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 This will most likely result in many pcs being immediately outdated, and prone to viruses.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?
The problem is most people don’t have the technical ability or interest in switching to Linux. Here is the solution:
- We, as Linux users, must be better advocates for the platform to untechnical people.
- We should make ourselves available to help people make the transition.
The solution is donate them. Don’t send them to a landfill. Give poor students a free laptop with Linux installed, etc. There are probably thousands of uses for an old computer that are better than sending it to a landfill.
I will take all of them.
Make correct marketing,create tools which will user switch OS with one click,create tech support gor usual people with small prices
Maybe there should be a centralised GitXXX documentation „Windows to Linux” with everything from choosing a distro to troubleshooting and links to appropriate wikis. There are so many guides/blogs, each saying something different
There have been. Creating another one creates another one. Not that someone shouldn’t, but it will always be one among many.
True, but I’m sure there could be something like „awesome-xxx” that’s just… one main one. Maybe I should just try doing that myself with my limited knowledge, I can’t really code, but I always wanted to contribute somehow
Windows now has a How to Install Linux tutorial…which seems odd.
Linux doesn’t support my DAW or audio interface. I’m not throwing away thousands of pounds of software and equipment to use Linux.
I would happily give it a go if cubase / uad interfaces were supported.
For me, it’s the lack of support for the audio HW. Infuriating.
Your DAW and audio interface doesn’t support Linux.*
Yeah, it’s a bummer, but you are in a small portion of effected computer users, still others can benefit from longer support.
I’d also bet that a huge portion of those offices rely on at least some kind of proprietary software that doesn’t play nice/officially support Linux. MS Office, for example, or Autodesk’s stuff. When I saw what a headache it would be to get these working on Linux, I just shrugged and decided I’d keep my dual boot available for when I inevitably have need.
You’re turning up the cost dial for every additional workaround or adjustment you ask of people. Just to save what is fundamentally seen as $50-200 up front cost on a system for a new Windows 11 Pro license.
It is far too confusing what to use - even as someone who uses Linux on various servers, a media centre, WSL and used to run a Gentoo laptop I still don’t know which distro to use, let alone which of KDE/Gnome, X11/Wayland, init/systemd etc.
just try one in a vm?
also, most of the differences are not that big, any one of them will work fine for most people.
Exactly. I tried using Linux and I just don’t understand how to use it, and I consider myself fairly tech savvy. It would bring my productivity to a grinding halt if I had to switch to Linux.
Did you install gentoo or something? Zorin or Mint is just install and use it (just like Windows)
I would use Linux but I heard that it doesn’t work seamlessly with NVIDIA gaming hardware
…What does the writer think support end means? Microsoft bricks the PC as soon as the support period ends?
They’re going to just keep using Windows 10, security be damned. Probably a good number of users who weren’t keeping their PC up to date even when Microsoft was forcing updates on them.
I still see XP pcs in the wild sometimes
Yep. Came across a computer recently still running Windows 2000 on it. Fan sounded like a truck with a bad lifter tick 😂
Hell I’ve spotted some old systems still running a Telex exchange and Windows 3.1
Although I’m not surprised, it is interesting that the same big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft taking stances on being “environmentally conscious” while also ignoring forced obsoletion of old hardware. Your average office environment just needs basic email, document/excel editing software and a browser. Now to continue to do these base functions, they have to buy new PCs to do the same exact thing. And it’s not even faster anymore due to the bloat.
If tech wants to preach about the environment, they best start figuring out ways to keep computers out of the landfills.
Or make repurposing a thing.
But buying new things is good for the economy!
(/s in case it’s needed)Although I’m not surprised, it is interesting that the same big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft taking stances on being “environmentally conscious” while also ignoring forced obsoletion of old hardware.
That’s purely greenwashing marketing hype, with Apple being the worst offender. Now Microsoft seems to be following in their footsteps, although they’re still better in this regard than Apple.
I have a 12 year old CAD workstation that won’t run Windows 11, but will run Mint just fine.
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?
Many companies still use Windows XP, so…
Connected to the internet?
I hope, mostly no. It is needed to operate various old equipment.
Plenty of Windows embedded devices on the internet, running a flavor of Windows very similar to XP
They should face huge fines for this kind of waste. $25M USD for each computer arbitrarily obsolete.
My laptop is a cast off from a member of my staff who said it was too slow - a (dmidecode) - Product Name: HP 255 G6 Notebook PC. It now runs Arch (actually).
It previously slogged along with Win 10, Outlook n O365 n that. Now it does Libre Office, Evolution and much more. I use KDE, which isn’t known for a light touch on the resources. I also do light CAD and other stuff.
My office desktop is even older - it was a customer cast off, due to be skipped around six years ago. I did slap a SSD into it and I think I upped the RAM to 8GB. Its a (ssh, dmidecode): Product Name: Lenovo H330 and the BIOS is dated from 2012! I run two 23" screens off it and again, it runs Arch (actually) and KDE for pretty stuff. I run containers on it - at the moment a test Vikunja instance. I have apache, nginx and caddy fronting various experiments backed up with postgres and mariadb.
Both devices are “domain joined” and I auth to Exchange via Kerberos, via Samba winbind. File access (drive letters for the Windows mindset) is currently via autofs. I have a project on at a member of staff’s request to switch from Windows to Linux. I’m going to take my time and get it right. My current thinking is the Fedora KDE spin and this: Closed In Directory
I understand lots of the words in this post, but there are many that tell me I wouldn’t get Linux up and running on any of my laptops or PC.
If you have an old laptop or PC why not give it a go? You could start here: https://www.linuxmint.com/ Another option is to install something like Virtual Box on your existing machine and try out running it as a virtual machine or two. 2 CPUs, 4GB of RAM and 20GB of virty disc will work for any Linux distro as a VM to start off with. There’s also VMware Workstation - there’s a free version. Do discover the joy of snapshots/checkpoints which allow you to roll back failed changes!
25 years ago the options were rather more limited. I started off dual booting Windows and Linux but I don’t really recommend that these days, unless you want to run a gaming rig with both. Few people can afford two lots of top end hardware! I left Windows behind completely around 2004 or 5.
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I am not sure if posting this in a linux community raises the awareness to a relevant degree.
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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.
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win10 is still supported for 3 more years - if you pay for it.
I’m about to abandon/relegate my old Windows 10 PC to a backup, and replacing it with a raspberry pi 5 running Mint. I’m trying to run quieter with less power consumption.
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.
There’s one in Minneapolis too!
Yup! A friend took me by there a few months ago when I was visiting him.
I feel like most of these computers are underpowered and worthless to most people outside of a web browsing machine. Which is fine I guess if you don’t have a computer at all. But when some of us are rocking six or seven computers in our house, do we need anymore?
There are lots of people who could use them. Schools, libraries, poor people.
People aren’t going to throw the PCs out. They are going to continue using Windows 10 for years without security updates.
I still saw XP installs a decade after support had ended.
“a decade after support had ended” for Windows XP is not until April next year.
It depends on the definition of “support ended”. Like, there are various forms of extended support that you can pay for for versions of Windows, and some companies do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle
Support for the original release of Windows XP (without a service pack) ended on August 30, 2005.[4] Both Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a were retired on October 10, 2006,[4] and both Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 reached their end of support on July 13, 2010, about 24 months after the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 3.[4] The company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista.[114] However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs producing what it defined as “ultra low-cost personal computers”, particularly netbooks, until one year after the availability of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009. Analysts felt that the move was primarily intended to compete against Linux-based netbooks, although Microsoft’s Kevin Hutz stated that the decision was due to apparent market demand for low-end computers with Windows.[115]
So for those, we’re all definitely a decade past the end of normal support. However, they have their extended support packages that can be purchased, and we aren’t a decade past the end of those…but most users probably aren’t actually getting those:
On April 14, 2009, Windows XP exited mainstream support and entered the extended support phase; Microsoft continued to provide security updates every month for Windows XP, however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes were no longer being offered. Extended support ended on April 8, 2014, over 12 years after the release of Windows XP; normally Microsoft products have a support life cycle of only 10 years.[118] Beyond the final security updates released on April 8, no more security patches or support information are provided for XP free-of-charge; “critical patches” will still be created, and made available only to customers subscribing to a paid “Custom Support” plan.[119] As it is a Windows component, all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows XP also became unsupported.[120]
In January 2014, it was estimated that more than 95% of the 3 million automated teller machines in the world were still running Windows XP (which largely replaced IBM’s OS/2 as the predominant operating system on ATMs); ATMs have an average lifecycle of between seven and ten years, but some have had lifecycles as long as 15. Plans were being made by several ATM vendors and their customers to migrate to Windows 7-based systems over the course of 2014, while vendors have also considered the possibility of using Linux-based platforms in the future to give them more flexibility for support lifecycles, and the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) has since endorsed Windows 10 as a further replacement.[121] However, ATMs typically run the embedded variant of Windows XP, which was supported through January 2016.[122] As of May 2017, around 60% of the 220,000 ATMs in India still run Windows XP.[123]
Furthermore, at least 49% of all computers in China still ran XP at the beginning of 2014. These holdouts were influenced by several factors; prices of genuine copies of later versions of Windows in the country are high, while Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences warned that Windows 8 could allegedly expose users to surveillance by the United States government,[124] and the Chinese government banned the purchase of Windows 8 products for government use in May 2014 in protest of Microsoft’s inability to provide “guaranteed” support.[125] The government also had concerns that the impending end of support could affect their anti-piracy initiatives with Microsoft, as users would simply pirate newer versions rather than purchasing them legally. As such, government officials formally requested that Microsoft extend the support period for XP for these reasons. While Microsoft did not comply with their requests, a number of major Chinese software developers, such as Lenovo, Kingsoft and Tencent, will provide free support and resources for Chinese users migrating from XP.[126] Several governments, in particular those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, elected to negotiate “Custom Support” plans with Microsoft for their continued, internal use of Windows XP; the British government’s deal lasted for a year, and also covered support for Office 2003 (which reached end-of-life the same day) and cost £5.5 million.[127]
Windows 10 IoT LTSC version will be receiving security patches until 2032 its what all my work VMS are based on right now.
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.
