Microsoft literally wanted me to convert my desktop to e-waste as it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.
I said “fuck that” and pulled the Boot SSD, kept the existing non-boot drives for data, and put in a brand new SSD, encrypted it and installed Pop OS in one shot.
Not only was it easy, I lost literally zero critical functionality vs. what I had with Win 10. There is a Linux app equivalent for everything I had before. I had a few driver issues but most were auto-discovered including obscure ancient printers and scanners on my network.
Microsoft literally wanted me to convert my desktop to e-waste as it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.
I said “fuck that” and pulled the Boot SSD, kept the existing non-boot drives for data, and put in a brand new SSD, encrypted it and installed Pop OS in one shot.
Not only was it easy, I lost literally zero critical functionality vs. what I had with Win 10. There is a Linux app equivalent for everything I had before. I had a few driver issues but most were auto-discovered including obscure ancient printers and scanners on my network.
Why did you have to replace the SSD?
I didn’t “have to” but, a few reasons…
Swapping the drive created a pretty easy rollback path that was just “put original drive back”
The drive was ~10 years old, and was in the range of recommended replacement for an SSD with the amount of TBW and age it had.
Original drive was kinda small and a new larger drive was available for not very much money.
Arguably sometimes drivers for older devices are more likely to have been ported to Linux at some point then conpletely new devices.
It’s not TPM. Older Intel CPU’s have unpatchable hardware flaws.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/5-years-of-intel-cpus-and-chipsets-have-a-concerning-flaw-thats-unfixable/