Ending support for Windows 10 could send 240 million computers to the landfill. Why not install Linux on them?

With support ending for Windows 10, the most popular desktop operating system in the world currently, possibly 240 million pcs may be sent to the landfill. This is mostly due to Windows 11’s exorbitant requirements. This will most likely result in many pcs being immediately outdated, and prone to viruses. GNU/Linux may be these computers’ only secure hope, what do you think?

Da_Boom,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Because the vast majority of people don’t have a reason to do it. They’ve never used Linux before - heck there are people who have never heard of it before.

The other thing is you and I, chances are can find a use for our old machines, have a place to store it, or know how valuable it currently is. Most other people aren’t aware of how parts or entire systems depreciates, don’t have a use for a second computer, and can’t afford the storage space to store a spare PC for a backup. They also don’t really have time to do a lot of research on the issue or just plain old don’t care.

So what do they do? Well there only remaining option is to throw it away, maybe theyll be a bit wise and take it to an electronics recycler, where you have to trust it won’t get thrown away anyway.

blazeknave,

Exactly. Used mine to learn Linux and proxmox. I’m also someone’s who would be here.

ULS, (edited )

They will be in the ditches alongside rural roads with the tires, couches, and washing machines.

Nature at work. In 1000 years the government will pay child slaves to mine them for the new microchip implants. Smoggy fields of children burning plastics off metal to feed the dreams of the rich and elite.

The same as it ever was, the same as it always will be.

…I don’t know why I wasted my time making this useless post. 😑

sevan,

My desktop and laptop are both eligible to upgrade, but I keep declining and will likely switch to linux when win10 support ends.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Why wait? It’s a process, so I would start asap

sevan,

I’ve thought about it, but right now everything works exactly the way I need it and the only complaint I have is the occasional pop-ups from MS trying to get me to upgrade to win11 or switch my browser. My main uses for my devices are games and I just started back to school, so MS Office is nice to have. So, it’s hard to justify putting in the effort to change things now, especially when I know how to use MS products very well, particularly modding games.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah. I feel ya. I still have windows on dual boot for certain things and it’s been a struggle at times but I gotta say I dread the times I need to boot windows! So much slower and annoying

Alph4d0g,

That’s the MS business model in partnership with PC makers. It’s a juggernaut. They’ve operationalized it.

Floshie,

TIL that MS can be either mean MicroSoft or MassiveShit and that they would still mean the same shit

elbarto777,

Did you learn that just today???

violetraven,
@violetraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

WinTel 2.0 🤢

ULS,

More computers for us poor folk!

Sine_Fine_Belli,

Same here

Why not give the poor some of our old and used computers?

Cannacheques,

Cheaper laptops and old computers for everyone could start with switching to Linux

Trincapinones,

I’ll install linux on my gaming rig when w10 support ends, I hate w11

ironeagl,

Why not try it now?

Trincapinones,

I did, discord was a mess (the systray icon not working and couldn’t stream audio), no parsec host support and other little things.

Yes, there are alternatives/workarounds but it’s too much of a hustle to play some games if the alternative is w10, I already know how to optimize it/solve common issues and for this specific case “it just works”

Sweetie,

Do you mind me asking which Distro you had used? I recently switched from w10 and haven’t had any issues with discord or audio.

whiskers,

Which distro did you use? I have a win 10 laptop and I might switch over to a Linux distro

Trincapinones,

I tried Linux Mint, then I switched to Nobara and I had issues with discord in both, the systray icon not showing green when I was speaking/muted and I was unable to screen share a program with sound (then I looked up and found it’s a discord problem not giving a shit about linux users).

Then the gaming part was pretty messy, specially when I tried to run pirate games or games like league of legends, I spent 2 days trying to make league of legends work with lutris (i don’t play that game anymore so now it shouldn’t be a problem)

The funny thing is that I have a linux server on which I self host a lot of services and I’ve been tinkering with it for +4 years now, I’m pretty used to Debian and Fedora in the terminal, but when it comes to desktop I get lost pretty easily.

By the way, which distro do you use?

CaptKoala,

The discord thing is improving (slowly), also partly it now recognizes Linux games launched from steam, but not proton ones. I haven’t tried lutris or anything yet, but I haven’t booted into windows for weeks now.

I’ve also become more comfortable with Linux in general so that’s likely helped too.

ironeagl,

I also have issues with Discord, they just don’t get the linux paradigm. Running it in a browser seems to work okay though (I use Firefox).

Jaysyn,
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

I have a 12 year old CAD workstation that won't run Windows 11, but will run Mint just fine.

Mio,

I think Microsoft should actually be forced to either extend support or give the user one option to be secured. With the later I mean pay for license or click here to automatically choose a Linux distro that the user will be migrated to. It could be Mint or one of MS own Linux distribution with OneDrive preinstalled and links to Office 365 online word. Even install Android could be one option.

This is better than getting all the devices on the landfill.

Remember that 99% don’t know what to do with their computer or are lazy. One easy fix should be available.

blazeknave,

This is why we need functioning representative government. Something this big needs regulation.

No entity can own a percentage of the global fucking economy and be less accountable than a member of the UN.

Mio,

Yes, many other products as well. Not sure why there are no regulations regarding e waste.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

MS own Linux distribution

The thought of this makes me feel a lot of emotions at once. I don’t think any are good… If MS made a version of Linux, I can’t even fathom how insanely badly they would fuck it up, nor can I imagine it ever happening. I cannot think of an analogy to illustrate this properly really. But yeah, hell freezing over seems like a starting point for describing the likelihood of it.

I have fantasized that MS will come to terms with how shit their core OS is and eventually make something Linux like, based on a lot of free stuff. But that feels 20 years off, and like an absolute fantasy still.

blazeknave,

I think with the current staff in the ranks at Microsoft and leadership opening the ecosystem for end user devices, they could build something sound. (Don’t sleep on the amount of our world infrastructure running on their OS’s. They are trusted for reliability.) A decade ago I had to reprimand by team for showing up to a mtg in Redmond with a stack of MacBooks and iPads. Now staff have iPhones.

The problem is the business looks for a buck in all the wrong parts of their massively horizontal set of goods. So their Linux will be bloated with cross selling adware.

NekkoDroid,
@NekkoDroid@programming.dev avatar

nor can I imagine it ever happening.

Chief, MS has multiple internal only Linux distros and publically they have CBL-Mariner and I think another that I forgot. They are mostly used with Azure. They really aren’t that much more different to what I know to any other (common) distro out there

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Fair enough, but I think anything consumer facing would be a whole different animal

Mio,

I don’t think they would do Linux. Better if they did a stripped down version of their OS that can run like Chrome OS. Secured with a web browser. Little maintenance as so much has been removed.

lhamil64,

I’m guessing it’d be cheaper for MS to just keep providing security updates for Win10 than to create a whole Linux distro…

Mio,

It probably is. But MS choose how they want to keep the control of the users. But just leaving them like this is just bad. I feel EU should force them to give a solution since the computer came with Windows so it is their responsibility.

One alternative is to give them Chrome OS, or they might prefer building their of version of it.

Today I see a computer as end of life when it is to slow to view webpages. Often like when it is to little RAM available or the CPU is really too slow. Then I think Microsoft could stop caring about it.

pingveno,

This isn’t a new thing. Free Geek has been refurbishing computers and installing Linux on them for over two decades now. It started in 2000 in Portland, Oregon and has since spawned affiliate locations elsewhere, including in Oslo.

UnpledgedCatnapTipper,

There’s one in Minneapolis too!

pingveno,

Yup! A friend took me by there a few months ago when I was visiting him.

SuperSpruce,

One of the 240 million would’ve possibly been my friend’s “old” gaming PC with a Ryzen 9 3900X, that he said could not upgrade to Windows 11. He sold it to me for cheap and I put KDE Neon on it. So far, it’s running smoothly except for the challenge of trying to automate mounting a RAID 1 set of drives.

7u5k3n,

I use “gnome-disk-utility” for mounting disks.

Heck if I can get a computer to mount a drive on login… but “disks” let’s me do that easily.

Granted that might be different for your setup. So ymmv

ShortN0te,
  1. I am not sure if posting this in a linux community raises the awareness to a relevant degree.
  2. I am not sure if i am scared by the fact that there will be potentially 240 million pcs still running windows 10 and are posing as potential bot net.
uphillbothways,
@uphillbothways@kbin.social avatar

Capitalism must feed. And, if we don't give them huge electronics landfills to search for scrap, what are our children and grandchildren going to do for work?

Crow,
@Crow@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve had windows 10 tell me I can’t upgrade to windows 11 because my SSD was formatted incorrectly even though it had always ran windows 10 fine. None of this was properly explained to me or how to fix it. By the time I finally got it working I didn’t even want windows 11.

ConstantPain,

That’s what I’m gonna do with my Windows 10 gaming machine. It’s been working just fine since I bought it in 2016.

LifeInMultipleChoice,

If the computer was purchased in 2016 the license key is likely tied to the motherboard from the factory, so unless you swap the board, the original key may pull on its own.

Valkyronix,

give endeavouros a try. ive been using it for games on my amd system and it runs like a dream

ConstantPain,

I’m Intel/Nvidia. I’ll give it a try anyway. See what fits my hardware best.

Rednax,

Or just circumvent the “requiments” that are so required that a few registry hacks disable them, allowing you upgrade to win11 via windows update.

Or if you want a fresh install, use rufus to create the install usb stick, and select the option to disable the tpm requirement.

ConstantPain,

I don’t have the windows key anymore. To do that I’ll have to reinstall the system instead of upgrading it.

Rednax,

“You can simply remove the appraiserres.dll file in the Windows 11 ISO file to make the Setup avoid these checks and install Windows 11 on any unsupported hardware too.” From the following article: nerdschalk.com/how-to-use-rufus-to-disable-tpm-an…

That sounds hard, but Rufus made this easy. Just select the right option. So just use Rufus to create the install usb: rufus.ie/en/#

This also allows local accounts, and disables all the tracking bullshit with a single click each.

Cannacheques,

Would be cool if Microsoft launched a new fangled cloud operating system, they’ve already got Bing AI, Onedrive, GitHub on the side and other infrastructure in place already.

Offering a Microsoft centered cloud computing operating system would allow them to dump or discard their other investments like GitHub, while holding both the money and infrastructure to competing against their old pals working with Linux and other GNU stuff.

The ultimate betrayal I tell ya hahaha 🤣

Nah just jokes, I would suck at writing or doing white collar crime but I would sure hype it up in an action novel alright

pivot_root,

BingOS was it’s name-o.

LeFantome,

I guess I should hold off on upstaging my systems. There are going to be a lot of deals.

Cannacheques,

Windows 7 or Linux would be fine, Windows 10 is hardly that bad

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Windows 7 is even older and already out of support for almost 4 years now. Why would you downgrade?

Only Linux makes sense in this case.

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