Most of those requirements are, to quote Captain Barbosa, “more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” Registry hacks can bypass the more specific CPU requirements and the TPM check, allowing older PCs to run Windows 11. That’s how I upgraded my gaming PC to Windows 11, which has a first-gen Ryzen CPU (just barely missing the Ryzen 2000 minimum), and it runs Windows 11 just as well as Windows 10. Maybe those hacked installations of Windows 11 will stop working at some point, or a future Windows 12 update will make those requirements actually required, but so far Microsoft hasn’t given any indication that will happen.

I found this part of the article interesting; it’s the first time I’m hearing about it. It’s nice to know that my old desktop won’t be stuck on Windows 10 once it’s deprecated, although it’s also… fucking ridiculous, to say the least. If it weren’t for two programs that WINE/proton can’t run, I’d have switched it over to Linux years ago.

Edit:

Microsoft even had to carve out exceptions for its own hardware: the 2018 Surface Studio 2, which was priced at up to almost $5,000, nearly didn’t get Windows 11 because it had a 7th-gen Intel CPU. It was later added to the compatibility list.

Jesus fucking Christ Microsoft