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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
Should I now install Windows 11 or keep it forever on Windows 10?
I would say no, neither of those. If there is no compelling feature of Windows 11 that you want right now, I would wait on 11. Windows 10 has entered a period where MS will leave it alone other than security updates, so no more pointless feature updates bringing instability along with features no one asked for. That’s actually quite a good thing… less headaches and drama for the next couple of years.
Waiting for now, though, does not mean keeping 10 forever. Maybe something in between those to points, like keeping 10 until it is about to run out of support.
With a new PC, if you must use Windows, I would find it hard to recommend buying a Windows 10 unit now, with the time almost run out on 10, unless you have a free path to upgrade to 11 or got a good enough deal on the PC to compensate.
Is it complicated and/or risky to install Windows 11?
Usually not, but you can’t predict when one of the unusual times will happen. I would not attempt it without a backup (and this is true of Linux as well). When you have a backup, you can always effectively hit “undo” if something goes wrong.
From what I gather, the 5400 is 11th-gen Intel, which is more than new enough to work with Win 11’s hardware requirements. It is still possible to bypass the hardware check and install 11 on an unsupported setup, for the moment, but that is a bit risky as Microsoft can end that any time.
It should not be an issue with your setup. 11th gen is new enough, and all SoCs of that era should contain software PTT (platform trust technology, essentially an emulated TPM 2.0).
Will this use a lot of space on my Hard Drive?
In the short term, an in place upgrade will use a good bit of disk space, as it will retain the old Windows installation after the new one is created, but after the MS-approved rollback period is over, the old Windows files will be deleted and you will reclaim the space. You can also tell it to delete these immediately and not have to wait for it if you are happy with the upgrade and do not mind losing the option to do an official rollback. I’d prefer an image backup as a means to go back instead of relying on the rollback procedure.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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