So we keep the other thread on topic, whilst having some fun bashing (or not bashing) Micro$haft…
There is more to this story (isn’t there always?!) than it being just for Windows 11. It was actually a requirement in Windows 10… but clearly not followed. So I would suggest the manufactures should the focus of user ire, as if you have a device manufactured after August (ok, let’s be generous, December) 2016, was made for Windows 10 or 11, and it doesn’t have TPM 2.0… it is not compliant with minimum requirements.
For Windows 10, manufacturers of new devices or those updating hardware configurations with major components (like CPU or graphics cards) must implement and enable TPM 2.0 by default, a requirement that has been in place since July 28, 2016
Now, the real question IMO is one of “is TPM (whatever version) really required if I don’t use X, Y or Z?” … Clearly, Windows 11 was released to give a clear break between Windows 10 and Windows 11 requirements since the hint wasn’t taken with Win10… so perhaps it is justified.
My own preference would have been for Win11 to officially allow installation on hardware without TPM 2.0, but you simply don’t have access to the features that require it (such as Bitlocker or Windows Hello), and it clearly be indicated this is the case (both at installation/upgrade time, and any time you try to access those features). Or, what I am really saying is IMO there is no need for Win11… they could have just as easily done this in Win10.
One problem in my mind is that we have a near-monopoly using software to forcibly obsolete working, capable hardware (sort of… Linux still will run on it of course). It’s become a “normal” thing, and it’s not good for consumers or the environment. But I bet hardware manufacturers are loving it. I’m sure some conspiracy theorists out there suspect some collusion with M$.
Indeed! Although, I also have my pet peeves with Linux, and 32bit no longer supported… as I have a perfectly functional old laptop that can no longer run some newer software/kernels “simply because” the Linux guys have basically given up on 32bit architecture. But at the same time, I don’t blame them… they have to draw the line somewhere/sometime.
My gripe with how Win11 and TPM was done is more about M$ being caught in the crossfire… the manufacturers are to blame fair and square. It is the same as with drivers… M$ is being criticised for them taking control of drivers away from the manufacturers… because those criticising them are oblivious to the fact this was because shitty drivers were causing the OS to be unstable… and M$ decided they had had enough of it.
Could they have executed this better? Perhaps… but at the same time, they were trying to make the whole industry toe the line, after having asked nicely and being ignored. And they have kept Windows 10 updates going… I’m more interested to see if software vendors who do not have any reliance on Windows 11 exclusive capabilities start saying their software will no longer be compatible with Windows 10.
They’re probably colluding! Okay that’s complete speculation with no evidence, but clearly hardware vendors are not shedding any tears about this “requirement” to buy new hardware for W11.
I’d have to be convinced that hardware vendors are the ones to blame rather than MS. And that might be possible… (I don’t eagerly follow the latest news about 'doze), but I’m thinking it probably takes both parties (HW/SW) to achieve stupidity of this magnitude.
Requiring them all to be open-source and fixable by the community would be a nice start there. If MS is going to throw its monopoly weight around, they’d might as well use it in a positive way after they’re done using it in their evil way.
I don’t think Microshaft’s role in obsoleting old hardware can be overlooked. At best maybe it’s both sides of that equation to blame, I guess.
lol… I’ll just put it to you this way … If you have a retail machine manufactured after mid to late 2016, designed for Windows 10, and it does not have TPM 2.0, Microsoft is not to blame.
Hardware vendors definitely share some of the blame, as some vendors have provision for adding TPM expansion module, meaning there was no excuse to not not leave provision for future upgrades, if they want to cut corners on upfront costs.
edit: I think it is quite interesting that both AMD and Intel launched CPUs capable of fTPM in late 2015 - 2016… looks like someone was paying attention.
Not sure I even have a strong opinion about the W11 hardware mandate (or maybe I am just staying closer to the fence, because I could be wrong).
I can agree they aren’t to blame for the lack of a TPM module in hardware. But I think they’re plenty blamable for completely locking you out of using otherwise perfectly functional hardware. From a personal freedom standpoint, I don’t think I see the problem with keeping it an optional feature.
Maybe we should first blame consumers and the market for poor TPM module adoption. It’s a hardware feature that nobody has cared about or demanded from hardware vendors, so it’s no surprise hardware vendors haven’t moved forward on it faster.
It’s extensively documented, people just ignored it. MS changed how drivers are packaged to make it harder for malicious driver packages to do malicious things.
people scream at them about security, then people scream at them about fixing security.
I think you were right at the start, and then lost it at “nobody cared about”… Taking the long view, it is actually something that people didn’t know they needed rather than that they didn’t care about it. It is after all about making it so that security is something people can do “easily” without it “getting in the way”. It is the solution to the “why is your password… password” or 12345678 problem, as well as locking down the boot process down tighter and more securely.
In other words, it still stems down to failure to educate. Passkeys are facing the same problem (along with FIDO completely missing the point that portability is a core requirement!!! And finally coming up with CXP to resolve. ) They are a great idea… unique, auto-generated “password” of every place they are used… and founded on public-key cryptography concepts that are well known and proven to be reliable… just this pesky minor detail that in the initial rollout they were tied to your device (FFS!!). Once “minor” details like that are finally resolved, there is no reason to ever use a password again, and thus data breaches and phishing attacks should drop off dramatically. Those “bad guys” will have to up their game seriously.
Lansweeper said 42.76 percent of the estimated 27 million PCs it tested across 60,000 organizations failed the CPU test, albeit better than the 57.26 percent in its last test a year ago. Altogether 71.5 percent of the PCs failed the RAM test and 14.66 percent the TPM test.
Is this really just about TPMs? Are they seriously obsoleting almost HALF of the desktops out there? (Assuming those stats scale out to the rest of the world.)
Up to what point is EOLing hardware no longer “perfectly normal”?
If Linux can support ancient stuff and not even charge for it, what the hell’s M$'s excuse?
Edit - I also LOLed at this gem in an adjacent article:
Valve also releases the results of its Steam Hardware and Software Survey. While primarily a consumer measure tracking what gamers use, its February results will not make for happy reading in Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. Windows 11 appears to be going backwards and now accounts for 44.1 percent of users, a decrease of 9.36 points. Devices running Windows 10, on the other hand, increased by 10.47 points to 53.34 percent.
I find it more amusing / disturbing that even now, articles like this one from Toms Hardware still state it was a Windows 11 requirement, omitting the fact it was actually a Windows 10 requirement which was ignored.
They also completely gloss over the fact that Intel CPUs from 2015 (6th Gen Skylake) and most AMD CPUs from 2013 (including all Ryzen) support TPU 2.0… yet are not in the hardware support list for Win11… again… WTH are Intel and AMD playing at? But no, we won’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
I don’t think it would’ve been a good idea, or easy to justify for that OS either.
I found an interesting quote by someone smarter than me which hits near the argument some of us have made here. He’s speaking about TPMs specifically, but the same idea works speaking about buying proprietary hardware:
You might think you can find out what nasty things a treacherous-computing application does, study how painful they are, and decide whether to accept them. Even if you can find this out, it would be foolish to accept the deal, but you can’t even expect the deal to stand still. Once you come to depend on using the program, you are hooked and they know it; then they can change the deal. Some applications will automatically download upgrades that will do something different—and they won’t give you a choice about whether to upgrade.
At least with a PC, you can always install Linux. So what MS is doing has a fallback. Not really the same when a printer company does this sort of thing.
As I read about the TPM topic and the idea of forcing them on people… I’m hating the concept more and more.
Linux or Landfill? End of Windows 10 Leaves PC Charities with Tough Choice
Oh for god’s sake… what’s wrong with these people. It’s not really a hard choice at all! Install Mint on the damn things and then give them away.
But… oh no… people aren’t used to it! This is unpossible! That’s the same thing as unusable! Just like giving them a brick!
This problem arrived because too many refuse to abandon their software prison… rather than walk out the wide open jail cell door (for free!!!) they’d rather walk into a brand new jail cell. It’s kind of jaw-dropping.
Maybe Microsoft should be sued for mass pollution. If they’re okay with making all this e-Waste, why shouldn’t they be the ones responsible for cleaning it up? Hold them accountable and make them recycle this stuff? (Not really serious, but I suppose you could make such an argument…) Or even better, make them install Linux on this old hardware and then give it away, that would be funny.
Not sure if its still possible, but when 11 first came out, there was a workaround for making old hardware still work. It stopped the hardware check during bootup or some magic like that. A registry hack.
Reminds me a little of a company that tried to add security but had it cracked a day later.
Some say they don’t want to deal with whatever problems they imagine they’ll have on Linux. But then they’ll bend over backwards for whatever inconveniences are necessary, fighting that software to keep the thing running the way they want it. I don’t get it…
I think you are still completely missing the entire problem and point here… It has nothing to do with whether it is is "good’ or “easy”… but a simple fact.
It was a requirement
It was ignored
Microsoft said “we’ll fix you non-compliant manufacturers”, Windows 11 is now going to be a thing
Everyone screeches “but I don’t need TPM!!” (when in point of fact, really they do, to protect them from their own stupidity)
No-one questions why it wasn’t adopted sooner, and focuses on point 3 and 4 only.
For some people that is perfectly fine, but the reality is unless you want to be receiving calls all the time saying “how do I do this… the X button isn’t there any more!”… it is not an valid option. For those of us who enjoy a change, and are willing to learn to adapt to change, it’s perfectly fine. For those of us to whom it is just a tool, and don’t want to learn where everything has moved to… sorry, not budging from Windows (what they know).
That is debatable… he is really quite dumb on some topics But he is primarily talking about DRM, not TPM, and only mentions TPM in passing in the postscript. Don’t confuse the two … TPM is not DRM, but it can be used to provide the unique identifier aspect required for DRM to function.
The bypasses have changed from being easy and even documented by Microsoft at one point, to harder, but I think it is still there under the hood. However they need to treated as that - bypasses of system requirements, thus now an “unsupported” configuration.
We might be talking past one another at this point (complex topics). But the key point I was making centered on justification (as in the title of the thread).
I can reword clearer: I don’t think this would’ve been justifiable with W10 either.
I’m not a “TPM expert” but I might want to dispute that TPM is an objectively good thing. Certainly RMS doesn’t think so and I think he’s been proven correct more so than not by now.
Nonprofits worried about getting tech support calls… hmm. I don’t know why they’d be obligated to help with that. “Sorry we can’t offer technical support.” Or hire/train someone who can answer some of those questions and make that part of the nonprofit’s services? Is it not their mission to help people? I hear this as an excuse, not a good reason to scrap tons of working hardware.
Yes “trusted computing” in a software form I assume, unfortunate there isn’t a date listed. I believe the essay is an old one that turned out to be prophetic in light of TPM2. I think it’s a good argument.
Okay that’s complete speculation with no evidence, but clearly hardware vendors are not shedding any tears about this “requirement” to buy new hardware for W11.
) They are a great idea… unique, auto-generated “password” of every place they are used… and founded on public-key cryptography concepts that are well known and proven to be reliable… just this pesky minor detail that in the initial rollout they were tied to your device (FFS!!). Once “minor” details like that are finally resolved, there is no reason to ever use a password again, and thus data breaches and phishing attacks should drop off dramatically. Those “bad guys” will have to up their game seriously.
But he is primarily talking about DRM, not TPM, and only mentions TPM in passing in the postscript. Don’t confuse the two … TPM is not DRM, but it can be used to provide the unique identifier aspect required for DRM to function.