Here Comes Windows 11....

[Bobby Henderson]

I bought a new Alienware X17 notebook to replace the aging Dell XPS 15 I used at home for most of the previous decade. I also have a new Dell XPS desktop system on order to replace to aging tower at my day job; Dell says that system will be delivered around Thanksgiving. I hope it arrives sooner.

I have zero near-term plans to install Windows 11 on either of those new systems. In the near term I have to consider what issues could crop up with Adobe's 2022 generation of Creative Cloud applications. I rely on Astute Graphics plugins for Adobe Illustrator. So I need to wait on that company to update its software for the new version of Illustrator. And then I don't know how forward-compatible the applications are with Windows 11. It may be well into 2022 before I install Win 11 on anything. And even then I would probably only install it on the new Alienware notebook since I don't connect it to a network.

Nearly all the PCs in my workplace are running Windows 10 Pro. I think there is at least one or two vintage PCs running Win 7. The only PC in the building I think is eligible for a Win 11 upgrade is a recently purchased Dell XPS desktop system we bought to control a pair of Hewlett Packard latex-based large format printers. Windows 10 is already bad enough for its own networking pains. I imagine mixing in a Win 11 system here and there may open a new can of worms. Unfortunately it's a bridge we will have to cross within the next year or two as we replace more computer systems.

Microsoft isn't the unstoppable force they used to be. While Adobe offers a formidable lock-in into either Windows or Apple, the general move to web-based applications has made them more replaceable than they've been the last 30 or so years.

What creative applications are going web-based? I can't think of any on the professional level that are doing so. Hell, I can't think of any open-source graphics applications doing that either. They all install on and operate off of the computer's local hard disc. The applications are too big to download and install temporarily every time they're run. And they're sure not going to be running remotely from some server. In terms of speed and overall performance it's no contest, locally running graphics apps are going to win, especially when using new hardware like NVMe solid state hard drives connected directly to the PCI Express bus, fast RAM, fast GPU boards, etc. Someone could get away with running a word processor in a web browser window. Legit graphics production, video editing, etc isn't happening as a web-based thing any time soon.

The only things in graphics that are running via the web right now are specialized services, such as cloud-based storage (very slow compared to local discs), value-added content (clip art, stock photos, stock video) or fonts. The creative applications themselves still install and operate very much like they have for 30 years, despite the word "cloud" being tossed around. The only differences now is we're not installing off physical CD or DVD discs and don't have huge retail boxes with printed manuals inside.

The only scenario I can see where a web-based setup might have an advantage in graphics creation is distributed rendering across many computers. That would be a very specialized scenario. No one doing regular traditional creative work will have such a need.

[Marcel Birgelen]

We have invested heavily in hardware the last few years, with the exception of the last two years, the pandemic wasn't the optimal time to invest for us... Most of our hardware is actually still in active support, yet a lot of our workstations (machines with quad Xeon CPUs from 2018 with 256 GByte RAM) don't qualify for Windows 11. I'd say that borders on the idiotic.

I don't see any reason to upgrade to Windows 11 if they don't offer support for our hardware. Heck, if they don't change their mind, we start moving away from Windows to Linux and run our remaining Windows apps using VMs. We'll simply ditch our MS365 subscriptions (my personal mail has been broken for more than three weeks now, no-one at MS bothers fixing that anyway) and move to e.g. Google.

Microsoft isn't the unstoppable force they used to be. While Adobe offers a formidable lock-in into either Windows or Apple, the general move to web-based applications has made them more replaceable than they've been the last 30 or so years.

Maybe the e-waste caused by relegating otherwise good machines to the trash is something that can trigger some buttons at Microsoft. I seriously cannot understand how you can position yourself as a "green" company and otherwise expect people to throw out 2 years old machines. Also, just try to buy some new hardware right now. Waiting times of anywhere between tomorrow and 6 months...

Apparently, there is already a Windows 11 installer out there, that kills the TPM check and what-ya-know? Windows 11 runs just fine without TPM 2.0... But apparently Microsoft has already threatened to withhold updates for those "illegal" installs. I don't know what their deal is, but I guess they got billions of dollars of "incentives" from the likes of Intel and AMD...

[Leo Enticknap]

Just made a disconcerting discovery. None of the five Windows 10 PCs in my home are hardware capable of W11, because they don't have the Trusted Platform Module. These are:

• My main desktop - home build, based on MSI motherboard, in 2018
• My DCP render machine - home build, based on Supermicro motherboard, in 2015
• My laptop - Asus Core i5, bought in 2015 (originallly shipped with W8, and upgraded)
• My work-issued laptop - Dell, Core i5, bought 2019
• My wife's laptop - Dell, Core i7, bought 2017

There is a TPM board available for the MSI motherboard that would make it hardware compatible, but at $80, that it a bit above being a trivial sum (especially for functionality that I don't need for any other purpose).

I suspect that when the penny drops that many if not most W10 PCs currently in use cannot be upgraded, this will become a significant news story. I would guess that around 90% of W7 PCs in use at the time W10 launched were completely upgradable right off the bat, and most of the others only needed a cheap hardware upgrade (e.g. 2GB more RAM). I also suspect, and hope, that the endgame will either be M$ relenting on a TPM being an absolute requirement (i.e. give you the option to install W11 on a computer without one), or extend W10 support significantly beyond 2025.

All five of those machines have UEFI capability (though it is currently disabled on all of them apart from my wife's computer), so that's a non-issue. But the TPM requirement is a big drawback. The chip shortage making computer replacement more expensive, and environmental concerns (all that e-waste), might also combine to apply pressure on Microsoft, IMHO.

[Ed Gordon]

Exactly the same problem I had with it Ed. None of the standard Photo Apps like Photoshop or Capture will run. Those are the two main apps that I use... I do have a mobile (car) computer that can just run W-7, but it sure runs a lot cooler with Ubuntu on it.

I have an old Netbook that I used when traveling that I have running Win7 on. I actually ran Win10 on it for a few years, until the Win10 "improvements" finally overwhelmed the puny Atom processor in the Netbook. The "downgrade" to Win7 revived it. I did try Ubuntu on it, and it ran just fine, but I had software I needed that was not compatible with Ubuntu.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Christie projectors (at least my CP2210) run on Windows XP.

Noop, not really.

The TPC runs on WinXP Embedded. But the TPC itself doesn't run anything, it's just an interface to the stuff that does the actual work. The rest of the projector runs pretty much on a mix of embedded software. I guess there is some Linux or VxWorks in there too and the ICP is probably some version of TI-RTOS. And some embedded stuff doesn't even need an OS to work.

[Frank Cox]

Christie projectors (at least my CP2210) run on Windows XP.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The dual-boot thing is going to suck, for sure. As is the fact that PXE booting doesn't work the same way in a UEFI environment (I don't know the details...I've always just set everything to "legacy mode" and used it that way).

I'm fine with offering UEFI and Secure Boot as options, but forcing them is just going to result in more environments that stick with older operating systems.

I understand their feelings on keeping the old stuff out. But there is a plethora of industrial computers that are stuck on old systems because there are no options. The CNC machining industry is just one of them. The Cinema industry had for a number of years... the Qube Servers that ran on Windows. EEK!

[Scott Norwood]

The dual-boot thing is going to suck, for sure. As is the fact that PXE booting doesn't work the same way in a UEFI environment (I don't know the details...I've always just set everything to "legacy mode" and used it that way).

I'm fine with offering UEFI and Secure Boot as options, but forcing them is just going to result in more environments that stick with older operating systems.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I have taken a serious look at moving to Ubuntu several times in the past years. Every time I consider it, I find at least a few of my applications are not compatible with unix. The desktop market share for unix comprises just over 2% of the market. Developers have not shown any real interest in porting their apps to Unix, so the only real choices are Windows or a MAC.

It is far too early to judge how Windows 11 will be greeted. I have not seen anything about it that gets me remotely interested in it. Microsoft has shown an almost unique capacity to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot, so I expect to see Microsoft stubble once again.

The only good news about the announcement of Windows 11 is that it will redirect M$ activity away from Windows 10, so that Windows 10 will finally become stable.

Exactly the same problem I had with it Ed. None of the standard Photo Apps like Photoshop or Capture will run. Those are the two main apps that I use... I do have a mobile (car) computer that can just run W-7, but it sure runs a lot cooler with Ubuntu on it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

From Adobe's point of view Linux has all kinds of problems. First: there is the previously mentioned issue of all the different versions of Linux out there. That fractures the potential Linux customer base into multiple smaller pieces. Which distro(s) do you support? Second: a pretty big chunk of the Linux user base is hardcore about open source ideology and want people making applications for Linux to do it all open source. There is no way Adobe is going to give away applications like Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects for free.

Then we get to add in the variables of new CPU types and having to write code native for them. Adobe is a huge company, but even they are having to move slowly, application by application, creating M1-native versions of their applications for Mac OSX. And they're having to maintain the Intel versions for at least the next couple or so years. That's a fairly big burden. I could just see Linux getting even more scattered if there was Intel, ARM and other CPU code bases for various distros.

It's a bit of a chicken and the egg problem, but in my humble opinion, those big-ticket companies could've forced some kind of consolidation of distributions. If Adobe would've said: See, we're only going to support the APT-packet infrastructure and nothing else, that would probably have resulted into a big shift towards APT-based distributions like Debian and Ubuntu early on, as having the Adobe stack of productivity/creativity products available on a certain Linux distribution, would've been a huge draw.

I don't know how many assembly code there is left in Adobe software, but I doubt it's all that much those days. I guess the more hardware/OS specific optimizations nowadays are mostly in the GPU space, since most compilers are pretty much optimized for their given platforms. It's also increasingly hard to program for multi-pipelined CPUs on a low-level basis, something compilers are getting better at in each iteration. It's like the modern automatic gearshift in your car. In certain situations, manual shifting may be more efficient, but in general, automation nowadays achieves a better result than the average driver.

I wonder how hard it will be to set up a virtual machine on a Windows 11 system. Lots of people have old PCs and old install discs for past versions of Windows. I have an old PC in my 2nd bedroom I sometimes fire up to run vintage software that's no longer developed (Macromedia Freehand and the Kai's Power Tools plug-in for Photoshop are two examples). VMs can be set up in Win10 and Win7.

If they don't drop the TPM 2.0 requirement, then you'll only be ever able to run it on a host that also has TPM 2.0. Also, if the Secure Boot stuff remains in place, it will only boot if the UEFI bootloader of your hypervisor has been whitelisted by Microsoft.

Afterthought on the UEFI thing: I guess that if I use two physically separate drives for Windows and Ubuntu, that might work, as long as the Windows UEFI bootloader will let me launch the legacy Ubuntu drive, or vice-versa. Not much of a problem for desktops, but very much a problem for most laptops. I've relied on having Windows and Ubuntu available on the same computer for many years now, and am not looking forward to that becoming significantly more difficult. I use both, all the time.

You can't rely on the Linux boot loader (GRUB), because that won't be signed by Microsoft, hence, GRUB will not be able to boot Windows. I don't know how well most UEFI implementations support booting from separate partitions on the same disk, but it should be a safer bet to install them both on their own disks and switch between them using the UEFI boot menu provided by your hardware.

[Leo Enticknap]

Afterthought on the UEFI thing: I guess that if I use two physically separate drives for Windows and Ubuntu, that might work, as long as the Windows UEFI bootloader will let me launch the legacy Ubuntu drive, or vice-versa. Not much of a problem for desktops, but very much a problem for most laptops. I've relied on having Windows and Ubuntu available on the same computer for many years now, and am not looking forward to that becoming significantly more difficult. I use both, all the time.

[Bobby Henderson]

I wonder how hard it will be to set up a virtual machine on a Windows 11 system. Lots of people have old PCs and old install discs for past versions of Windows. I have an old PC in my 2nd bedroom I sometimes fire up to run vintage software that's no longer developed (Macromedia Freehand and the Kai's Power Tools plug-in for Photoshop are two examples). VMs can be set up in Win10 and Win7.

[Leo Enticknap]

The one thing I don't like the sound of is that UEFI will be mandatory for a W11 system drive. It's an absolute pain in the poohole to set up dual booting from different partitions under UEFI, though I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet and figure out how to do it.

[Ed Gordon]

I have taken a serious look at moving to Ubuntu several times in the past years. Every time I consider it, I find at least a few of my applications are not compatible with unix. The desktop market share for unix comprises just over 2% of the market. Developers have not shown any real interest in porting their apps to Unix, so the only real choices are Windows or a MAC.

It is far too early to judge how Windows 11 will be greeted. I have not seen anything about it that gets me remotely interested in it. Microsoft has shown an almost unique capacity to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot, so I expect to see Microsoft stubble once again.

The only good news about the announcement of Windows 11 is that it will redirect M$ activity away from Windows 10, so that Windows 10 will finally become stable.

[Scott Norwood]

On the other hand, "I want to play the latest games and install random crap from the Internet." That's not going to work well with Linux unless you know what you're doing.

Agreed. I _am_ a Linux systems administrator (and AIX and, previously, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, and others), and I think that it's most useful for either very simple tasks (user logs in and runs one application) or very complicated ones, but probably not for the average home user.

Nevertheless, many people buy a computer in the same mindset as they would buy a TV set or some other kind of home appliance that can deliver 20 or more years of use. They get pretty angry if something forces them to replace a device that otherwise seems to be working properly. They look at the "upgrades" as nothing more than ploys to make more money.

I think that most people are OK with the idea of upgrading their computer (which can range from buying new RAM to replacing everything) when the new one can do something that the old one cannot, or can do the same thing faster or better. If one owns a machine that needs to be upgraded to run Fun New Game X or work with Whizzy Bangy Device Y, I think that most would be fine with that. The problem now is that improvements in performance happen in very small increments. If a machine from five years ago works perfectly well, then most people will balk at the idea of upgrading it because an OS upgrade which is mostly cosmetic in nature will not run on the old one. And even stuff like UEFI is often buried in obscure BIOS settings, such that a compatible machine will appear to be incompatible because the setting is set wrong. What does a TPM offer to the average home user who isn't using encrypted filesystems? Not much. And Secure Boot makes it difficult to boot multiple operating systems and impossible to, say, boot a custom Linux kernel, so people who need this functionality are hurt by it.