nexos wrote:
In other words, most machines until around 2010 were built with BIOS.
Okay, but that's still more than a decade old.
iansjack wrote:
The answer is simple - you don't run Windows 11 on these machines.
Yeah, period. The problem appears when you are forced to upgrade, then your only option would be to buy a new machine (or switch to another OS).
iansjack wrote:
But there's nothing to stop you running older OSs on older machines.
Yes, actually there is,
Microsoft likes to force users to upgrade. They promised
not to do this with Win11, but they have also told us there will be no Win11, so...
iansjack wrote:
And the same is true of Linux, BSD, you name it, although the time scale may be a little different.
Not exactly. I haven't tried BSD on old machines, but I know that you can still compile the latest Linux kernel for very very old machines, so I guess BSDs work too (at least FreeBSD very likely). There are Linux distros too for old machines, for example
Puppy can run on a Pentium Pro, and they still offer 32-bit versions; and it is said that
TinyCore only needs a 486DX (although I could not find anything officially confirming that). These are modern Linux distros in the sense that they ship new versions of the kernel and sufficiently new versions of the software.
Look around here:
https://itsfoss.com/lightweight-linux-beginners/, there are a lot more Linux distros that run on old machines.
iansjack wrote:
It's called progress.
Too bad I can't see any progress at all. I'll dare to say that Win98 runs a lot smoother on a Pentium than Win10 on the most cutting-edge PC. I can only imagine this got worse with Win11. "
What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."
Cheers,
bzt