This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I once ran the windows Troubleshooter to get an old scanner working, and the final page told me to but a new scanner!
I plugged it in to a mini PC I use as a backup server and the scanner worked fine with Linux.
And another recommendation issue: I noticed that my Windows laptop has a "reduce your carbon footprint" settings section that tells me to reduce power settings, screen brightness etc. but it's completely lacking a "stop giving me AI search results in Bing" section.
Switching from Windows to Linux on my Framework laptop makes my battery last 2-3 times as long. They should just have a switch to Linux recommendation to reduce your carbon footprint.
Win11 also says that showing seconds in the taskbar "reduces battery life"/"increases power consumption"
While it sounds ridiculous, there is a reasoning for this even nowadays:
Any periodic activity with a rate faster than one minute incurs the scrutiny of the Windows performance team, because periodic activity prevents the CPU from entering a low-power state. Updating the seconds in the taskbar clock is not essential to the user interface, unlike telling the user where their typing is going to go, or making sure a video plays smoothly. And the recommendation is that inessential periodic timers have a minimum period of one minute, and they should enable timer coalescing to minimize system wake-ups.
Found 1 test that seems to confirm battery life is slightly worse (2%) with seconds enabled. But this is true only when nothing is going on on screen. If you would actually work on PC, I imagine difference would be practically nonexistent.
All that said, I use seconds on my private and work PC. Was pissed when MS initially removed this as an option.
The moment I heard about the option was the moment I literally searched on how to enable/install this single KB-Update just so I can use it :P
Regarding the battery: That would be like leaving the desktop on at all times and just doing something else. This could be appropriate for an e-ink display. Maybe a PC should embed what form-factor it is in the bios like android phones do (e.g. phone, tablet, phablet) and the display report what type of panel it is (e.g. e-ink, TN, IPS, VA, QLED/OLED hybrid).
You can actually see those specs with AIDA64 on a phone. Very neat
As all the cool kids keep saying, now is a great time to try out Linux.
No, I’m not recommending a distro for you, that is what DuckDuckGo is for.
DuckDuckBuntu?
Ubuntu is actually falling down the ad hole lately. It’s not great, even if you leave out the technical issues that the distribution leans into these day (snaps, amongst other things)
Devices running an unsupported version of Windows will still function, but Microsoft doesn't provide the following: Technical support of any issue
Oh, you mean the support forums? I don't think those have ever helped anyone
they helped me learn how infuriating it is to try and go back in my browser history after visiting a microsoft help link
You mean running sfc /scannow isn't the solution to all life's problems?
Literally no one in those forms ever actually works for Microsoft anyway so you're just talking to people who you could talk to anyway on any other forum.
Microsoft recommends you remain ignorant about how awesome Linux is.
Linux sounds good but I never see it discussed on this website. How am I suppose to use Arch if nobody else does?
If only someone was here to tell me something by the way, it arches my back not knowing.
Big company recommends users turn functional hardware into e-waste so they can boost quarterly profits.
when microsoft feels threatened by the recycling community being noticed, they add more technical constraints. Chromebooks are the gold standard for an intentionally non recyclable machine, neck and neck with apple.
The bullshit of chromeOS to be capable of running on the shittiest hardware but having an artificial lifetime for devices is stupid. To google's credit, they did increase that limit to 10 years, but that was only recently.
"and OneDrive". Yes, it is essential to have OneDrive.
And it's essential to have a always on network connection 24/7 if you turn it off we will delete all your data/j
Man I really don't want to switch to Linux but Microsoft has ended things forever with Recall. There's just no way to stay with microsoft long term.
I switched, it's magic on fire with Linux.
Except for a couple if things, so I also now have a game-box running windows.
Best of two worlds IMO. It also shows how hellish windows is.
If a game won't support Linux I won't support it. There are thousands of games out there.
Just go for it! Did it recently and the overall experience is actually getting impressed multiple times.
My PC is getting old and I might replace it in about a year whenever I can get an OK GPU for a reasonable amount of money again.
I've built my own PCs since the late 90's and this will be the first time I will not install Windows on a computer I built. Get fucked Microsoft.
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.
Again: install Linux. Yes, there are a few edge cases left where you're screwed and must rely on Microsoft (and even there, most of yhose can run in a VirtualBox environment) but most work you can get done under Linux. Why suffer I der Microsoft bullshit?
Headline in another universe:
"Microsoft aiming to push population into switching to Linux."
If I upgrade my machine, I am keeping TPM disabled. I don't want Windows 11.
I think this is the year. One of my long time Windows friends has recently decided to install Manjaro GNU/Linux after being fed up with forced reboots, updates that seem to overwrite settings, and constant bluescreens of death.
How is it an upgrade/update if you need to replace the hardware?
I still for the life of me can’t figure out what’s so great about secure boot and tpm. All it’s ever done for me is prevent me from booting a legitimate OS, or a bootable flash drive with iso images on it (like ventoy). It’s also pretty good at giving me a headache trying to figure out how the keys work and how to register them.
I just turn them both off and live in ignorant bliss.
Secure boot and TPM are tools for (among other things) making sure nobody (E.G. a virus or worm) has tampered with your OS and bootloader. You can for instance use both on Linux, it's just by default they come preloaded with Microsofts configuration for loading Windows, and the technical knowledge for how to reconfigure it is a bit arcane.
It's an excellent security tool, it's just abused by Microsoft to discourage competition.
I'll keep 10 then.
