Title: Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows. I am a FreeBSD &quot;Ports&quot; (packaging) committer.<p>I own a HP Spectre x360 14&quot; which dual-boots Windows 11 and FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT. The Spectre is my personal laptop. I recently reinstalled Windows.<p>Laptops on Intel&#x27;s TigerLake platform use something called VMD which supposedly helps with Intel&#x27;s Optane SSD by taking over the NVMe. Some laptops like Lenovo ThinkPad models allow you to disable VMD, but my Spectre does not, so you need a second USB to sideload the drivers.<p>What else? There is no touchpad on the Windows installer. Linux and FreeBSD both have had TigerLake touchpad drivers for a while.<p>I remember working with a developer to build FreeBSD drivers for the VMD, and submitting a patch myself for TigerLake touchpad, and both are in FreeBSD 13.0 from over a year back.<p>Yet neither are in Windows 11&#x27;s ISO, even the latest &quot;Visual Studio&quot; downloads, and on both Windows 11 Home and Enterprise.<p>The mainline Linux kernel has drivers for Apple M1 outside the GPU, something that needs many man-hours of reverse engineering. Windows 11 doesn&#x27;t even have drivers long committed in the Linux and FreeBSD trees.<p>While I can install Windows 11 on an 8th Gen WhiskeyLake Spectre fine, touchpad and NVMe, it&#x27;s a hassle on 11th Gen hardware even when the hardware isn&#x27;t even super new, 12th Gen laptops are already out.<p>I guess the wrong person at Redmond got the note for the drivers :-). If someone reading this works at Windows, please add drivers for Intel&#x27;s VMD and TigerLake&#x2F;AlderLake touchpad.
Upvote: