- Joined
- Jan 18, 2021
- Messages
- 202 (0.14/day)
| Processor | Core i7-12700 |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | MSI B660 MAG Mortar |
| Cooling | Noctua NH-D15 |
| Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB (4x16) DDR4-3600 CL16 @ 3466 MT/s |
| Video Card(s) | AMD RX 6800 |
| Storage | Too many to list, lol |
| Display(s) | Gigabyte M27Q |
| Case | Fractal Design Define R5 |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM750x |
| Mouse | Too many to list, lol |
| Keyboard | Keychron low profile |
| Software | Fedora, Mint |
Funny, I saw an article just a few days ago claiming that Microsoft plans to put a watermark on Win11 machines using unsupported hardware. And there is corroboration in Microsoft's official documentation, as of this moment:
And therein lies my problem. Yes, you can bypass the requirements, but there's no reason to trust that the bypass will continue to hold. Same deal with various privacy settings. Even on Windows 10, there were at least two occasions when an update silently reset all of my telemetry options. (There was another time when a Win10 update helpfully erased home users' home network settings.) We needn't discuss more recent developments like Recall, and the ongoing general controversy about Big Tech mining private data to train AI.
Users' relationship with their OS shouldn't be adversarial. Updates will occasionally change or break things no matter what you're using. God knows I see that on Linux, but at least with Linux I don't feel like the developers are working against me on purpose. With Windows, even when Microsoft walks back a controversial decision, the subtext is always that MS still holds the pimp hand. "In light of overwhelming criticism, we've decided not to attack you in this specific way, today, but keep your eyes peeled!"
I think most people, at least on this forum, would accept a new Windows edition with stringent hardware restrictions, provided that the hardware were used to provide tangible benefits. Win11, from my perspective, fails on both counts: the OS comes off as a not-so-glorified reskin of Win10, and its extra hardware requirements largely concern ephemeral security measures with questionable upside, dictated by a party with questionable motives.
TPM is a great example: there are scenarios where a TPM-backed auto-Bitlocker system might make sense (e.g. a ditzy college student's laptop), but for experienced users, gestures like this come across as arrogance. It isn't Microsoft's business where or how I store my encryption keys, and it surely isn't their place to silently force encryption of my disks, with the default failsafe conveniently stored on their cloud servers. Another poster suggested that Microsoft's trying to make itself into Apple, by asserting total control over not just the OS, but also the machine on which it runs. I wish them luck if this is their plan going forward, but Microsoft got to where it is today in large part because it represented the open platform, in contrast to walled gardens like Apple's.
I don't know whether Microsoft has, in fact, walked back its stance on the TPM requirement. For a couple of years now, Win11's hardware requirements have been in sort of a No Man's Land--with Microsoft tacitly endorsing "unofficial" methods to bypass those requirements, even going so far as to publicize instructions on their own website, while at the same time maintaining that such methods are "not recommended," and also periodically shutting off previous methods e.g. to bypass online registration.
And therein lies my problem. Yes, you can bypass the requirements, but there's no reason to trust that the bypass will continue to hold. Same deal with various privacy settings. Even on Windows 10, there were at least two occasions when an update silently reset all of my telemetry options. (There was another time when a Win10 update helpfully erased home users' home network settings.) We needn't discuss more recent developments like Recall, and the ongoing general controversy about Big Tech mining private data to train AI.
Users' relationship with their OS shouldn't be adversarial. Updates will occasionally change or break things no matter what you're using. God knows I see that on Linux, but at least with Linux I don't feel like the developers are working against me on purpose. With Windows, even when Microsoft walks back a controversial decision, the subtext is always that MS still holds the pimp hand. "In light of overwhelming criticism, we've decided not to attack you in this specific way, today, but keep your eyes peeled!"
I think most people, at least on this forum, would accept a new Windows edition with stringent hardware restrictions, provided that the hardware were used to provide tangible benefits. Win11, from my perspective, fails on both counts: the OS comes off as a not-so-glorified reskin of Win10, and its extra hardware requirements largely concern ephemeral security measures with questionable upside, dictated by a party with questionable motives.
TPM is a great example: there are scenarios where a TPM-backed auto-Bitlocker system might make sense (e.g. a ditzy college student's laptop), but for experienced users, gestures like this come across as arrogance. It isn't Microsoft's business where or how I store my encryption keys, and it surely isn't their place to silently force encryption of my disks, with the default failsafe conveniently stored on their cloud servers. Another poster suggested that Microsoft's trying to make itself into Apple, by asserting total control over not just the OS, but also the machine on which it runs. I wish them luck if this is their plan going forward, but Microsoft got to where it is today in large part because it represented the open platform, in contrast to walled gardens like Apple's.
