Sometimes I make mistakes. About two or three times an hour. For example, I always maintained that unlike Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella, coming from a sector where Microsoft had strong competition, knew how to read the market. Nevertheless, we may be facing a new gaffe from Microsoft. And, this time Linux is in a position to take advantage of it.
Windows 11 and business. There are problems in paradise
As I write this, Windows 11 is three days away. Nevertheless, half of the enterprise workstations seem not to meet Microsoft's hardware requirementst. And in a post-pandemic economy context (Plus the shortage of components) there doesn't seem to be much interest in upgrading equipment that works perfectly well.
Lansweeper is a digital asset management company that recently performed the survey that produced the result that I exposed above. Their data is based on 30 million computers used by 60 thousand organizationseg.
In case anyone supposes that we are facing a case similar to what counted Darkcrizt, I must clarify that Microsoft's decision leaves out pre-2019 teams, including some XNUMXth-gen Intel Core CPUs or XNUMXst-gen AMD Zen CPUs.
According to the study44,4% of the machines could meet the Windows 11 CPU requirements while 52,5% pass the Trusted Platform Module 2.0 requirement. Things are better with RAM (91,05%)
Remember that the hardware requirements for Windows 11 include at least 4 GB of memory and 64 GB of storage; You must have UEFI Secure Boot enabled and have a DirectX 12 or later compliant graphics card with a WDDM 2.0 driver. And, let's not forget about the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0.
The same requirements must be met if you want to use virtual machine platforms such as Microsoft HyperV, VMware, and Oracle VM Virtual Box.
In the case of virtual machines, the percentage of TPM support is negligible. Supported CPUs are 44,9% while only 66,4% have enough RAM
Regarding TPM, only 0.23% of all virtual workstations have TPM 2.0 enabled. And while this can be done, it requires a lot of work before you think about upgrading to Windows 11.
Of course, there are still 4 years of Windows 10 support left and a lot can happen. It should also be noted that Lansweeper is in the business of helping companies update their hardware and software, so we might well be skeptical of the numbers. However they sound credible.
The lustrum of Linux on the desktop (Corporate)
The truth is that so far Microsoft is unable to explain (as it happened with Windows 8) why someone should install Windows 11. Except for some cosmetic modifications and the still unfulfilled promise to allow the installation of Android applications, there is nothing to justify it. And, much less if we refer to the corporate market (Which would continue to use XP if they left it)
The quirk of requiring TPM 2 (Trusted Platform Module) can only be understood as an attempt to sell your devices. It is true that it is a physical security measure based on a chip that prevents malicious programs from making modifications. But, there does not seem to be a situation that implies forcing its use.
LInux distributions are in an unrivaled position to replace Windows 10 in 2025. Not only are there support programs such as those with Red Hat or Canonical for commercial support, but also the offer of workstations with Linux installed natively, has increased exponentially.
However, the big weak point is still the software. Although solutions such as LibreOffice and Blender have commercial support, there are still many areas where there are no competitive alternatives, and in the case of those that are, they do not have commercial support or their manuals and translations are incomplete.
The good thing is that this time it's up to us.
It is not that simple, in the corporate environment many companies still depend on applications that run on Windows and not precisely as web clients, so they would first have to migrate (and reprogram) them, which is surely more expensive (at least in the short term ) than an investment in new hardware. On the other hand, we must take into account the deficit in qualified personnel to provide technical support for a massive migration to GNU / Linux, which cannot be resolved from today to tomorrow. The issue of ignorance of the decision-makers for a move of that nature and the damages against GNU / Linux, it is not worth talking about.
The problem is not the software, since the one that comes in the distributions is very good.
In our company we use it on all workstations and servers. We only use Windows Server to isolate accounting packages and to access government services through remote desktop.
The real problem is cultural, since our workers don't know how to use Windows anyway. That's in most companies, because nobody bothers to learn and they wait for someone to figure out how to install the printers or connect them to the internet.
It is simply getting used to and that they do, if the company gives the directive and prepares its IT department to give the appropriate support and assistance. This is the reality that we live in our company: 6 years working with Debian and systems developed for that system.
It can. Then people have such fluid productivity that they don't even realize that they are used to working in a system they were unfamiliar with.
These days, most people do not know how to use their computer, add that in the end it does not matter what you put it to work, as long as there is someone who does know how to solve the problems that arise.
The article talks about the corporate world, but this also applies to the end user. Satya Nadella's ineptitude and bad faith will cost Microsoft dearly. This subject, although in a different format, is the continuation of Ballmer as far as the assault on hardware is concerned. During these years his only objective has been to generate money, services before innovation; bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, and we are already in tomorrow. To proclaim oneself a patron of GNU / Linux is an impudence when their plans go through because everything has to be executed under their directives on closed hardware. It is a golden opportunity for the GNU / Linux world, but I am very afraid that this man will either drop his pants or they will put him on the street before 2025.
Greetings.
«During these years his only objective has been to generate money»
Of course, Microsoft is a company not a sister of charity. If I had a company I would do the same.
Businesses and normal users will continue on Windows, because this system is the standard of computing since the desktop PC was born in the 80s with IBM and nothing is going to change that. The same happens in mobile phones with android, which is another standard and nothing is going to change that, and we could continue with programs like wasap or telegram, nothing is going to change that.
I am a Windows user and I will continue to be, since it has been a system that has met my needs perfectly for many years with all kinds of free programs included.
GNU Linux will have to settle for its percentage in web servers, mail, etc ... since it was not intended for PCs just as it was not intended for unix either.
"However, the big weak point (STRONG) is still the software"
Hundreds of FREE programs
Ease of use, configuration and above all UPDATE, not only of the OS, of all system software, including drivers without stopping working with hardly any reboots in the life of the computer - only for kernel changes -.
The business programs used by large corporations in their community versions - free - or the same paid ones.
Excellent free virtualization with QEMU for those programs that only exist in other OSs, so good that Azure, the MS platform for the cloud runs on Linux.
It is possible that within the business environment it is cheaper to replace with the equipment necessary to make Win11 work, since migrating a software that has been working for years may not be so easy, nor can it work under Wine. Where there may be an opportunity is in the average user that by wanting to have a computer with a similar performance being cheaper than the one necessary to run Win11, it could eventually lead to end users at home who adopt Linux little by little. However, I would not be surprised if someone or some group cracks Win11 to work on computers without TPM, and these will be the majority of common users along with companies that are located in the third world, such as Latin America.
Some educational institutes for computer science professionals in Galicia, the so-called FP, have renewed their hardware last year and I think that at the moment they are not convinced with this of installing a system that in idle state consumes 8 GB of ram, more when they are teams that for certain activities need to run one, two, up to 3 virtual machines at the same time.
At the moment, in their dual boot, they are relegating the installation of Windows 10 to the background, giving priority to Debian and Ubuntu and for the year, apparently, they will only adopt GNU / Linux.
This would be wonderful! I hope so.