It'll be interesting to see if Win11 catches on or not. Windows 95 was a big change that was successful; Windows ME had a fair amount of change, mostly under the hood, and it flopped; there was lots of resistance to XP, then lots of resistance when Microsoft took it away; there were big changes in the unsuccessful Vista, which Microsoft then polished into the very successful Windows 7; and I think they'd rather forget about Windows 8. To most folks I think Windows 11 will seem like Windows 10 Service pack 1 [for those who remember Windows service packs]. There will again be changes under the hood, but I don't really think they'll matter all that much except for biz use, and then it might only interest those [somewhat scarce] businesses that aren't penny pinching when it comes to IT. The crucial deciding factor may be if Win11's better for gaming -- I personally think that had lots of impact in pushing Win10 over the top.
And I *think* that the question of whether Win11 catches on or not matters, because I also *think* that's why Microsoft has been a bit vague when it comes to future Win10 support.
Microsoft has been going out of their way to explain why the new, stricter hardware requirements are necessary, but people are catching on to the fact that much [if not all] of that is pure marketing hype. For example: "According to Microsoft, PCs that don't meet the minimum requirements of Windows 11 have 52% more kernel mode crashes. In contrast, PCs that do meet the specs are 99.8% crash-free, according to Microsoft." OK, so some percent of the .2% that experience crashes have had kernel mode crashes. Now take 52% of whatever that figure is... Microsoft doesn't say, but it's guaranteed to be less that .2%, and Then take roughly half of that. Doesn't sound like much to worry about to me. :)
windowscentral[.]com/you-can-run-windows-11-unsupported-devices-will-you
So why is Microsoft only supporting some newer CPUs with Win11? Ed Bott thinks part of it is because those older CPUs were susceptible to stuff like Spectre & Meltdown. Officially Microsoft is more vague, saying for example that newer CPUs support virtualization security features [VBS]. VBS is already available in Win10, though turning it on has caveats, e.g. VirtualBox isn't really compatible with the required Hyper-V, so using VBS won't be required in Win11. If you hadn't heard of VBS you're not alone -- Google and you'll get hits for Visual Basic Scripts -- so if you're interested this might help:
docs.microsoft[.]com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs
techrepublic[.]com/article/how-to-activate-virtualization-based-security-and-core-isolation-in-windows-10/
Win11 requires TPM 2.0, which is good for Bitlocker they say... well, the problem with hardware security solutions, is that unlike software, when the inevitable security vulnerabilities are found, you often can't simply fix it with a patch [e.g. Spectre & Meltdown]. Bitlocker itself is disk encryption designed for biz, allowing a biz to access the encrypted laptops they give to employees to use when an employee is uncooperative. For individuals that want disk encryption, the free VeraCrypt is better, no TPM required.
Win11 requires a UEFI BIOS that's Secure Boot capable, and a GPT rather than MBR hard disk, all of which have been available since Win10. A Legacy BIOS is hard-coded, while UEFI BIOS run a mini OS [so it can BTW be hacked], but you won't/don't have a choice in the matter -- whether you buy an assembled device or build it yourself, if it's less than 5 years old it'll have UEFI BIOS, and there's no way to change from Legacy to UEFI or vice versa. Secure boot is supposed to insure that only legitimate Windows software starts when you boot [turn on] the device. Most people don't know if they have it, or if it's turned on or not, and I've never seen anything widespread saying they should care -- the only discussions I've read concern problems tech enthusiasts [i.e. fellow Nerds] have had. GPT and MBR hard disks just use a different method of keeping track of the 1s & 0s making up the data stored on that disk. For some folks however, this stuff could get a bit sticky...
Windows 7 didn't like UEFI BIOS, so devices with UEFI BIOS used an artificial Legacy or CSM mode that mimics a Legacy BIOS. Most of the time hard disks were also MBR, and in fact if a CSM-capable UEFI BIOS sees the boot files on a GPT hard disk, it'll usually switch to UEFI mode, regardless any settings you might make. Win7, Win10, and [maybe unofficially] Win11 all have 2 boot modes, UEFI & Legacy, and changing that mode doesn't always work out so well. Long story short, I expect some people unaware of this stuff that ran Win7 and want to run win11 on the same hardware will run into problems.
That all said, I think some of the execs at Microsoft feel that in this cell phone-centric world we live in nowadays, so many people will be turned off by the notion of manually updating to Win11 using an ISO, that allowing it on most hardware won't matter at all.
