This Sun UNIX Workstation from 2005 might be the oldest possible PC that can run Windows 11.
Umm, it should work and there should be legislation to prevent planned obsolescence.
Meanwhile, I can run modern linux on a first gen Pentium, and many mainstream distros still support the Pentium Pro.
The way I see it, in the past, Microsoft kept things closed source so that nobody would copy them… now I think they have to keep it closed so we can’t see why the heck it has crazy minimum requirements (4gb ram minimum…?) when a functioning operating system used to just require only megabytes of ram… I’m guessing when you have qualified people all over the world working on all these different distros (sometimes literally just for fun) it’s bound to outperform the insanely declining quality of work coming out of these behemoth tech companies…
I used to work for Amazon in Seattle and it was amazing how little you can know and be called a “senior developer”… a lot of the staff was circulated through all the local tech companies (to include Microsoft)… my favorite thing I once heard was “ugh wait this has windows, I think I need at least a Mac or something so I can run python”. 🙄
What’s a good distro for this that is well supported?
You can go for a really minimal install of Arch or Gentoo with no DE
If you have a Pentium Pro I.e a i686, you have a few options. Debian, Slackware, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and antiX are the first that come to mind. If you have an original Pentium you’re probably stuck with Tiny Core Linux.
Of course, you could also spend about $20 and get yourself a vastly more powerful computer like a RaspberryPi Zero.
Well shit, I guess I’m gonna downgrade to Win11 using Tiny11.
Damn fine video.
It’s fun and seems surprisingly useful. Although his remark on the 1000w power supply (similar to 2003 era PowerPC G5 Macs) does make sense. Whenever I run a modern Linux on a PowerPC Mac it just turns into a boring slow old computer that feels even older than the same hardware running an ancient MacOS X