So I was wondering if the standard Windows driver bundle being distributed right now would be compatible with Windows 11. My guess is it most likely will be as Windows 11 seems to be mostly UI changes.
Currently I’m running Linux until the Windows 11 release. I’m gathering info so I can hopefully have a smooth install.
Yes, it should be compatible. Windows 11 still reports kernel version 10, and the driver model hasn’t changed.
I thought there was some new hardware required to run W11. Why isn’t W11 offered here? I don’t “want” to run W11, but if I “need” to, I’d like to know if the present models here will run it.
Probably well before the 2025 end of W10 support they will cripple it to push you to W11.
I’m looking to run my favorite PCLinuxOS (since 2007) among other Linux distros to boot into.
I believe the primary part required is a TPM2 chip which the Framework has, but Windows 11 is really early in the cycle so I wouldn’t expect many OEMs want to deal with non technical users and support issues for Windows 11 this early.
Windows 11 hasn’t technically released yet. It’s still in its late testing phase as far as I’m aware. It’s supposed to release on October 5th. Knowing corporate culture and what I’ve heard of software development, they’ll probably barely squeeze out what they have ready with a few bugs a day or two ahead of release. Hopefully nothing as serious as a preloaded app causing a blue screen on launch (Vista is a really interesting topic).
As long as it’s working on this laptop, I’m ready for it. I’d rather do a fresh install than migrate a Windows 10 install, for the sake of stability.
Win11 requires a few hardware things, but the ones everyone’s heavily focused on are:
Most pre-built PCs (laptops, “off the shelf” desktops, that type of thing) built since 2018 have this. Microsoft has been requiring their partners to do so since then. While not all PCs have both as dedicated hardware, namely a lot of such PCs don’t have dedicated TPM chips, Intel and AMD CPUs also have been including fTPM, f for firmware, for about the same time scale. Supposedly not as secure, but perfectly functional. A lot of the fear around this comes from a lack of understanding of that last part. For much further back than 2018 almost all PCs have had UEFI and support for Secure Boot, it’s just rarely on by default. In much the same way fTPM, or even the dedicated TPM chips in some devices, is off by default. That means a lot of PCs will support Windows 11 just fine, the problem is people need to go into their BIOS and flip a couple options… which is a whole different conundrum. That said, there are also a lot of PCs still in perfectly functional condition, so there are quite a lot of computers that won’t support it. Even then, MS will allow you to install Windows 11, but from what I’ve seen of the Insiders Program builds apparently is gonna be quite snippy about it.
Anyways, Framework supports both of these already, and when I booted mine up both TPM and Secure Boot were enabled by default. Like all major new/updated OS releases, there may be some growing pangs as driver support does (or doesn’t) happen, but it’ll work out eventually.