I bought a refurbished 3-year-old game computer with an option to upgrade its Win10 to Win11 Pro, so as to be able to claim familiarity with this latest release for professional reasons. Now running 11 Pro, I'm releived to have experienced little trouble in the way of being forced to establish a Microsoft account before OS activation could occur. I got to the point of being asked "Don't have a Microsoft account? Create one!". Making that choice experimentally, what happened when clicking "create one" was not the state of being dropped into an account establishment form, but an end of the current procedure. It sent me out of the installer completely and allowed normal activity. I then set up a local user with no problem, got updates, etc. Surprise.
I'm annoyed that the apparently arbitrary requirement of Win11 to run on processors only 3 or 4 years old or less requires many to buy new (or new-to-me refurb in my case) computers. There, however, is an opportunity here. With so many boxes abandoned by 11 that may have 2 or 3 Ghz processors and 8, 16 or 32 gigs of RAM expansion capability, what to do with them? This is the time for Linux-on-the-desktop advocates to get to work. Linux is free and the boxes will just be sitting around. Time to get creative, America - or World.
The kinks have been worked out of the Ubuntu's, mostly. There's MX Linux if you have the need for speed. And many gaming situations have embraced Linux for years.
The shortsightedness of the Win11 situation is the best case for DT Linux I've ever seen, and I remember UUCP over 300 baud modems. Which is still possible to do, I'll have you know, you young whippersnappers.
