table of contents
another disclaimer
part of this process only applies to computers that cannot legitimately upgrade to windows 11 due to restrictive hardware requirements. if your computer can upgrade to windows 11 legitimately, you should just do that. if you want to follow along, and get the slightly debloated version of windows 11 this process installs instead of the microsoft defaults (with support for an offline account, copilot disabled, etc), you can ignore the step where you select an "Extended Windows 11 installation" below.
for the rest of you, it should be noted that some very old windows 10 machines simply cannot run windows 11 at all, even with an unofficial installer, and unsupported windows 11 installs may stop working at any time with no warning. if you were planning to do this because it would be "easier" or "more reliable" than installing linux, that's not really true 100% of the time, especially if your computer is from the windows 8 era or earlier and has already been upgraded to windows 10.
the main reason you should be considering an unsupported upgrade over linux, is if you cannot go without applications that cannot run on linux (i.e. certain professional software, usually from adobe). if you're a gamer, and you think you have to use windows for games: the steam deck and steam machine both run linux, and any games that they can play, would also play on your linux install. granted, this doesn't include some online competitive shooters and games with kernel-level anticheat, such as Destiny 2 or Fortnite, but due to the continued success of SteamOS, more and more of these games are considering or actively working on linux compatibility. if your games are on steam, you can check ProtonDB to see whether they're currently supported or not.
tl;dr: unsupported upgrade is jank and unsupported. it might stop working at any time if microsoft feels like patching it out of existence, and if your computer is old enough, it won't work at all for you. for many of you, switching to linux might actually be easier and more reliable than doing this. you should seriously consider that if you can.
getting the install media
let's make this short:
- go get a USB storage device, ideally a thumbdrive at least 8GB in size. yes, this is required. be advised that in this process, all files on the USB storage device will be deleted and lost, so you should either copy them off first or use an empty drive.
- go download rufus from https://rufus.ie/en/. at time of writing, the latest version (and the one that will work for most people) is
rufus-4.15.exe. you most likely DO NOT want the portable version i.e.rufus-4.15p.exe, the 32-bit version i.e.rufus-4.15_x86.exe, or the ARM version i.e.rufus-4.15_arm64.exe. - in "Device", select your USB stick. if you are using an external hard disk or SSD, [not recommended], the program will send you a warning.
- hit the dropdown next to "Boot selection", pick "Download", and select the latest version of windows 11.
- in "Image option", select "Extended Windows 11 installation (no TPM/no Secure Boot/8GB- RAM)".
- press "Start" at the bottom.
- wait for it to complete - this may take several minutes.
installing windows 11
to install windows 11 from the install media you've created, you will need to open the completed USB install media in file explorer, and then run setup.exe. it will perform an in-place upgrade from windows 10 to the latest version of windows 11, ignoring minimum hardware requirements.