I AM amateurish and geeky.
KDE Neon is crap, Mint is great, Pop is alright, dunno 'bout the other two.
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Sandbox is surrounded by eight-foot concrete walls.
Most restrictive piece of software I've ever used WITHOUT the school slowing it down with their proxies.
Similar spec to mine. Mine is 1st generation Ryzen, and apparently none of the 1st gens are considered suitable for W11. I read in a computer mag that Microsoft and AMD worked together on the evaluation process, which suggests there is a real reason for it.
Is the board set to boot in UEFI mode, with secure boot enabled?
Would not think you have a problem with the requirements for DirectX12 & WDDM 2.0, and memory / hard drive space is well above minimum specs.
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Yea the real reason is money.
Who says big industry doesn't collaborate to to jack prices and force people into products they don't need ?
Big industry!
At least Windows computers don't get throttled when the new models come out, like iPhones have in the past.
I think 10 years of support for Windows 10 is pretty good.
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It's a long-standing tradition to "hate" Microsoft and to deride Windows, but nobody works as hard as Microsoft to maintain backward compatibility for such a long time and to support old versions of its products.
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I'm a lifelong fan of the Washington Football team, so I'm used to love-hate relationships.
If I had to point to the cleptocracy it would be Apple because they sunset an exceptionally high number of machines within 3 years. Forcing the purchase of a new machine because they remove legacy apps from the app store.
Windows 11 is not necessary to use any program currently and I'm hard pressed to imagine anything other than a widget that will require it over 10 in the next few years.
And it is a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with i5, 8G, 256G SD.
Fortunately, I just use it as a "tablet", my real working PC's are Linux Mint.
My wife spent 30 years working in a medical office using Windows 3.11 thru Win10 and now retired, she uses an Elitebook i5 running Linux Mint and OpenOffice and is pleased - I'm pleased too as she requires no spousal support like with those MS Windows products. Linux just works.
Ray (ex MCSE)
Your Skylake i5 is 7 years old.
You know, to be honest, so does Windows. Of course you can find individuals with horror stories, but I'm pretty sure if you asked you'd find Apple and Linux users with similar stories. But honestly, I literally can't remember the last time I had a significant problem with Windows. The last BSOD must have been, what, fifteen years ago? Nearer twenty, probably. I've never had a security breach, never lost data, ever.
In case you're thinking "Yeah, but...", my PC runs all day every day, and gets rebooted only when an update requires it. It gets used for audio editing and digital audio workstation (DAW) work; video editing; the full MS Office suite; Windows programming in Visual Studio and Delphi; microcontroller programming; electronic circuit design, simulation and PCB design; mechanical CAD; along with all the mundane stuff like emails, social media, web browsing, contact management, time management, etc, etc. It also runs Windows 7 and Windows 11 in virtual machines, along with various Linux distros.
And yes, really, Windows just works. At least, for me.
Mind you, I think the W10 GUI is a pile of excrement if you're a mouse/keyboard user like me. It's a hideous kludge of a touch-oriented, paper thin skin sitting awkwardly on top of an extensive mouse/keyboard infrastructure. The last time I actually admired Windows and enjoyed using it was Windows 7. Microsoft should have split the OS in two, like Apple did: a mouse/keyboard version for workstations, and a touch version for mobile use.
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If the 6th generation i5 is the only non-compliant item you should be able to do a clean install of Windows 11 from the iso download.
I have not been paying enough attention to Windows 11 to know what (if anything) it does that Windows 10 cannot, and I've never been someone who just has to have the latest thing.
I'm typing this on a laptop that was originally sold 10 years and 3 months ago, works well for what I use it for so I see no reason to upgrade.
I think therein lies the misunderstanding of some and the understanding or others.
It's quite reasonable that a 7 year old processor is excluded for security and/or instruction issues. That doesn't mean it's a bad processor or a useless computer. It just means that it should not be upgraded to the new OS, even if you can fenagle it.
The PC works fine on 10 so why bother with the upgrade?
Absolutely! Well said. My first gen Ryzen is excluded for some deep, technical reason that I don't know or understand, even though it's way more powerful than lots of current laptop chips.
It's fine by me. Nobody has a right to upgrade their machine to W11. Yes, it's a bit disappointing if you can't, but W10 is what you've been using well enough all these years, so staying with it won't do you any harm. It's no biggie. Especially as W11 is really just a spit 'n' polish.
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Yes.
I did not buy it new; price ridiculous!
But I love the formfactor & resolution - great tablet for browsing and wasting time like old farts are known to do.
As a one-time MCSE, I figured it would never be updated; I do not care.
The Surface Pro 4 was announced on October 6, 2015 alongside the Surface Book. In the U.S. and Canada, the Surface Pro 4 was released on October 26, 2015 . The Surface Pro 4 is an update over its predecessor, featuring Skylake CPUs, more RAM and SSD options and a 12.3-inch display with a greater resolution.
BUT, Microsoft sold this puppy thru the summer of 2017; thus I guess there are some pissed-off owners that dropped > $1K.
As I have no relationship with M$ anymore. I personally think it is criminal for MS to intro an OS "upgrade" where their own high-end hardware approximately 5 YO does not have an upgrade path; In my mind, this is total BS and is just an excuse to drive new sales at the expense of the existing customer base. Obviously, businesses are the big purchasers of high-end computing h/w and it is a write-off for them. Sounds to me that the hardware dudes begged MS for a new, non-compatible release. But that is just my opinion having been in the "business" for 30 years.
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Sorry that you disagree.
I will say that you are not the only MS professional with decades in the field participating in this conversation.
If MS was forcing an upgrade and not continuing to provide legacy support for years to come and blocking current applications from Windows 10 installs, then I'd agree with you, but sir that's simply not the case. They aren't Apple and they don't do that.
Still on Win 7, best win os
It is not that I disagree, just that I do not believe MS is making W11 out of "need", rather pressure within and external to drive new h/w sales.
If the GUI is the driver, that just a bunch of classes that can be migrated.
If the Security is the driver, W10 users should be shaking with fear.
There is just something basically smelly in the ether when a goodly number of W10 users get a ticket on the W11 bus but other W10 users are given the finger and told their cpu, or BIOS, or TPM version is not recent enough.
I would have thought it more appropriate to not upgrade W10 and just sell it on new h/w or via retail/download. But Microsoft has chosen to discriminate the OS based on hardware specifications.
But, it is just my jaded opinion.
This has always been the case with Windows. Microsoft draws a line in the sand and it can usually be discerned quite clearly. Users who fenagle an upgrade across these lines usually face very poor performance or permanently disabled features such as Aero. Drivers are also an issue as older drivers use facilities that have been eliminated.
I do agree with you on one thing though, your opinion is exceptionally jaded and it is not at all impartial.