I was living under the impression that I didn’t want to install Windows 11—that I was consciously choosing not to. That belief let me feel like I was riding a moral high horse, preaching about the virtues of open source and the perils of using Windows 11.

Then I ran a command in my Linux terminal.

By running:

sudo dmesg | grep -i tpm

I discovered that my laptop only has a TPM 1.2 chip. Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0. In other words, I never actually had a choice to begin with.

This isn’t inherently a bad thing. My laptop runs Linux perfectly fine. But I had always assumed I could throw in a spare SSD and try Windows 11 someday—maybe for content, maybe just out of curiosity. Now I can’t.

Sour grapes

I won’t lie—it stings a bit. Not because I desperately want Windows 11, but because the option was taken away without me realizing it. I wasn’t abstaining by choice; I was excluded by limitation. I had lied to myself, thinking my laptop was more capable than it actually is.

I hate for this to turn into a “sour grapes” situation, but that’s exactly what it is. My criticism of Windows 11 now comes from a place of missing, not from a place of ownership and rejection.

To recap

I have a laptop with limited capabilities. It runs Linux beautifully, but it would struggle—or outright fail—to boot Microsoft’s latest and greatest version of Windows.

I thought I was holding out by choice.
Turns out, it was just advanced coping.