Microsoft sheds some light on how "unsupported PCs" will work when Windows 11 is installed on such hardware. In short, no new builds of Windows 11 will come to them. But they will receive cumulative updates until the general availability of the OS. After that, Windows will prompt the user to return back to Windows 10.
The information comes from the Brandon LeBlanc, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft on the Windows Insider Program Team. He made the following statement on twitter:
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The PCs given an exception will no longer receive any new future Insider Preview builds from the Dev Channel but will still get Cumulative Updates for Windows 11 leading up to GA. As I said, there is a distinction between *new builds* here.
— Brandon LeBlanc (@brandonleblanc) September 1, 2021
Mr. LeBlanc explained that those PCs in the Dev Channel won't get new Insider Preview builds, but will continue to receive patches like it happens right now.
Kip, Windows Insiders don't just get "new builds" they also get updates - e.g. Cumulative Updates. This is an important distinction here. PCs given exceptions in the Dev Channel will not get *new builds* in the Dev Channel going forward. June 24th blog post will still hold true.
— Brandon LeBlanc (@brandonleblanc) September 1, 2021
As you could already guess, the Dev channel will soon host builds from a newer branch, which will eventually become the successor of the initial Windows 11 release, say "Windows 12". So for unsupported devices those builds will be inaccessible.
If we understood everything correct, devices running Windows 11 in that unsupported mode will stop receiving updates on October 5, 2021. That's the date when Windows 11 reaches general availability.
After that date, Windows 11 will ask the user to return back to Windows 10. By that time, we expect Windows 10 version 21H2 to become generally available as well, so it could be offered as a Windows 11 replacement.
The official Microsoft's post says that you will need to clean install Windows 10. Also, the company noted that the user can join the Release Preview channel of Windows 10 to preview its latest updates.
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I don’t like to be insulting but this is insane. The stupid thing was going to take over anyway as new computers are purchased so instead of their latest and most secure (in theory) OS being available to all, they’re doing all this rubbish to annoy power users. Not that I care because I’ll never use 10 or 11. Not optimistic about 12 either, to be honest!
Finally settled on Mint and Ubuntu Studio as soon as I have a bit of spare time. Still have 16 months support on this stupid thing so it’s all good. ;-)