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 This will most likely result in many pcs being immediately outdated, and prone to viruses.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?
There is a reason Microsoft demands 8th gen cpu:
Older cpus are susceptible for spectre and meltdown side channel attacks. There are many more similar flaws, like ZombieLoad.
Some of these attacks can be mitigated but with a huge performance penalty.
Here is a German blog post with even more reasons: carolapantenburg.wordpress.com/2021/08/03/windows-11-und-die-8-generation/
A ton of people can barely open a PDF and this sub thinks those people can change to a completely different operating system.
Honestly Linux mint can be more user friendly. The problem is that no one else knows how to help people using it
Because the hardware is being made obsolete for a reason. They are inefficient compared to modern hardware, consume way too much power and there are cheaper and more powerful options available.
A modern ARM-based computer like the Raspberry Pi 5 can outperform most computers and laptops running Windows 10 and have a smaller environmental footprint.
The problem is that the obsolete hardware is not cost effective to decommission and recycle. They have not been designed for an environmentally conscious world.
My 4th generation Intel processor is still chugging along in my gaming PC. I’ve had it in there for almost 10 years and it’s still fine for new games. I also edit videos on it. It’s absolutely overpowered for most people today and it would still be fine for most people’s uses in 10 years from now.
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?
My 4th generation Intel processor is still chugging along in my gaming PC. I’ve had it in there for almost 10 years and it’s still fine for new games. I also edit videos on it. It’s absolutely overpowered for most people today and it would still be fine for most people’s uses in 10 years from now.
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
