The issue isn’t so much about the actual OS change, as it is about their dumb forced requirement of a TPM. A lot of perfectly fine PC’s don’t have one or don’t have it enabled, as it can cause headaches. If they dropped that requirement, a lot fewer people would care about the switch.
I’ve got an ROG B550E motherboard in my PC, built in July 2021. It’s perfectly fine, perfectly capable. Big ‘ole 3090 in it, plenty of ram… I have zero need to upgrade right now.
It has a firmware TPM option, but that involves doing stuff like updating the bios, configuring some stuff and runs the risk of potentially breaking something. Now, I’m willing to give that a go if push comes to shove, but your average consumer just doesn’t want to deal with that hassle.
Which means that a lot of folks are going to be running an unsupported OS or buying new PC’s when the old ones are still more than capable. You can guess what I think will happen…
If I can’t get my PC on 11 without hassle, I’m likely to switch to Linux anyway. I’ve beenhearing great things about Linux Mint for gaming. And I’ve owned a Steam Deck since release, so gaming on a Linux system really doesn’t scare me anymore.
And with the current trend of people wanting to take a but more control back from big tech, Microsoft very well might permanently lose customers to Linux. And once they make that switch, they’re not likely to switch back.