- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Windows 10 end of life could prompt torrent of e-waste as 240 million devices set for scrapheap::As Windows 10 end of life approaches, analysts are concerned that millions of devices will be scrapped due to incompatibility
of course no mention of upcycling these with linux and getting them into needy hands. with alll the solid state hardware now many of these machines are perfectly functional, and will be for some time. its the batteries that likely need a looking at
My AMD computer still runs great for what I use it for and will continue for a good several years. It’s got a 6gb 1060 (that I’ll probably upgrade a bit pretty soon), 32GB ddr4, and what magically won’t officially run on w11: a ryzon 5 1600x I have OC’d to 4Ghz.
Once win 10 goes out (which no one kid themselves, it will 100% get a support extension) I’ll mainly swap over to Linux and run 11 unofficially for the couple things I’d need it for.
Cool, I need some cheap Linux servers to build out my home lab
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Maybe the prices will become reasonable once again.
I’m all for it. Save the hardware.
Positive take: Lots of great Linux laptops on their way to eBay.
Backmarker as well hopefully.
High-end corporate laptops from 5-10 years ago make excellent cheap and powerful Linux machines today (given a reconditioned battery, assuming you want to run them without mains, and a new SSD several times larger than the hard drive they came with). See all the sticker-festooned Thinkpads you see at conferences that spent the first few years of their lives handling executive email and PowerPoint presentations, now living their best lives.
I’ve always wanted to do this.
What’s a good source to buy them?
What models do you recommend?
I’ve always got them from eBay.
The T and X series are the high-end ones. Between those it mostly depends on what size of laptop you’re looking for. Its worth checking a guide for how you replace the SSD/RAM/battery - some of the newer ones have these soldered in place, which means you’re stuck with whatever it originally came with.
Personally, I think the sweet spot is around 4 years old. By that point they’re pretty cheap (maybe 10% of the original RRP), and going for older ones doesn’t save you much more money. I recently got an X390 and it’s doing everything I need from a laptop
Thanks a lot! That’s super helpful.
Backmarket
I just brought a thinkpad home from work for that purpose the other day. Gonna keep an eye out for a newer one in the coming year
Windows 10 should not require such a short life time. 11 isnt much different other than the security\TPM chip shit. And 11 is fucking terrible UX
Not to boast MS, but its service life is longer than Linux at 10 years. Lts on Linux is generally at best 8. Ltsc on Windows is much longer. Windows 10 released on 2015 and the ltsc ends at 2027 on the enterprise channel, or 2025 for the consumer general availability.
I’m only commenting because I dislike misinformation more than I dislike MS.
Where can i get this waste .my linux pengiun will love it🤩.but it saddens me that people relay on windows so much.
Embrace Linux and open source software
This will be interesting, maybe this will push for huge adoption for linux. This could also mean a lot of old hardware that are still very capable goes to 2nd hand market in turn lowering prices for pc. Or nothing happens and most of the people will be in a compromise OS for years similar to what happen with windows xp debacle. There also another situation where Microsoft does backtrack on its decision and the same status quo would remain for years to come.
I am hoping for this but unless Microsoft puts a banner on 10 saying you should switch because x,y,z I don’t see it happening for a majority because a lot of people probably don’t even know how to install windows from scratch.
I can’t upgrade to W11, I can’t afford nor am I ready to upgrade my gaming PC, its likely I’ll be moving to Linux or keeping to use W10 w/o support.
Microsoft really did no favors with limiting official W11 support. Its not just TPM.
I migrated to linux when Windows 7 died. So I’m you from years ago, lol.
If you’d like any advice, I would just say check ProtonDB for the games you regularly play (especially if they are MMOs) to make sure they work, cause anything that uses restrictive kernal level anticheats arent going to run.
and if you are looking for a distro, I would personally recommend Nobara. it stays up to date, it has a lot of the gaming stuff built in (Some of which might require compiling from github otherwise), and its been rock solid for me personally. but you should poke around and find whatever tickles your fancy… and anything you don’t get from X, that you can get from Y, can usually be manually installed on Z.
This obviously doesn’t solve any of the larger problem about MS pushing TPM, but you can bypass most of those W11 requirements.
How many non-tech people actually know about this? And how many of that small percentage are actually going to toss their computer as a result of it?
Because for the average computer user, they will never wonder why there are no more updates. And as long as their computer still browses the internet they don’t care even if you notify them.
Microsoft tried for years to get people off of fucking internet explorer and barely succeeded.
Do you really think that Microsoft is going to let these people exist in ignorant bliss?
You underestimate people’s ability to dismiss pop ups and notifications without retaining any of the information in them.
I’m definitely not, I work in IT 🤣 That doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t try.
Yeah, no one actually cares. Just look at phones, people don’t actually stop using them when they aren’t supported and don’t care as long as it keeps working.
I expect there to be a lot of nagging. MS doesn’t want to miss out on all the Windows 11 licences they can sell with new hardware.
Use Linux.
Oh, I didn’t know that was an option! I’d forgotten about it since the last time I read the comments on a Lemmy post related to Windows.
This genuinely made me snicker.
Incompatibility with what? Things are only just starting to be incompatible with Windows 7. I’ve still got customers running variants of Windows XP.
And Windows 11 doesn’t really contain much that won’t work on 10.
I reckon the TPM and secure boot requirements will eventually be dropped. They’re the Kinect of Windows 11.
You’re probably not correct about TPM and secure boot being dropped. Microsoft’s entire enterprise line of security products including Intune and Defender for Endpoint are integrated to it and Microsoft Azure AD/Entra ID uses it for their certificate based enrollment and authentication. This is their primary profit drivers, not consumers.
Disabling the tpm requirement is just a registry hack in win 10, or a selectable option when creating an install usb with rufus.
I think they will make a simple calculation; What is going to cost more: The bad PR of nolonger updating 240 million pc’s, or accepting that a small portion of your users does not have tpm?
They haven’t stopped advanced users from installing win11 on older hardware so far. So no loss there. I also doubt they lose enterprise money if they allow win10 to upgrade regardless, as tpm is now well entrenched as the default on new hardware.
I’m still not even sure why they decided to require TPM anyways. But yeah my computer is among the many that can’t upgrade until that’s gone. I guess it’s either that or I learn a lot more about Linux…
At least if you switch to Linux there’s no shortage of people on the fediverse willing to answer questions.
There should be a “Linux hotline” community where people can post whatever is stopping them from switching and get solutions
Elsewhere, Linux support areas seem more likely than not to have a large contingent of “WHY ARE YOU ASKING A DUMB QUESTION, you horror of a human being? Why didn’t you Search the site for words you don’t know using our broken search engine, instead of infecting us with your congenital idiocy?” folks.
I use Arch too!
exactly, I admit to sharing some of the “bro its so easy” attitude, but that should result in simple answers instead of berating, like a “no stupid questions” but for linux thing
A “no stupid questions” for Linux would be super helpful. A big one for me is shell commands. Like are shell commands different between distros, or do I have to install something to have certain commands? How do I even know what commands I do have?
Like are shell commands different between distros, or do I have to install something to have certain commands?
Yes and no, kinda. So the most popular shell by far is Bash, which includes its own built in functions, and can also be extended with custom functions which certain distros may include in your bash config file by default. But generally, Bash and the GNU coreutils are standard, although some more “hip” distros will include other shell prompts such as zsh or fish by default, but even those tend to come with bash for script compatibility or easy switching for user preference. Some distros may include programs by default, but most of the time those are easily available in other distros through the package manager.
How do I even know what commands I do have?
compgen -c
(orcompgen -c | more
for a scrollable list (pressq
to exit)) should do the trick, but that is a built-in bash command that may not be available on other shells, but generally you can find all the programs able to be called from shell inside the/bin
/sbin
/usr/bin
and
/usr/sbin
directories. All these directories are added to a variable called $PATH, and when you type a command into your shell, these are the places that get searched for a matching program to run. You can use
echo $PATH
to see all the directories on your machine which are searched, or even add your own directory containing custom scripts or utilities so you can use them anywhere like an installed program.
rtfm
Going the linux way can be troublesome at first, but you will be free from ms bullshit in the long run and will have your hardware lasting much longer. Unless you need something specific to windows for work, I recommend trying linux.
It’s just another scam for them to make money
I tried win11 for about 2 hours and installed linux on the third hour and haven’t used a windows machine in over a year. Windows costs an obscene price AND they have so much tracking and spyware that it actively impacts gaming performance.
Complete trash OS. I won’t be going back and I now actively avoid any game that doesn’t function on linux.
We’re starting to roll out Win11 at work. I created a GPO that keeps certain individuals on Win10. I am not looking forward to the day when that policy has to be retired.
Not to mention the price of all the resource hogging and handicapping your workflow by changing everything around everytime.
The enshittification of an OS that used to be pretty good. It’s a shame. I haven’t touched Windows for over a year as well.
Google should be pushing ChromeOS towards people and businesses with this kind of hardware. It’s a perfect way to capture market share from Microsoft.
Nah. Google decides to ban your account for whatever reason, and your files and mails are gone, and you can’t even login to your computer. Linux is just as easy as windows nowadays, and in some cases even better for gaming.
I just helped a friend who is still on Windows 7. I showed him my Linux boxes. Even offered him one for free. “but I can’t live without this minesweeper”. Seriously. I showed him minesweeper on one of the Linux boxes. “it’s not the same one, I have a high score”. Thankfully, this isn’t a laptop, because he would not be permitted to connect to my wifi. Those that scrap their old devices for Win11 will either be businesses/corporations that have no other choice or slightly more advanced users that understand the benefits of active support. The general populace will likely keep their Win10 (or 7) computers until they have to upgrade the hardware, and they’ll likely be super happy that they don’t have to deal with the “annoying windows update that restarts [their] computer”. To be fair, forced reboots is an annoying feature.
WINE will run minesweeper. He can even bring over his highscores file.
Yes, that should work nicely. It’ll even look the same for the most part.
Given how long it took the general populace to let go of Windows XP, I predict a pretty similar turn of events (or rather lack thereof) with Win10. By and large everyone’s grandma and parents and auntie will just keep on using their same old computer as it is, possibly eventually turning into a petri dish for every exploit and piece of malware in the known universe in the process.
The majority of casual home users will throw away their computer and buy a new one only if it stops working or possibly if some new piece of software or more likely some future web site won’t work with it. Otherwise, to most non-nerd users it’s just an appliance.
Office and corporate deployments are another thing, but OS end-of-life situations are not new to any of those guys.
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I know the feeling.
I slapped an SSD in my dad’s machine (Microcenter has their Inland house brand ones on sale for $18 right now for a 265 gig, FYI) and it took his boot time from five minutes to about seven seconds. I think it was a Jackson well spent.
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True. But he’s stuck in his ways. This was about a year or so ago. He’s still on the same Win7. I’m sure it has a virus or 12.