run Windows 11 on these machines.

Yeah, period. The problem appears when you are forced to upgrade, then your only option would be to buy a new machine (or switch to another OS).

iansjack wrote:But there's nothing to stop you running older OSs on older machines.

Yes, actually there is, Microsoft likes to force users to upgrade. They promised not to do this with Win11, but they have also told us there will be no Win11, so...

iansjack wrote:And the same is true of Linux, BSD, you name it, although the time scale may be a little different.

Not exactly. I haven't tried BSD on old machines, but I know that you can still compile the latest Linux kernel for very very old machines, so I guess BSDs work too (at least FreeBSD very likely). There are Linux distros too for old machines, for example Puppy can run on a Pentium Pro, and they still offer 32-bit versions; and it is said that TinyCore only needs a 486DX (although I could not find anything officially confirming that). These are modern Linux distros in the sense that they ship new versions of the kernel and sufficiently new versions of the software.

Look around here: https://itsfoss.com/lightweight-linux-beginners/, there are a lot more Linux distros that run on old machines.

iansjack wrote:It's called progress.

Too bad I can't see any progress at all. I'll dare to say that Win98 runs a lot smoother on a Pentium than Win10 on the most cutting-edge PC. I can only imagine this got worse with Win11. "What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

Cheers,
bzt

So, run Windows 98.

But you can't run Linux on your IBM AT. Like I said, it's just a question of the timescale.

bzt wrote:By the way the reason why they do this is simple: they want to force the end users to buy new machines, preferably every year, because that makes more profit to the sector (both to the manufacturers and to M$ selling more OEM licenses). They don't care about electrical waste or about the user's satisfaction for that matter, their one and only motive is profit, just like any other big corp.

While I agree that this is part of it, I'd say that the profit motive in this case mostly comes from wanting to narrow the window of systems they will need to support. Even with support fees, tech support can be a major cost center (at least in the eyes of the bean counters), so anything that reduces the number of support calls regarding older or less common hardware is seen as a win by most software companies.

While I don't see them taking the absolutist position that Brendan espoused - that the users can either get their hardware from a very small supported list or not get the software at all - I can definitely see narrowing the tech support channel being a major concern for Microsoft. MS aren't going to care much about Intel's bottom line, even as their partner; they care more about how much money they are spending themselves.

iansjack wrote:The answer is simple - you don't run Windows 11 on these machines. It's no different to the Apple world, where you can't run newer OSs on older machines. (And the same is true of Linux, BSD, you name it, although the time scale may be a little different.)

It's called progress. But there's nothing to stop you running older OSs on older machines.

True, but I suspect a near majority of people are using old BIOS machines. So, I feel that this is a mistake of Microsofts.
But, I don't really care, I use Windows XP and NetBSD on the main desktops I'm worried about .

bzt wrote:Yes, actually there is, Microsoft likes to force users to upgrade.

But if Win11 doesn't support older PCs they couldn't do that.

bzt wrote:I'll dare to say that Win98 runs a lot smoother on a Pentium than Win10 on the most cutting-edge PC.

Most certainly! I ran Win98 a while ago, and I was shocked at how fast it felt! My Windows XP desktop feels like a super computer compared to my sluggish Win10 laptop!

iansjack wrote:So, run Windows 98.

I probably would at least run W2K if it supported modern apps / webpages!

nexos wrote:I probably would at least run W2K if it supported modern apps / webpages!

I have fond memories of trying to run foobar2000 on W2K, and it didn't work. Stated reason was that advapi32.dll was missing some function. So what is a poor student with enough knowledge to be dangerous to do? Exactly, download another version of advapi32.dll from the Internet. I believe I got a version from Windows XP. Warnings about system files being tampered with were ignored, and then the whole thing ended in a blue screen. Ultimately it lead to me installing Linux on that box, so it did work out in the end.

Microsoft never officially stated that there would be no windows 11. An employee might've gotten overeager and implied that, but it was never officially stated by MS or their PR team. This is one of those "somebody implied it so we ran with it" scenarios, which seems to happen way too often with MS.