I've been a computer geek and programmer for 35 years. I'm the one my entire extended family asks for IT help. I'm even consulted by the IT department at work.
And I have no idea how to get Windows 11 running on my home PC. It has a TPM but I have secure boot in BIOS set to "Other OS" because I dual boot with Linux. I'm not getting rid of Linux, that's my daily driver. I just use Windows to play games. What does MS expect me to do exactly, get a second PC for Windows?
35 years? cmon man, use your brain then. Install win11 on USB with Rufus, check the box to bypass tpm requirements, install windows. You can force it on anything like any other os. I hate windows 11, but you're being a little dense here.
With his experience (and I agree if this is the case), he's probably expecting issues with unsupported configurations of Windows 11.
I guarantee that at some point after Windows 10 support drops that Microsoft will start pushing features that require TPM functionality. Maybe it will be minor at first, like you can't use PIN logins without it. Eventually it might move on to HTTPS requests failing without root certificates protected by a secure element store. Maybe OS updates will fail to install making these customized Windows 11 installs just as useless as Windows 10.
I've been a software developer for over a decade, and while I will never say always, usually unsupported configurations like this TPM workaround eventually fail. I wouldn't place my trust in it lasting.
Yeah you're right, these hacks usually lead to trouble down the line, and sometimes the tools you need to use are shady. I'm wary of letting some script-kiddie tool touch my kernel drivers. I'm fine with putting in extra effort once - especially if I'm not paying for the software. But the maintenance of all these little things add up and I'd rather spend that time with my kids.
Also this was more to express disbelief and frustration with how difficult MS makes it. I'm paying for this product (three times over, in fact) and they are adding draconian security features that prevent me from using it the way I want to. When I said I had no idea how to install Windows 11, I meant I had no idea how to do it using methods supported by Microsoft.
If you currently have a Windows 10 machine, you can use NT Lite to edit the win11 iso. You can remove some of the bloatware, turn off some of the annoying features, and disable the tpm and secure boot requirements entirely.
Yeah, pretty sure that's what stopped mine upgrading as well. I'm not messing with the boot settings, because I don't want a machine that suddenly can't boot.