A Windows 11 tsunami? No, more of a ripple as Microsoft's latest OS hits 5% PC market Microsoft's Windows 11 OS has notched up a respectable near 5 per cent of PCs surveyed by AdDuplex, as another Dev Channel build was unleashed with new features for the favoured few. With less than a month of General Availability under its belt, Windows 11 now accounts for 4.8 per cent of "modern" PCs (Windows Insiders running …
Further investigation reveals a TPM port on the motherboard, so I guess it is either an order-option or an add-on option. It makes sense that the key would be removable, as it is the key to the drive contents for the machine, and you want to be able to take your keys out of a lock.
Have you checked the BIOS for an fTPM option? I have an older self-build Ryzen system with a Gigabyte motherboard and no hardware TPM. However after enabling fTPM in the BIOS, it passes that part of the system requirements check.
Of course it then fails on the CPU as Microsoft don't consider a Ryzen 7 1700X (3.4GHz, 8-core) CPU to be good enough...
The comments above aptly describe the Microsoft/Windows 11 sausage machine upgrade conveyor belt that you can't jump off, and in the process produces 1 billion PC's of Landfill crud, to a toxic landfill site near you.
And if anything - Apple are worse, because they sell themselves as 'green' (*), but ignore the aspects where they clearly aren't green, support for hardware. As little as 2 years of support for each OS (Monterey/Big Sur/Catalina etc), before it's discontinued, from the effective last date it's sold pre-installed.
(*)"100% recycled aluminium" used in MacBooks isn't post-consumer recycled aluminium (i.e. collecting used Coke cans and being melted down), Apple's recycled aluminium is just recycled aluminium created as part of Apple's manufacturing process, by all accounts.
It's a play on words, and it's sneaky.
You could class the rest of a slab of aluminium as "recycled waste", as soon as a single tiny useable part had been cut from it. Apple (and companies in general) need to be far more transparent about how they have calculated their 100% recycled aluminium figure.
Sorry, what has the lifespan of an OS version got to do with not being green? Older machines will quite happily run newer OSX builds (last time I looked you could load the latest version onto 7 year old machines) and security updates continue for some time beyond the OS.
Apple has always been sneaky about describing what they do. According to someone I knew directly involved at the time, back in the 1990's when Apple used to ship an inch-thick paper manual with every machine (as did all PC makers), they'd have "Made with recycled paper." printed all over them. When the first order of manuals was sent to be printed, the order did say recycled paper. But the Apply supply chain folks would switch the orders to cheaper non-recycled paper. It was the 1990's when I was told this by this person, not many years later.
But no guarantees that they won't break it with an update in the future!
I can't see any point in trying to get workarounds to work - W11 offers nothing that I actually want and is not an improvement over W10.
Might think about it in 2025 if I have any machines which aren't officially compatible and which I want to continue using after the W10 end of support.
But.. But.. This new, improved version of Windows is the fastest, most secure Windows ever, and your current version of Windows is now a ticking timebomb of slothful insecurity.
If you upgrade, you'll get new features like parental controls for the Calculator App, a VisualBraille(c) display mode for blind users, a new Comic Sans font with serifs**, and a 'What's New' screen with themes downloadable from the Windows Store.
**Requires an 8 core CPU with 32GB of RAM or 64GB if you wish to use italics.
I've used those hacks to install Windows 11 Pro into Virtual Box machines. It eventually worked, but only after about half a dozen boots because the installer itself kept balking despite the hacks.
Shift + F10
regedit
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig
BypassTPMCheck=1
BypassCPUCheck=1
BypassRAMCheck=1
BypassSecureBootCheck=1
Still had to install Open Shell to make it usable. And the awful thing wants a PIN rather than the password to log into the local account. Keeps nagging to use "Windows Hello". All around a POS.
fTPM is apparently not supported by the latest and greatest Ryzen 9 12 core that was on the market November 2020. I did further searching and found Gigabyte sells a TPM 2.0 module for that port on the motherboard, but I couldn't find anyone who *sells* them in Canada. I guess the only way to get one is to order a line-item that includes it; the "Elite" does not.
Prices have shot up for these TPM modules.
I bought mine some months ago (on the W11 announcement) for my Asus motherboard, and it cost £8.99 (though I had to wait for it to come back into stock as they were selling out quickly on each delivery).
Right now, the same module is retailing for around £40.
"Most of the compatibility issues are more like "soft limits" than actual hard restrictions."
No, they are HARD BLOCKS/HARD LIMITS, soft blocks are where the software installer flags something as a warning, but allows you to continue. The Windows 11 installer has hard blocks, it stops you dead in its tracks, if the machine doesn't meet the criteria, in the same way macOS does with the "No Entry" symbol on first boot.
Yes, you can get around them, but that's still a hard block/hard restriction because it takes work to get around it.
Both companies could have applied 'soft blocks' to older hardware going back to 2008 based on Core2Duo+Nvidia Graphics (9400M etc). macOS has had hard blocks since EL Capitan for such mundane reasons as having the wrong iterative upgrade of Broadcom network card:
BCM94322 v older BCM94321. (Apple decided that updating a hardware ID was too much work with the 2008 iMac, with the move from El Capitan to Sierra, as an example of Apple's built-in obsolescence)
All the whose iMacs/MacBooks from 2008-2012, could have run Sierra/High Sierra/Mojave/Catalina, even Big Sur with very little work by Apple, if Apple had wanted them to.
OS updates included hard blocks preventing users from updating machines that were quite capable of running all of those versions of macOS listed. How do we know this? Because home-grown support has shown that to be so, with these machines running those OSes, but with no support from Apple in doing so.
Apple's Metal graphics support has been the biggest stumbling block, on newer versions of Big Sur onwards.
Apple has completely different motivations for making kit obselete than Microsoft...Apple makes all of their own kit in house for a start. Microsoft does not.
I don't see the Microsoft TPM block as that big of a deal. First off I'm a Linux main, I generally only use Windows in a VM...so go thinking I'm a fan boy. I'm not.
The reason I don't see it as a big deal is because those with the knowledge to bypass the check won't have a problem getting Windows 11 installed...like, at all. The kind of people that will struggle to or not understand how to bypass the checks are probably the kind of folks shouldn't bypass the checks.
Microsoft is clearly making a push to improve security across its userbase and the best way it has found to do this, is to shrink the ecosystem and use technology such as TPM to achieve this.
At this point we don't actually know enough about Windows 11 to know why these restrictions are there. All we really know is what they've told us...which isn't a whole heck of a lot.
I was surprised to find that my three year old HP 17-Y002NA laptop was compatible. I bought the laptop on the basis of price and screen size so it's hardly a roaring power house.
But I'm in no hurry to upgrade. I only use it for browsing and email. I'll wait until if/when Windows Update pushes it to me.
At 5% of the PC market, in less than one month of the official launch Windows 11 has already grabbed twice what Linux desktop has managed in over 2 decades.
Yet somehow, those on this board will consider it a "ripple".
I'm sure most here will not want to hear that (and downvote me), but those are hard-core factual numbers.
Yes, Windows users rarely do that if ever. Linux users on the other hand like to tinker with their systems which sets them apart from the large mass of MS consumers.
Besides all this, I have 4 Linux machines in active use in my home (and I could easily have ten times that) so, please remind me why should I care about the percentage of the PC market ? Go ahead, enlighten us!
These days, the only reason to fake a user-agent is to pretend to be a browser that you don’t want to use for your own reasons (e.g., making Firefox look like it’s Chrome to sidestep Google’s deliberate feature-blocking on its services). Doing that does not require changing your advertised OS.
The only thing that looks at the OS part of your UserAgent string is the download page on a website, so it can highlight the right software versions for you (and often hide the others). Quite a few companies now do support Linux, and if you’re running Linux, it would get pretty tiresome having that fact hidden from you just because you’re too cool to advertise that you’re actually running Linux.
In short: no, Linux users most likely do not pretend to be running another OS. I know maybe five people who use Linux as their primary OS, and not one of them bothers with this kind of messing around. (A few years back, I needed a sample of UA strings, so I asked people I knew to hit a collector page I’d set up)
" most likely do not pretend to be running another OS"
Hmmm, not sure which desktop those five people are running or for how long, but for longer than not I've had to run "Windows / IE11" with FIrefox for:
1. YouTube to run minimized (simply desktop used to not cut it)
2. Netflix (during the Silverlight era)
3. Amazon Prime video (prior to FireTV stick... 1 or 2??)
4. iTunes (early on, before "retina" displays I know that)
5. Many others I don't remember (various shopping carts, entire websites, etc.)
While I do not believe any of the above require it presently, I still set it to Windows just in case. Sadly, Firefox on mobile doesn't seem to have about:config anymore, but previously working plugins prior to the disablement now work (or so I think, I can't tell anymore with Firefox mobile... it's a mess). On desktop I'm KDE, various Debian flavors.
Not sure how these stats are acquired, but let's say that System Builders have been building W11 pc's that can be ported back to W10. At some stage in the System Build/Back Porting operation it is feasible that the W11 counter is triggered.
Channel Stuffing used to be a good way of inflating market share (I have been on the sharp end of that in the past from a well-known software vendor who shall remain nameless). Not sure how that would work with downloaded OS'es. I suppose all retail outlets will want it on their shelves and MS would donate for that exposure. Then you've got all those educational establishments that have no doubt been gifted trial licences.
(No DV from me btw. Interested in what commentards think of the suggestions put forward, as 5% does seem somewhat questionable).
Exactly - it's a reasonable guess that every single pre-built PCI've everowned (all of which have been refurbs) were initially sold with Windows on them, due to MS getting away with outrageously monopolistic practices. And yet, every single one of them, once in my possession, was running Linux instead. Where exactly has my use of Linux been recorded? I
very much doubt that those "market share" figures have much merit outside of seeing the overall market share of Microsoft and Appale amongst Microsoft and Apple users. And theyre almost certainly more accurate n teh Apple side of things than the likely spuriously high numbers for MS.
I'm not claiing that Windows isnt still the most widely used OS - but I have good reason to doubt that it's quite as dominant as "market share" figures claim.
This post has been deleted by its author
5% is a lot of PC's, given the constraints and absence of the W11 version of GWX (none of my eligible W10 laptops are showing any indication that W11 could run on them if I only clicked 'yes', I suspect the figure is highly suspect. Even more so given the silence of Redmond..
Well, as soon as you get W10 update number KB5005463, according to:
https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/windows-10-pc-health-check-force-install
The article does note that the "PC Health Check" tool it installs (which checks to see if the PC is W11 compatible) doesn't run at startup though, so it's not as bad as GWX.
That's not what the OP wrote.
Go back and read it.
I agree, a (measured exactly _how_? [*]) share of 5% is quite impressive so short after the release.
However, you are yourself extremely biased. I would say that you should compare the market penetration starting from the introduction of MS DOS. No, Win11 has not much to do with that, nor has a modern Linux desktop environment with the old command line only version of decades ago.
[*] none of my machines will show up there, I'm pretty sure.
And this is because? Hmm, Currys selling Linux ,actual Linux computers (not Android tablets or phones), Argos? When my family's Windows 10 machines start to go bad, they'll be getting flushed and converted to Linux. My new laptop came with FreeDOS, runs Kubuntu, and boots twice as fast as my work Windows 10 laptop received this year too. It's shocking, the difference. But then many people seem to believe whatever they're told.
Even in corporate land, we're moving away from proprietary software like Microsoft Office to open source. Why? Flexibility to deliver results. Office has been adding eyecandy and removing useful features for too long now to be relied upon.
I'm a Contract PM and often work in the infrastructure space as well as application implementations. Whilst I've worked with a number of clients who were 'moving away' from Microsoft, not one had significantly reduced their MS office license numbers. I tried to pilot a non MS office suite years ago with incredibly disappointing results. A recent experience of the Corporate Google offering was even worse. I was having to use Google docs for report presentation but having to take the content and put it into word to spell check as the Google spell check was so poor then deal with the formatting errors which occurred when I put it back into a google doc.
In the end I was using two screens pasting the text into word then manually correcting the typo's word found but Google Docs missed manually.
The Project I was managing also required tight office suite integration into several apps so all the application users were still using MS office for that task.
The only organisation I've worked with who has moved entirely away from MS office was the Government Digital Service (theoretically) but the people I was working with were not using any large scale apps, just simple documents and design framework tools.
Non MS Office apps are fine if you or your organization is working in isolation and not exchanging documents with others.
I've tried alternatives, and so often I have to come back to MS Office. Now, rather than wait for the inevitable, I open the document in Word, check it and save it again before sending it.
"At 5% of the PC market, in less than one month of the official launch Windows 11 has already grabbed twice what Linux desktop has managed in over 2 decades."
"Ha, ha, the bias is showing"
It certainly is. You've overlooked '4.8 per cent of "modern" PCs'.
Without knowing exactly what percentage of PCs are classified as "modern" you have no idea how many percent of actual PCs have upgraded - basic GCSE maths.
The bias might be intentional or it might be the result of not understanding simple arithmetic.
Yep, you're absolutely right!
Thing is only Windows and Mac users give a monkey's about market share. Linux has nothing to prove, it holds half the internet together as well as millions of mobile devices. When Windows or Mac hold up most of the comms for the entire world as well as into space, then I'll care!
What does is the term "ripple" meant to indicate here? I just took it as an acknowledgement of the MS policy of resting machines allowed to be upgraded.
It might mean comparison of update rate compared to other windows releases in the pastHere's some earlier data -
Computerworld:
> According to Net Applications, Windows 8's online usage share through Dec. 22 was 1.6% of all Windows PCs, an uptick from 1.2% of November. Windows 8 publicly launched on Oct. 26. At the same two-month mark in Vista's release timetable, that OS accounted for 2.2% of all Windows systems, double the month prior. ... By the end of its second month of availability, Windows 7 accounted for 6.2% of all Windows machines, or nearly four times that of Windows 8 as of Dec. 22.
Cio:
> Windows 10's user share of systems running some version of Windows was the slightly higher 3 percent during the same week. (after I month)
So according to this admittedly very rough search result -
8 < Vista < 10 < 7,11
7 and 11 being pretty close.
I never for a moment considered "ripple" to to be playing down the extent to which windows overpowers linux share on personal PC's, let alone the server market or desktops used for software development.
OOOPS - 5% is actually 5% of modern PC's. So maybe it is a ripple.
Well when you have a market where a product is sold and said product has a contract with vendor and you must add their product, yep you will capture market share.
Or more aptly put the little lemmings that go to buy a PC only know that they want their Windows, or Word or anything else that is Microsoft. It is all they know, so the PC maker isn't stupid, they want to sell a PC and will install a Win OS. I am amazed at people who are astounded that I have computers that aren't running Windows but yet I can somehow send e-mail, write letters, create spreadsheets.
I come from the generation of DOS, when we had to do things to make our computers respond. There are now generations that only know an icon. Push, press and it that isn't happening they are lost puppies.
Heck, there are still XP users. How can they survive? Just kidding!
"According to StatCounter, desktop PCs in Armenia still primarily roll with Windows XP (via WinFuture). As of September 2021, 53.5% of desktops were using the operating system that landed in 2001."
I manage about 50 PCs. Three of the PCs might support Win 11, so I will start replacing computers mid 2022. I halted all new computer purchases when I discovered the then impending release of Win 11 and its implications. I wanted to replace some of these computers over the last several months, but I am unwilling to take a chance on getting a new computer then discover Win 11 won't run on it. I am waiting for mid-2022 to start replacing production computer so I can discover if all our applications work with Win 11. We had an accounting program that required a time-consuming work-around to get it to work with a new computer that didn't work correctly with Windows 10 until mid-2021, even though the manufacturer insisted it was fully Windows 11 compatible - network searches and my experiences proved their assertion incorrect. All the computers that don't meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11 do need to be replaced. The release of Windows 11 didn't speed-up my replacement schedule, it brought it to a standstill until I can verify our users will actually be able to run their programs.
"At work we're going to have to throw all of the PCs in the trash can because Windows 11 says that they are not supported, the upgrade is just a c^Hripple"
Great. I've got 2025 in my diary for re-fleeting our laptops and desktops. The more Win10 users there are and the fewer Linux users to snaffle up the discarded but still decent hardware - the cheaper they are going to be.
So, thank you Microsoft and ssshh don't tell anyone the secret ;-)
Wife's Ryzen 1800x 8 core 64 bit doesn't fit Microsoft criteria. Its just over 3 years old. Has TPM2.0, and secure boot enabled, has 32GB, of RAM, Dual 8GB AMD graphics , and still it doesn't qualify for an upgrade. Microsoft can sod off, if they are expecting me to fork out even more dosh, to upgrade a system, that is working brilliantly . Me thinks Microsoft are biased towards Intel. Anyway, I'm not happy.
Of that’s a desktop you are very likely able to upgrade just the processor. Not that I imagine that will help any mon technical users or laptops. Personally I still expect Microsoft to back track and allow the first Gen Ryzen and 6th Gen Core series, as both support all the required features just with an about 10% performance hit. At work most of our machines are 7th Gen which we were buying up to only about 18 months ago so lots of life still in them.
I use my machine for work. I can't take the risk of installing Windows 11, even if it were offered as a free upgrade from 10.
Besides, I *like* 10.
11 is just window dressing and widgets with very little USEFUL plumbing changes under the hood. In short, ye old profit stream was taking a dip and we needed to give it a boost...
Ironically, 11 actually does have lots of plumbing changes underneath, while 10 was largely the same kernel as 8.1, but with new(-ish) UI stuck onto it.
Most of the changes in 11 aren’t really of benefit if you’re using current hardware, but you’ll need them on your next machine, which is likely to have PCI 5, DDR5 memory and a CPU with different-sized cores (Intel’s Alder Lake/12th generation has big and little cores now, and Zen 5 will when it launches next year)
I also like 10’s clean, uncluttered design - it’s a shame it doesn’t go all the way down to the various control panels and configuration apps, but I understand the reasons: those dialogs have been screenshotted in decades worth of internal IT training documents in thousands of big Microsoft customers, who would be unhappy about having to redo all that work.
While I originally expected to see processor support extend back to sixth gen Intel and 1st gen Ryzen it now seems that the cut off is MBEC support. This leaves me with the grand total of 1 supported PC. The supported PC is the only one running Home rather than Pro. If Win 11 Home included bitlocker, which would have seemed sensible given the focus on security, this might have been enough to justify the incomplete feature set of Win 11. As it is the sixth gen Intel and first gen Ryzen machines I have will continue with Win 10 as long as the hardware remains usable. I expect Win 10 support to be extended. I have two machines with significantly older processors. One a gaming machine with intel 4th gen would have been rebuilt this year but that build is on hold until graphics card availability sorts out - the other even older is lightly used and still doing its job ok. Probably should be rebuilt but to be honest the money is better used elsewhere. Even when the gaming PC gets rebuilt at the moment it is more likely to get Win 10 than Win 11. This reflects the poor state of Win 11 and the benefits of os commonality.
...let them iron out the worst bugs over the next 3-6 months then I'll give it go. Many moons ago I was happy to waste my time on an O/S that will crash more times than Eddie "Eagle" Edwards used to, but not these days thanks.
I'm happy for the early adopters to do all the hard work to offer me a better O/S down the road.
Come on guys, we're all techies here. Moaning about restrictions is what mortals do. Techies work around them:
https://github.com/haithamaouati/BypassWin11
Go there, check out the bypass scripts, use Windows 11. There, not so bad now eh?
Have any of you considered that the new restrictions might be a skill check rather than an actual hardware lock?
If you're Dave on the street, you aren't going to bypass anything or know how, therefore you might not have the technical skill or where with all to avoid cyber attacks.
If you know how to bypass a TPM check etc you probably aren't usually a victim of cyber attacks.
At the moment if you get a brand new OEM machine you get asked which version of Windows you want.
I've just rolled out a batch of Dell Latitudes that asked me if I wa ted to continue with Windows 10 or upgrade to 11.
The whole batch I put on Windows 11 and so far it's been just fine. I've had user complaints about the UI changes, but only from a specific age group. Most people appear to like the UI update.
I've wanted to move to Linux for ages and these seemingly needless restrictions are the final straw. I'm starting a new contract where they use RHEL so I'll use that to learn what I need as a Java dev. My old but still perfectly capable laptop will get shifted to Linux once I'm comfortable I can do everything I need. The only things I'll miss are OneDrive and OneNote, I'm otherwise happy to get off the MS train. My needs are simple, I've only delayed out of an excess of caution and inertia. No games, no Windows development.
You're thinking about this the wrong way. Microsoft isn't thinking about computers of today, it's thinking about 5+ years from now when the current specs will seem laughably small. For reasons only Microsoft knows, they choose to make the occasional large jump instead of a series of small increments. It gives them some headroom to work with for future developments.
Microsoft can do what they want, but I will move to Linux and take the initial hit. I expect my productivity to improve significantly as I become increasingly confident on the linux command line. I also expect it will improve my marketability. So, no, I'm not thinking about this the wrong way around.
I've installed Windows 11, tested it, on an identical HP laptop to the one I use, but am I actually using it as my daily driver? The answer to that is a big fat NO.
Windows 11 offers absolutely nothing, over Windows 10 21H1, and Windows 10, in the cold light of day, offers very little over Windows 7 SP1. We've had 10 years of smoke and mirrors from Microsoft, it's all about them, what data they can garner from 'our' (their) machines.
I quit updating windows, after added even more advertisements to Window's settings. I set every possible connection as a metered connection, and don't manually run Window's update. Sometimes windows update accidentally gets run when viewing Window's settings, etc..., and I have to roll back the latest 'quality' updates to remove those additional ads. Wish all of Window's built in ads never existed.
Linux has way less advertising built in.
This does not reflect my and many other peoples' experiences with windows 10.
Even with out of the box drivers you should not have the above issue so I can only think that you were downloading windows updates at the same time, the internet was partially borked, there is a fault with the michine, it's 10+ years old or something else is wrong.
The sales training I had called this the Puppy Dog selling technique.
Lend a family a cute puppy for a while and, when you come to collect it they say they can't live without it, how much to buy it?
MS think that when they do activate the restrictions down the line, everyone will upgrade their hardware to match.
What they are forgetting is the puppy that shits, pisses and pukes all over the place tends to be handed back at the end of the loan period.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
