Analysts have warned Windows 10 end of life plans could spark a global torrent of e-waste, with millions of devices expected to be scrapped in the coming years. 

Research from Canalys shows that up to 240 million PCs globally could be terminated as a result of the shift over to Windows 11, raising critical questions about device refreshes and the responsibility of vendors to extend life cycles.

  • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    If only you could put linux on them so they get security updates and give those to poor kids. Shame that is not possible. /s

    • mayooooo@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      It’s not possible. I need software that runs only on windows, so as much as I’d like to I can never switch. The only thing I can do is maybe do a vm passthrough thing - except I don’t want to spend a couple of grand on a new pc. People have jobs, real jobs, we have to work instead of fucking around distro hopping. A whole bunch of people could possibly switch to linux, but it’s still such a major pain in the ass that nobody will do it unless they are forced into it. Expect hacked win 11 installs

      • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        The “give those to poor kids” part was such a foreign concept you failed to even acknowledge the words existence. wow.

          • mateomaui@reddthat.com
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            9 months ago

            He’s commenting on how you missed the entire point of his comment regarding how older systems can have another OS put on it and given to an underprivileged person, specifically a kid. If you’re an exceptional case who has to find a way to use old equipment with Windows, fine, there are already ways to do that, but if you actually don’t understand his original comment or his reply in context of his original comment, then you’re pretty stupid.

      • slowbyrne@beehaw.org
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        9 months ago

        While I agree with you that some software isn’t capable of running on Linux (even through wine), there is another aspect that’s important to remember. Want and choice. The software that doesnt run on Linux is developed only for Windows because of market share. If more people used Linux, and more importantly, demanded Linux support, more software would support it. I WANT to use Linux instead of windows, so in order for that to become a reality, I push companies to support it and I talk to people and encourage trying Linux out. Can everyone make the switch? No, but some can; and the more that do the more Linux will be supported.

        Your voice and opinion and choice matters. Don’t let a big corporation steal that from you. Even if you want to use Windows, you should still have the choice.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        So,

        1. you’re called an exception, not a rule. Just because YOU need windows doesn’t mean literally no one would have have use for ewaste revived through Linux.

        2. I run programs made exclusively for windows on Linux using wine daily. And

        3. maybe you like to fuck around distro hopping when you use Linux, the rest of us just fucking use our computers like a normal person. (See, I can be condescending too).

        • mayooooo@beehaw.org
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          9 months ago

          I’m called the vast majority. I can’t use my software on wine because it’s not supported by my vendors. It’s nice that you use things, but try working in architecture, civil engineering and construction and let me know how that works for you.

          Let me be even more condescending - I use things I need to do my work. I don’t jerk off to linux or windows. If there was an option to move to mac I would do it. That’s using a thing like normal person, you use thing get money

          • SplicedBrainwrap@beehaw.org
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            9 months ago

            I disagree, the vast majority just need a browser, your use case may be quite common, but definitely not the majority.

            • mayooooo@beehaw.org
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              9 months ago

              I guess most of the world is stuck jerking off to oss instead of working whatever their professions are. Anyway, we get windows 10 support until 2028 I guess? So nobody cares about all of this shit anyway. Oh, and for the dudes with the idea of sending western used crap to poor kids… wow

  • Norgur@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Since all the.“but you can disable this”, “just switch to Linux that” posts are already going strong, I’d like to remind everyone that many, many of those devices will be from businesses and are on some sort of leasing agreement. Since.the business needs to safeguard itself against IT fault related costs, they will not circumvent TPM, not because there would be anything wrong with doing that, but because they do not want to provide a target for insurers and lawsuits when they use their PCs in “an unsupported configuration”. Businesses see their PCs very differently than private ppl do and “just switch to Linux” will be so much more expensive that they will not do that. They’ll just get delivered new stuff from their leasing partner and that’ll be that.

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      9 months ago

      In all honesty. Most business laptops will have recent TPM anyway. Simply because if you give employees laptops you damn well want bitlocker on them. Where I work they’re changed every 2 years anyway. People lose laptops. It’s just a fact of life and you want some protection for the data on there.

      Desktops, not so sure. For home users, there are of course very simple tools to make customised Win 11 boot USBs removing the fake requirements. But I’d say that the majority of users still couldn’t install an operating system at all. So if windows cannot upgrade itself, they’ll sit on unsupported win 10 or have to buy a new one.

      If you can install windows, you can install the customised one I’d wager. The skill level is about the same.

  • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Linux can breathe life into older laptops (if the HW is supported). It’s not for everyone (and downright infuriating in some ways) but it it does work very well for many things.

      • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        FWIW, I used it as a daily driver for many years. And that was back in the days when things weren’t as easy.

        Unfortunately, to run the stuff I need to run, I’m pretty much stuck with Windows and WSL. (But with Linux on my old laptop.)

        I’m probably not the audience that needs convincing, though.

        • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          So, “give those to poor kids”, and use your proprietary software in the OS you are allowed to use. Not seeing the issue.

          • Perfide@reddthat.com
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            9 months ago

            use your proprietary software in the OS you are allowed to use. Not seeing the issue.

            The OS they are able to use is Windows 10. They likely don’t meet the TPM requirements to update to Windows 11(as if you’d wanna use it anyways); so when W10 goes EoL, they will be SoL(shit out of luck) on getting future security patches. Which is y’know, bad, especially on the machine you do actual work on.

          • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Not sure I follow (especially wrt poor kids?) - maybe I’m just missing the reference. I applaud using Linux on old stuff to breath life into it. But I suspect mass adoption would be harder than one might think. Easy to convince tech savvy folk to dive in and wrangle with it (for its numerous advantages and disadvantages), but the majority of folks won’t (they’d sooner move to Apple - with even more waste, proprietary bs, and cost).

            Not saying this should be the case, merely that it is the case. (The more adoption, the better chance of better support from developers/HW manus, etc. There’s just a leap that seems very hard to make. Wish I knew how to bridge it, but the obstacles seem less of a technical thing than a social/psychological thing)

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    Someone should open a business taking free perfectly good laptops people were going to throw out, putting Linux on them, and reselling them.

    Goodwill could do this with anything they get donated.

    • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      I’ve seen this done. Store lasted for a bout a year, which is longer than I would have expected given the obsolete e-waste they were selling for extortionate prices. This was only a few years ago, but most of the laptops they were offering still had 4:3 displays and disc drives, that’s how ancient they were. Hell, one of them had a floppy drive.

      • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 months ago

        That’s wild. There’s a place here in Melbourne that sells refurbished Dell Optiplex’s. They’re ~8yrs old and still perfectly functional machines. For $100 you can get a full setup with a 16:9 monitor, keyboard and mouse. If you’re on unemployment they’ll sell it to you for $50 so you can look for work online.

  • BoastfulDaedra@lemmynsfw.com
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    9 months ago

    Linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux. linux.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    Why would 240 million devices be scrapped? Just install Windows 11 or Linux on them. If you have a PC built in the last 6 years, you can probably run an OEM version of 11 if your settings in 10 is saying you don’t qualify.

    This post just highlights just how woefully technologically unsavvy the average person is.

    • BoastfulDaedra@lemmynsfw.com
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      9 months ago

      Windows 11 actually won’t run on all of them due to inconsiderate and arbitrary system requirements… but otherwise yes.

      • YMS@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        Windows 11 officially requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0, but can easily be run with just TPM 1.2, and with some effort even without TPM. All the other system requirement increases (like single to dual core, 2 to 4 GB RAM, etc.) don’t really play a role for any recently built PC anyway.

    • Perfide@reddthat.com
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      9 months ago

      In the case of business’s, liability reasons, real and imagined, mostly prevent just “switching” OS’s freely.

      In the case of home users, think of how many people you know that have a windows computer. Now how many of those people can you confidently say could install ANY OS, let alone handle setting up Linux or bypassing TPM requirements for W11?

      Personally, out of the hundreds of people I know with a windows computer, I can count on my fingers how many I’m confident in being able to install an OS. Most people are really not tech savvy. They will just ride it out with no security patches until it becomes Jenn’s laptop from the IT Crowd, and then they’ll chuck it in the garbage.

    • douglasg14b@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      I have a PC I built a year and a half ago and apparently it “doesn’t meet the requirements” for windows 11…

      Ryzen 5 5600x and a 3060 TI.

      • tuhriel@infosec.pub
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        9 months ago

        That sounds like a solvable issue for me. The upgrade health check tells you exactly what prevents you from upgrading.

        My system gets flagged as not applicable as wellndue to secire boot not being active. I could resolve it by enabling it, but since I still have an old MBT Id need to switch that aswell. Which I procastinate, as I won’t get nagged to upgrade to win11

        I never completely reset everything in the last few years, although I upgraded some components and did some Windows reset. The MBR never was part of it…

    • Thevenin@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      Windows 11 needs Secure Boot and/or TPM workarounds, and while Linux is better than it used to be, but it still hates peripherals. Only 5% of Americans work in the tech industry. Fry cooks and forklift operators often lack the education needed to find these workarounds, and are too busy and tired making ends meet to seek out that education.

      In the modern corporate environment, most companies would rather replace their machines wholesale than risk unplanned downtime due to unforeseen glitches. They apply the principles of preventative maintenance to IT.

      I like Linux (Mint is good stuff), and I believe in what it stands for. But the human desire for simplicity, reliability, and familiarity should never be construed as a lack of virtue.

    • ares35@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      it was a false/inaccurate quote, afaik, but my thinking after hearing it was…

      yea, last one we’ll buy, everything after will be a subscription.

      might be ‘postponed’ a few versions (my guess is whatever’s after 12), but i’m certain that’s still microsoft’s end goal: subscriptions and only subscriptions.

      • Aatube@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        At the 2015 Ignite conference, Microsoft employee Jerry Nixon stated that Windows 10 would be the “last version of Windows”, a statement reflecting the company’s intent to apply the software as a service business model to Windows, with new versions and updates to be released over an indefinite period

        Doesn’t seem like a false quote

        • YMS@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          But incorrectly quoted as “Microsoft promised…”. It was one low-tier Microsoft employee who said it once, in a side note of a conference talk that was not about the future of Windows.

          • Aatube@kbin.social
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            9 months ago

            He is a Senior Software Development Engineer and was a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft, the latter of which apparently translates to press person. So not low-tier but probably side note

            • YMS@kbin.social
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              9 months ago

              A developer evangelist is not a press person, but a developer that gives talks to other developers. I didn’t find any specific numbers, but Microsoft probably has hundreds of them. And anyway you wouldn’t expect that kind of announcement to be made by anyone who isn’t like C-level, in a presentation made specifically for that fact, accompanied by a big marketing campaign, and so on.

              • Aatube@kbin.social
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                9 months ago

                A lot of countries also have hundreds of press people, and being the last version they’ll release doesn’t sound like a very marketable thing or something you should market, plus the media already spread the evangel by storm