I watched the Win11 release, and I was just really floored when they closed by saying, “So go out and buy your Windows 11 ready laptop today!” That was after they informed us that TPM would be required and the ridiculous specs were just revealed and all the TPM modules were stripped from all the online store shelves…in the midst of an economic and health crisis…yeah. Go. Buy. Today…not words that made me very happy.
So I am pulling for you! Get her done! Build that baby! 
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Some Research on TPM…
TPM is something I’ve been aware of for 10 or 15 years, but I’ve never used - it’s just been an empty slot on a motherboard. Windows 11 requires TPM, and won’t install or run without it. So I’ve had to do some digging. Here’s what I’ve found out:
TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module. It’s a hardware encryption device that integrates with your processor. It holds digital keys to various critical pieces of software. To cut a long story short, If viruses or malware make changes to your system software, the TPM will not allow the altered code to run.
For a long time, TPM modules have been available as a card to plug into your motherboard. They’ve never been popular, and as far as I know, only people like banks and security agencies actually used them.
TPM has gone thrrough a number of industry standard versions. It started at V1, then V1.2, and now we’re on version 2.
Although TPM started as a plug in circuit board, since 2013 processor manufacturers have been incorporating the technology into the processor itself. Intel Core processors from generation 4 onwards have TPM built in, and don’t need the separate circuit board. Intel call their system PTT, but it’s the same thing. Modern AMD processors also have an implementation of TPM, but I don’t know the details.
TPM Version 2 was only standardised in 2019, so processors manufactured earlier are likely to be V1.2.
There is currently some confusion over whether Windows 11 will accept TPM 1.2 or not. Initially, Microsoft insisted on version 2. However, there have recently been signs that MS have backed off this stance a little. You need to check their website, as things are still developing.
I did some checking with Asus, and they are very clear that you should not use the plug-in TPM modules with their motherboards. Even if the module is fully industry compatible, the chances are it won’t work with the Asus BIOS. You need to use the TPM implementation on your processor (and that does work - I have one).
That’s pretty much all I can tell you. I’ve only researched enough to get my system up and running. As to why Microsoft are insisting on TPM - well, they say it’s for security. But you need to bear in mind that the presence of TPM gives Microsoft total control over what software and hardware is allowed to run on your computer. Now that’s something to think about.
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Yes. I am supposed to have tpm on my motherboard however, bios does not list it…my son and daughter have the same motherboard and they have it…all of that aside, I have reached a point where I really need a new build…so I am watching you with great interest.
In the meantime, I have worried for some time about Microsoft’s need for control. I mean, they are not perfect. It’s like locking everyone’s valuables in the same safe. That safe then becomes the prime target for theives and fortune seekers. When one of them succeeds, we all lose.
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I noticed something behind the bushes in the garden last night. I thought it might be a fox. Was that you?
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I would like to say yes. 
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Actually, my worries in that regard have decreased significantly over the past 5 or so years. Microsoft has made consistent advances in supporting open-source development, moving their software to other platforms, and integrating and supporting linux systems in their cloud services.
Sure, it’s not altruistic, they need to. They loose the market otherwise. I mean, not even a decade ago they apparently seriously believed that they could run a cloud development platform without linux. The idea is utterly preposterous, and Amazon had them on the ropes for trying… 
But they’re doing it, and they’re pretty positive about it, and I do appreciate it, even if it’s possibly only because the only alternative would be to vanish into insignifficance in the next 20 years. There’s enough companies in this business who couldn’t make that move and vanished in all but name (hey there Xerox, how’s it working out for you that you thought the “mouse” was a childs toy that any serious IT-technician would would be too dignified to use it?? ). It says something about so large a company that they are able to throw out old doctrine and go almost opposite ways.
As for TPM and stuff… From a developer standpoint, I understand the motivation behind it. Our civilisation has by now become utterly dependent on our infostructure. And make no mistake, it is vulnerable as fuck, pardon my french.
Most people don’t understand just how vulnerable, and that includes most politicians. If you’re running a hospital, there’s all kinds of government regulations concerning hygiene, substance storage, ventilation, power supply, earth quake safety, anything you can name, that you need to follow. let’s not mention all the regulations that had to be obeyed when just erecting the building.
Do you want to know how many government regulations there are for their cyber security? Zero, that’s how many. Any halfways competent team of hackers with some moderate backing or other motivation could take down a hospitals network at essentially any moment. And it’s like this basically everywhere, because nobody realises just how vulnerable they are.
Except for tech companies, and it scares the crap out of them. Because if anything large scale ever goes down, their bottom line will be the most affected. So they’re forcing as much security into systems by default, to make the infostructure as a whole less vulnerable. It’s not so much about control as it is about herd immunity, if you will. Apple has had similar mechanisms in place for a long time, but noody cared because you can’t choose your hardware yourself anyways.
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In engaging with open source, Microsoft are just doing what they’ve always done. Embrace, enhance, extinguish.
I’m willing to bet that five or ten years down the line, crucial sections of the Linux kernel code will turn out to be Microsoft copyright, slipped in “helpfully” years before. And by that time, so many applications will be dependent on the copyright code, it will be impossible to remove it.
And then Microsoft owns Linux.
Microsoft have a long and sordid history of doing this to innovative IT ideas. They see that people like them, so they take them on board. Then they add to them, just enough so they’re no longer compatible with the original creation, and just enough that Microsoft now own the copyright. Then they shut them down.
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Please, don’t say that out loud.
As for TPM, I totally understand @jedidia on the dangers out there. My question is, does TPM really make us any safer? I have read reports stating that it really does very little.
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That’s not how GNU works at all. Microsoft doesn’t control the repositories. Much less the gazillion forks of it.
In fact, under GNU, Microsoft doesn’t even have the right to build their own linux distribution without making the source code public. The terms are clear and merciless. Microsoft wouldn’t stand a chance in court.
It makes us any safer, yes. How much? difficult to tell. It’s become best practice in the industry to just use anything you can conveniently use. Every bit helps.
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Firstly, GNU is not the kernel. GNU and Linux are different things.
Secondly, anybody can make modifications to the kernel. Whether on not they’re adopted is another matter.
Thirdly, the insertion of rogue or copyright code into Linux is not done by the copyright holder. They pay some innocent-seeming third party (or perhaps a person who doesn’t actually exist) to do that.
When the copyright code is “discovered”, nobody is more surprised then Microsoft. But it’s still their copyright. They own it, and anything it’s used in, regardless of how it got there. That’s how civil law works.
If I steal my neighbour’s car, and sell it to you, that doesn’t mean you now own it.
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Well, obviously not. GNU is the license (well, GNU GPL to be more precise). And the kernel is under that license.
I see… something like this could work on paper (to a degree), I admit. There’s a lot of iffy stuff from a practical point of view, though, which I won’t go into in any detail right now. Let’s just say that proving copyright abuse in source code is a big problem in and of itself, and even if you can, you have almost no hanhold to prevent the code from keeping to exist in slightly altered form. The only way I could see this working is through patent law, not copyright, but first you’d need to think of something to contribute to the kernel that you can patent without running into issues…
They own it, and anything it’s used in, regardless of how it got there. That’s how civil law works.
If I steal my neighbour’s car, and sell it to you, that doesn’t mean you now own it.
That’s not an adequate analogy, though. Microsoft wouldn’t own anything. If you steal your neighbours bobblehead and put it in your car, it’s not suddenly his car, either.
They would have to make a ceise-and-desist to force the linux repositories to remove the code, and that would lead to some frantic scrambling to plug the holes that creates, but nothing that can’t be handled in a reasonable timespan. It would be disruptive, for sure, but not fatal.
What I would consider more likely if Microsoft wants to take a serious stab at linux, is to make their own distribution under a trademark. This has already been done successfully by Red Hat. Source Code must still be publically available under GPL , so everybody can go and compile their own red hat entrprise linux, and even distribute it, they’re just not allowed to call it red hat enterprise linux. But of course the real incentive to get a red hat is the customer support you get with it anyways.
This avenue seems imaginable. Microsoft basically investing a lot of money to out-develop the competition (and most importantly, out-advertise, since the competition has the good right to adopt any of the code they want), and the de-facto standard linux distribution being controlled by them in the end, would seem like a pretty microsoft thing to do. I just think they have more benefits from making money off of a whole ecosystem that they don’t have to pay anything for, but who knows.
In any case, even that scenario wouldn’t be too bleak. There would still be other linux distros around, many of them with almost the same code base, maybe with a few things stripped out that the developers felt were a bit too microsoft-y.
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You know, when I talk of Microsoft claiming ownership of Linux, I’m speculating. It’s not fact. I’m riffing off Microsoft’s past behaviour. They’ve always been an underhanded, unprincipled and untrustworthy company.
And when Microsoft do something new, I always look for the ways in which their actions are intended to disadvantage their customers. Because Microsoft have never done the decent and honourable thing. There’s always been a catch - and we’ve always been the suckers who paid for it.
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I honestly found them more principled than Apple most of the time, though Apple too has improved a lot since Jobs didn’t call the shots anymore… Of course, that’s like comparing a highwayman to a cutthroat, but you take what you can get… 
I understand where you’re comming from. I have a bit of a different view on it.
First, lately microsoft has not been that unkind to acquired property. They didn’t ruin minecraft, they didn’t ruin Occulus, you could say Skype died or you could say it got rebranded to Teams to keep up with competition of the caliber of slack against which skype in its original form would have been hopelessly lost, Visual Studio is still a pretty good IDE if you have the misfortune of having to develop something natively for windows (or, you know, use Unity or a myriad of other development platforms that VS just provides integration for for no money at all), and then of course there’s visual studio code, by now the most popular derivation of ATOM and, yes, open source and multi-platform…
Microsoft starting to seriously support many of their applications on Linux may be a move watched suspiciously by the public, but two tons of relief for developers, who now don’t have to run a dual-boot with windows just so they can participate in a meeting with the office guys or to look at the annoying powerpoint presentations they send our way, or to see if the bloody website works in edge. Also, edge… can we just take a moment to appreciate that they have completely canned IE, ActiveX and all their ridiculous shenanigans from the past with which they tried to control the internet, and agreed that Mozilla and Google probably have the better idea? They didn’t have to do that, IE was still one of the most used browsers on the net, they could have forced a division if they wanted to… but they didn’t. Instead they made a web-kit compatible browser, and made all developers lives a lot easier.
And then there’s other things like forced updates and stuff, which… yeah… you take a bit of a different look at things like that when you’ve seen what’s out there and just how little people do for their own security. Also, as widespread as windows is, I’m still being amazed at how little windows updates actually break serious stuff. I mean, I don’t remember when i had a release of my stuff last time and nothing broke, and that’s just a couple hundred raspis hanging around places and a dozen servers or so…
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Honestly.
Ask IBM how many copies of OS/2 they sold. Ask them how much they paid Microsoft to develop it for them.
Then ask where Microsoft got the money, expertise, and research to develop Windows NT. And ask which reached the market first.
Unprincipled? Absolutely.
And Steve Ballmer is on record as saying that Linux was the greatest threat faced by Microsoft, and that they should make all efforts to neutralise that threat.
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So, I remember when home computers became something many could afford. I remember a rush of OS creators prepping to push their version as just what your new home computer needed. I remember the collective thought was, buy a computer, choose you OS, go home and enjoy. I remember Microsoft going behind everyone’s backs and paying computer makers to pre-install Windows on their systems. I remember the lawsuits. I remember the trials. Microsoft is monopolizing the industry. I remember Microsoft drug the proceedings out for as long as possible. Why? Because, in the meantime, computers running Windows were being sold left and right. By the time the courts ruled against Microsoft, the game was all over. Other OS creators folded. People were already addicted to Windows.
Now, honestly, you almost have to have a PC running Windows if you want to be compatible with the software. Especially if you are file sharing or working with a group or company that uses Windows programs and apps. Yes, you can make most things work on Linux. And they work hard to bring more compatibility every day. As Microsoft works harder to gain more control over what we can and cannot have on our PCs, more people are tempted to turn to Linux. Over the last 1 1/2 years, with more people doing more things from home on PC, people are getting more frustrated with Windows. My son has wiped literally dozens of Windows PCs clean and installed Linux. If that is happening in my small corner of the world, it has to be happening other places too. Microsoft has to be aware of this. I have to share @Polyphemus sentiments. I am afraid.
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Does anyone else see the irony here?
Computers are our enlightened path to escapism - heck, who wants to worry about all the monopolisation, the corruption, the BS that goes on in the world. We’ll all just play a game on the latest extremely expensive hardware inherent with all the spyware and cookies and it’ll all go away. Bill Gates didn’t become the richest man in the world because of his honour and honesty.
There’s absolutely bugger all the likes of you and I can do about it. A small percentage migrating to Linux isn’t going to have that much of an effect.
I’ll say it again. We’re hooked. Now, blue pill or red pill?
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Purple?..
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Women! It’s no wonder there’s so many glitches 
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That’s not quite how I understand it… Now, far be it from me to defend Microsofts business practices, especially in the early days. I did call them a highwayman in my last post after all… I’m seeing (or should I just say, perceiving) some change in their attitude, is all I’m saying. We all know microsoft started by Gates fulfilling his initial contract to IBM by buying an OS from an other guy for a lousy 20’000 bucks…
OS/2 does look like a bit of a different matter, though. AFAIK, Microsoft was not contracted by IBM to write the OS, it was a joint venture (i.e. both parties putting money into the project and both owning the entire result). Microsoft withdrew from that Venture after Windows 3 was more successful than they expected, and that they might be better off just going with that label and making it an actual OS.
That’s a bit of a dick move, but really not so uncommon. You always have that danger in a joint venture between multiple companies. But IBM still had all the code, and they still had all the expertise they gained from developing it. And so did Microsoft, of course. Microsoft just realised that in the world of personal computers, marketing was much more important than quality…
It’s also inaccurate to say that NT came out before OS/2. The first version of OS/2 by IBM was commercially available in 1987, predating WinNT by a whopping 6 years (without a GUI at this point).
On why exactly Windows beat OS/2 (by 95 clearly the supperior OS) opinions vary, and that’s probably because the reasons vary. Some of them are good, some bad. Microsofts marketing machinery was supperior, yes, they played every dirty trick in the book, but they were also more user friendly, supporting lower-end machines, and you could just start developing applications for their OS whenever you felt like it, while IBM tried to cram developers into a hellishly expensive certification program before they’d even sell you the SDK for another juicy sum per seat.
The truth is, yeah, Microsoft were ruthless sleazebags, but also dynamic, observant and surprisingly open for the time… while IBM was still stuck in a ridiculous authoritarian business culture that wanted to have everything that happens in and around their system to be controllable by some old guys in suits.
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Just a heads-up for @Polyphemus
The Verge: Microsoft blocks EdgeDeflector to force Windows 11 users into Edge.
“While Mozilla’s workaround is available in the version of Firefox you download from the web, if you download Firefox from the Microsoft Store then the default browser workaround is missing.”
“It’s an aggressive strategy that reminds me of the ugly antitrust battle for bundling Internet Explorer in Windows.”
I’m sure you are not surprised.
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