Subj : Re: negate the new Win11 To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Thu Jan 01 2026 08:01:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! > > AA> Businesses should consider linux, imho. The costs could then be > > AA> less! :D > > AFAIK not required to upgrade the hardware constantly! That's a huge > > savings right there! > KM> Except when you get sued for not using supported devices. > > From a causual look the 'supported devices' seem fairly generous: CPU of > at least x generation, RAM of y amount. ...Suppose that rapidly gets a > lot more specific when it comes to the motherboard, video card and > monitor, peripherals like bar code scanners..... Win11's current requirement an 64bit CPU with the SSE 4.2 instruction set (specifically the POPCNT function), which came in with the Core2Duo. This was added as of the 22H2 release. 21H2 will actually run on an earlier CPU (someone got it running on an early Pentium 4, tho it was painful), but is no longer "supported" (21H2 updates ended about a year ago). And despite that instruction set supposedly requiring at least a Haswell Intel CPU, I can assure you current Win11 runs perfectly fine on an Ivy Bridge CPU. [points at Fireball] So... *technically* as far back as the earliest consumer 64bit multicore CPUs (that actually did 64bit; some early AMD64 CPUs did not, and will only run a 32bit OS). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications?r=1 They seem to have dropped the previous specification of an i7-6th gen or later. Probably because all the cheap Win11 laptops were arriving with an N-series Celeron, which is about half as fast as the earliest Core2Duo (but uses very little power, good for battery life). And Win11 runs adequately well on those N-series CPUs, despite that they're so much slower than an early Core2Duo. I have two netbooks and my mom's old laptop that all have N-series Celerons. The netbooks (4GB RAM) have Win11, and are pleasant enough; I regularly use them as portable word processors. The laptop (upgraded to its 8GB RAM max and all of HP's crap nuked) has Win10, and it's sluggggggish. In such poor circumstances, Win11 performs better. > KM> There's where business is presently at: any device or software > KM> has to be officially supported (even if that's a third party > KM> support contract) because otherwise you open yourself to > KM> liability lawsuits. So perfectly good hardware gets replaced when > KM> it goes out of warranty support, and software by subscription was > KM> a huge relief because no more worrying about being in compliance > KM> -- THAT liability is now all on the software vendor. > > The laywers are making all kinds of money! There's the problem! But we know what to do with the lawyers. > > > KM> My sister's architecture firm (she's effectively second in > KM> command, and they have offices worldwide) won't even keep a car > KM> or a phone that's no longer under warranty. If they design a > KM> building and something goes wrong and the building falls down, > KM> even if it's NOT THEIR FAULT -- if the chain of liability lands > KM> on, say, an outdated version of AutoCAD, that is out of > KM> compliance with industry standards, and that will get them soaked > KM> in court to the tune of billions of dollars. Same with computer > KM> hardware. Or phones, or cars, or anything else. > > Yes, between saving a thousand dollars for new computer stuff and > getting socked billions for keeping it I think the answer is clear: we > get to buy refurbished stuff!! YES!! Cuz the bloody AI craze is why the price of RAM quadrupled overnight, and why SSDs suddenly got scarce (and doubled in price, and that's still rising). > > The store I worked for did switch to Linux for the point of sale > > systems. After the conversion I was part of the group to open the > > registers and make sure everything looked OK. All we were told is > > there's a new system installed. ....Why does this look familiar?? > > ..Oh!!!! :) The registers did have a major boost in response! > KM> I doubt it was due to linux, which until you get to the Win10 > KM> era, generally needed more hardware under it than Windows did to > KM> have the same performance for the same task. But removing cruft, > KM> or updating the network connection..... > > I'm thinking it was removal of the cruft, a portion of which was due to > switching the system from Microsoft to Linux: they had to rewrite/update > a ton of programmes which that in itself probably cleared out a bunch of > junk. I don't know the details of which Microsoft version, which Linux > version, etc., but from the looks of the boot it was an old Windows and > a reasonably new Linux. Cruft and needless crapware makes a huge difference. My mom's "new" (2020) laptop is an HP, and still had all the default HP spywa-- er, helpers for this that and the other thing. And it ran at a glacial pace -- Win10 took about ten minutes just to boot up, and forget doing any real work on it. After I killed all HP's crapware, it boots in about a minute and tho it's stilll sluggggggggish, it's usable. Before, it was not. (Gonna be some other OS in its future, once I get all my mom's stuff located and archived off. But it's a touchscreen, and maxed out at 8GB RAM, so its options are limited. Win11 would be better.) > KM> You hear the opposite, but I have done straight-across compares > KM> on the same hardware, multiple times. And there are distros that > KM> make Win10 look snappy... linux performance is much more > KM> constrained by hardware I/O and bus speed. Or why Win10 on > KM> spinning rust is fine, but linux on the same disk is sluggish. > > I haven't played like that but makes sense. My _extremely_ limited > experiences between Windows and Linux were Linux was either faster or > about the same. And I need to note this comparison was done decades > ago. Back around 1998, Argo dual-booted RedHat6 and Win95. Win95 ran rings around RH6, which was at best glacial. That was my first clue that the hype wasn't all it seemed. Fireball (4th gen Xeon, 64GB RAM) has about 20 HDDs with various OSs. Including: Windows: XP64, Server2008R2 (Win7 server), Win10 Pro, Win11 Workstation Linux: Fedora (what it presently runs), Mageia, Devuan, Debian, Mint, others I forget. (For some unknown reason, PCLinuxOS won't run on it.) Windows of any species boots in the range of 30 seconds to one minute, cold to usable desktop (Server2008R2 is the slowest, but it does a bunch of Server Stuff along the way). Fedora takes about two minutes to boot, and another two minutes to find all its body parts. (PCLinuxOS would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster, if it would run.) Mageia is about the same. Mint, Devuan, Debian are all about comparable with Windows, tho a bit slower to load programs. So there's a present-day, realworld comparison, on the same hardware, with worst-case storage given it's spinning rust. I have noticed that while an SSD or NVMe will naturally speed up any OS, linux has much more obvious benefits, because its HDD I/O is so freakin' slow and that will never be fixed, while someone apparently wrote a proper driver, with proper caching (lacking on the old I/O) for the SSD/PCIe family of hardware, so that performs at the expected level. > > So I have a question: what happens when one can't connect for whatever > > reason? ...Oh yeah: nothing! Just like when AWS goes down, MS 365, > > someone does an upgrade at the ISPs and crashes the system. > > KM> There is the problem with all mandatory online everything, not > KM> only AI but also software as a service and product activation... > KM> what happens when there is no internet? or when the activation > KM> server dies and isn't replaced? (I'm lookin' at you, Adobe.) That > KM> is in fact a good reason to use an activation crack (when one > KM> exists) even on legit-purchased software. > > Yup: had that with my old X10 utility ActiveHome Pro. Company > essentially folded (portions remained) but the call-in-to-see-if- > legitimately-registered-software portion was broken. Good news: worked > until until reboot or worked until tried to change something, I forgot > which. Someone did create a bypass. There ya go. That's also why for the Win11 software I want for the future (pending an expectation that Windows will become By Subscription and basically a cloud OS) my intent is to work up a basically portable install, so if the hardware dies I can just move it to the next PC. Win10 doesn't mind this being horsed from one PC to the next (most of the time it doesn't even need reactivation), and I don't see why Win11 would care either. > > .. In the English language nothing starts with 'n' and ends with 'g'. > KM> A narrating clearly necessitating a course in remedial English, > KM> for one who doesn't put nutmeg in their hot cocoa. But sure is > KM> nosing around memes online....perhaps their brain suffered a > KM> necrotizing infection. > > Did you miss 'nothing'?! By then I was nodding off. > KM> https://word-lists.com/word-lists/list-of-words-starting-with-n-an > KM> d-ending-with > KM> g/ > > Good grief! Now I'm wondering if there is a site dedicated to words > rhyming with 'orange'! Your wish... https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/what-rhymes-with-orange My personal favorite is "door hinge". :D þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com (454:1/1) .