Windows 11, yes or no?

[rwillett]

Somebody has Win 11 working on a 15 year old Pentium 4

https://uk.pcmag.com/migrated-3765-windows-10/136375/no-new-pc-needed-windows-11-runs-on-a-15-year-old-intel-pentium-4-chip

I realise I sound like a contrian here and am pushing Win 11, I'm not but I like keeping kit going. I have a circa 16 year old Linux box that is still working and is used for nodejs testing. My 2013 Macbook Pro is still working hard each day.

Rob

[StevieDvd]

I've been running a win11 version on my PC as part of the Windows Insider program for Win10, so when an early upgrade to win11 was released to me it installed fine, Only a few updates later it warned of the CPU/TPM requirements but gave a bypass with a warning about lack of updates on unsupported hardware.

There are some registry changes to allow you to upgrade but have similar warnings about support.

Things that I like about Win11 are the support for an embedded Linux (it can even run some Linux apps in gui mode) and it will have the option to run Android apps too.  It is supposed to be more secure and prevent some of the ransomware from getting control of your system, which I think is why the TPM later CPU requirements come in.

I've been keeping my fingers crossed that the requirements will be officially relaxed so older but reasonable machines can use it too (that would explain any typos in my threads).

 

 

[rwillett]

I'm not too bothered about Windows support TBH. We now have two Windows boxes, ones is my astronomy laptop, a mid range Lenovo T450s and I just donated my quite large PC that now only plays Battlefield 4 to the kids so they can play Planet Zoo. What I sacrifice as a parent ...

If it wasn't for BF4/Planet Zoo and the astronomy stuff, I'd probbaly be all Mac based, but I did try to go all Mac and there's just not the range or quality of software. I know I can go Raspberry Pi, and indeed I have a Pi4/8GB running Stellarmate, but it's so much easier on a laptop and until I get really familair with it, I'll stay with Windows and then move to the Pi.

I have run Lunix on Windows, but there were little gotchas around the GUI that it's just easier to fire up a Ubuntu box or even a VM session.

I am really struggling to see the value of Windows 11 over Windows 10. Now a proper supported ARM version of Windows that I can run on my M1 Mac with BF4 support would be very welcome and I'd pay for that as I can rationalise hardware.

Rob

[StevieDvd]

17 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I have run Lunix on Windows, but there were little gotchas around the GUI that it's just easier to fire up a Ubuntu box or even a VM session.

...

Rob

 A full Linux Desktop is still better off standalone or in a VM. The WSL is fine for command line and running the gui apps you want - such as gedit and python ide's.

 

[rwillett]

2 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

 A full Linux Desktop is still better off standalone or in a VM. The WSL is fine for command line and running the gui apps you want - such as gedit and python ide's.

 

I think you're probably right, I haven't tested WSL in any detail or in anger, whereas I have tested and indeed run Linux on VMs quite extensively.

That's all running on a single i7 CPU (forget which) on ESXi with 32GB  of ram and quite a bit of SSD behind it. Not sure WSL would work here, especially for the OpenStreetMap server. if you gave ever run the OSM server you'll know why it's turned off and only runs when I let it out the cage. Doing a large map rebuild dims the lights in the village

[Mr Spock]

Apparently my 3 year old state of the art silent PC is not compatible. I can't even run the PC Health Check app to see what the issue is.

At the moment my PC runs just fine. I've never had any problems with W10 so don't see a need to change.

[StevieDvd]

33 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Apparently my 3 year old state of the art silent PC is not compatible. I can't even run the PC Health Check app to see what the issue is.

At the moment my PC runs just fine. I've never had any problems with W10 so don't see a need to change.

There's a non-MS app on github to do a detailed/explaining check for pass/fails.

Your's may be simply that a BIOS update/settings is needed.

My PC Health check shows thus:

[Mr Spock]

Mine is saying TPM not found. I'll have a ferret round the BIOS when I have a moment.

[Mr Spock]

Hmm, this says I'm ok, Windows Update says I'm not. Sigh...

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

On 20/10/2021 at 10:00, PeterCPC said:

I get the impression that it's an "age thing". MS decided to draw the line somewhere. I think that older processors would run W11 quite happily but MS are being very restrictive.

The actual minimum system specs for windows 11 are pathetically low: a 2 core 1ghz CPU, 4gb ram, gfx capable of 720p and 64gb storage space. 🙄

[Whirlwind]

This is worth watching especially if you have AMD processors as W11 appears to hit them very hard.

 

[StevieDvd]

28 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Hmm, this says I'm ok, Windows Update says I'm not. Sigh...

Looks good, you can try the tpm.msc command to launch the TPM control panel. It may need to be activated to be discovered.

[BCN_Sean]

On 20/10/2021 at 11:00, PeterCPC said:

I get the impression that it's an "age thing". MS decided to draw the line somewhere. I think that older processors would run W11 quite happily but MS are being very restrictive.

I don't think MS are being restrictive with it; it's more of a safeguard of their reputation/product image.  I'd say that most (probably not the bargain basement Amazon jobs) computers from a processor/GPU/RAM standpoint built in the last 10 years would easily support the operating system, a lot of these systems are probably carrying obsolete ancillary hardware like sound chips/webcams/network adapters and the like where the manufacturer of those parts has ended support for them (or in some cases, vanished); so even with attempting to install W11 on that machine, the support and guaranteed compatibility wouldn't be there.

If it was offered to all, then a lot of folk would blindly click the "update now" button, and then start banging away in all caps on every sounding board they find because Windows 11 broke their computer instead of realising it was their computer that broke Windows 11.  Drawing that line with TPM has probably brought them some flak, but probably a lot less than X million folk like my other half who wouldn't understand why their 10 year old cheap end of the spectrum (when new) machine isn't working right because some other vital parts of the recipe were EOL'd back in the middle of the last decade.

[Bridgehouse]

Strangely, I decided to create a Windows 11 virtual machine in Parallels on my new M1 MacBook.

I was expecting a complete failure and it not to work, but rather bizarrely it absolutely flies along - it’s quicker than my Windows 10 virtual machine by a huge margin. 
 

Now, I suspect Parallels have optimised their VM code for it, but given the hardware requirements I’m still amazed.

[Adam J]

On 17/10/2021 at 17:35, tomato said:

Sorry if this has already been asked and it is sort of resurrecting the Win 10 upgrade discussions that went on, but are folks going to upgrade to Win 11? 
 

When Win 10 came out I was in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” camp but I acquired a couple of new machines with it installed, got a bit nervous about the Win 7 no longer supported messages, so decided to install Win 10 on all my machines. All my software and kit worked fine with it, and apart from the annoying updates and everything being referred to as Apps, I’ve got along with it.

Just wondered if I should do it all again?

For astronomy more so than anything else I would simply say if it's not broken don't fix it. 

[Mr Spock]

Looks like I'm good to go. I'm not in any rush though 😜

[StevieDvd]

4 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Looks like I'm good to go. I'm not in any rush though 😜

 

 A good time for an image backup of the OS disk/partition then 😃

Was the issue the settings in the bios or enabling TPM in the control app?

 

[Mr Spock]

3 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

Was the issue the settings in the bios or enabling TPM in the control app?

I had to enable TPM in the BIOS. I then ran the tpm.msc app and did a clear. After a reboot, it started working.

I now have:

Needless to say I'm doing a full system image at the moment. That will take a while...

[Melitastro]

I started getting the messages about incompatibility a few weeks ago, running a mini pc at the mount, laptop for control and desktop for processing. The mini and laptop are now running Linux, and since I've found proton will run most of my games (the only things i have that are Windows specific) I'll be switching to Linux on the desktop soon. The only thing that still needs Windows is the iOptron firmware program but everything else is happy with Linux (Kstars / Ekos / Pixinsight etc)

[Mr Spock]

It's on. Can't see what the fuss is about; it works a smooth as anything. I can't say it's all that inspiring though - there's not that much to it 

[StevieDvd]

8 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

It's on. Can't see what the fuss is about; it works a smooth as anything. I can't say it's all that inspiring though - there's not that much to it 

Good. It's not been a bug free insider process moving the parts a bit at a time to the Win 11 equivalents but has been stable enough and enough that I would not like to go back to Win10.

Had a few upgrades which failed and backed themselves out, and a nightmare with a mischevious task-bar which kept losing the iconsbut everything settled down now. On build 2200.282 today (Win 11 Pro) via an update - not sure how that compares with the upgrade version.

BTW - first thing I did with the new taskbar is to ask for an option to set it back to left-hand justified )well me and a lot of other insiders )😁

 

[Mr Spock]

I've left mine in the middle - I don't mind it.

In W10 I did have my program shortcuts in folders in the start menu folder, which I then had as a taskbar tool bar. A nice fly out menu structure. That's gone in W11 but my folder structure is still there in the All apps area. There's a lot of blank space though.

I also like the new icons, and the dark theme is much better. I also like the rounded windows and highlights.

I'm giving it a thumbs up 

 

[gazza25]

upgraded yesterday seems ok to me on a amd chip