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 This will most likely result in many pcs being immediately outdated, and prone to viruses.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 average consumer isn’t going to toss out a good computer they bought if it can’t run Windows 11. They’re certainly not installing Linux. They’ll keep using Windows 10 for as long as they can. I’ve seen way too much of Windows XP still running on people’s computers, if it can still browse the web, access emails and look at Facebook they’re not spending money on a new one
I mean stopping Windows updates is really more a win than a loss half the time. They’ve forcefully installed so much of the shitware in Windows 10 updates that makes Windows 11 awful. It took me an hour to strip all the bullshit off of my partner’s Windows 10 that he left to auto-update.
…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.
Who the fuck throws out their computer when it’s still working???
A lot of businesses. I’ve stocked an entire network lab out of waste bins from buildings with tech companies in them. Laptops, monitors, network gear, cabling. I once scored a whole box of 100W USB-C chargers.
You could make a living reselling stuff online.
I’m sorry, 100W USB-C is throwaway stuff now? Wut?
That’s the MS business model in partnership with PC makers. It’s a juggernaut. They’ve operationalized it.
What if, sometime after Win 10 loses support a virus takes advantage of the lack of patches and propagates across all the machines with a simple message “This operating system is no longer supported, please click here to upgrade.” The button then runs a script to download and install a user friendly Linux distro. The world is then saved.
Chaotic good
My kind of hopes.
Microsoft: Arbitrarily increases the system requirements for Windows 11 even though it runs perfectly fine on older pcs just to get people to buy new computers
Also Microsoft: Why’s there so much waste??
If these were all stacked laptops, stacked on top of each other, they would form a stack 600 km above the Moon.
Ummm… what??
Assuming 3 cm thick laptop x 240 mil = 7,200 km. Moon is on average 380,000 km away. Even 30 cm thick laptops (lol) would only get you to 72,000 km.
They’re stacking on the longest dimension after opening up the laptop.
XD that would still only get you half way to the moon!
They said “600 km above the Moon”, so assuming that the laptops are 2.5mm thick, and stacked on the surface of the moon…
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.
We all know that won’t happen because most users don’t give a shit about things like conserving hardware or the resources that went into making them, and will just use this as an excuse to splurge on the latest shiny device.
Fuck the users
Herein lies the rub where the discourse online always fails. It’s easy to blame the rich, corporations, politicians, etc. but the end of the day they’re simply doing what the masses want. We are the problem.
Now that said, I understand the appeal of blaming a smaller segment of the population because it’s easier to shift blame and it’s easier to force change that way, but rest assured Apple stops making a new phone every year their brand dies unless everyone stops doing it. They’re doing it because we are conditioned to want it.
We are the underlying problem. All of us.
Edit - having my point proven is amazing.
Nah, that’s shit. We are not the problem. The people in this thread don’t seem to be the kind of people to go out and buy the latest device every 6 months. I keep my phones for years until either the performance or battery becomes nearly unusable for me. I install Linux on older hardware (and newer hardware) and buy new hardware when necessary, not every time it comes out.
You can blame the average person, sure, but saying all of us is just incorrect.
If you’re saying everyone is providing your point, I think you disproved your own point.
They’re doing it because we are conditioned to want it.
Conditioning a behavior is basic psych101. It’s a controlled external stimulus which illicits a desirable action from the subject. So a conditioned consumer is subject to external stimulie which illicits them to spend. I wouldn’t blame the subject here, I’d blame the one doing the conditioning.
Regardless of all that, you are right but so wrong. We are all to blame, but I mean corporations and us. Politicians and the oligarchs aren’t responsible for what you or I do. What they are responsible for is manipulating systems to benefit themselves over the interests of the general public.
Since politicians and the business elite wield so much influence that makes them more responsible than you or I who really can’t make a big difference on our own. You’re blaming the proletariat for being the proletariat, but we don’t choose whether or not we are. You can work as hard as you can your entire life and you’ll never amount to the level of power and influence Elon, Jeff, Mark, Bill, or Steve had/have.
fuck me harder ms yes daddy yes please mmmm thats good keep going harder harder HARDER YES
fr tho, that ‘smaller segment of the population’ owns the means of production/computation. so yes, I do blame them. and so should you and anyone with more that a couple folds in their brain.
important tldr summary: “Many Windows 10 computers do not meet the Windows 11 system requirements”
i pretty much dont give a fuck what companies do.
except its hella destructive/wastefull to the environment… and also will probably drive up the price of computers for everyone.Windows 7 or Linux would be fine, Windows 10 is hardly that bad
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.
I’ll install linux on my gaming rig when w10 support ends, I hate w11
Why not try it now?
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”
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.
Which distro did you use? I have a win 10 laptop and I might switch over to a Linux distro
I been using Nobara instead of Windows for about 4 months, so far haven’t had any major issues. Updater works and hasn’t broken anything yet, found installs Nvidia drivers without issue. Only issue I have is that the few times I stream on discord for friends it doesn’t capture audio.
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.
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.
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
