And even if you don’t want to… Find someone who does! Donate that laptop to someone. Find a LUG or Mutual Aid group or a friendly local anarchist :)
'End of 10' to Windows 10 Users: The Environment Wants You to Use Linux
Submitted 1 day ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://fossforce.com/2025/05/end-of-10-to-windows-10-users-the-environment-wants-you-to-use-linux/
Comments
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Wait so someone might wasnt the top of the line Macbook Pro from 12 years ago that someone gave me?
codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
A pretty large amount of people don’t own a PC at all, though I’m finding it surprisingly hard to get a good number on it. Just anecdotally, most people I know who aren’t IT professionals have either no PC or 1 old laptop, often from college or on loan from work. Most folks use their phones for everything. People I know with kids have school issued Chromebooks, which barely counts.
As to exact numbers, I’m curious what others can find. I turned up between 74% and 94% of adults in the US owned a PC, which seems insanely high to me. But on the same page claiming that 89% of all households have a PC, I also saw
In the United States, the number of households with computers is projected to surge from 4.7 million to 120.45 million between 2024 and 2029, indicating a substantial increase in computer ownership.
Which… That’s bonkers. They expect the number of PCs (in homes) to go up by a factor of 30 in just 5 years, presumably that guess was before tariffs as well. I’m wondering if these household and per capita numbers somehow include corporate spending because businesses and schools do purchase literal tons of computers.
wanderingmagus@lemm.ee 4 hours ago
Unironically yes. There’s someone out there who is on the other side of the digital divide that would absolutely want any kind of access to what you currently take for granted.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 19 hours ago
Just an FYI - you don’t have to throw away computers that can’t upgrade past Windows 10. They will keep working.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
Long story short, my Dad just got a new computer. (His old was was actually really old, but he could have used Linux.)
Anyway, I told him not to throw out the old computer and that I would take it. He was baffled that I would want it or could even do anything with it.
I am going to set it up as a backup server in the house for my parents and myself as it will be a nice way to have an offsite backup for free.
shalafi@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
So many use cases! I’m giving an old NUC to a kid at work who’s learning Linux. Jesus, the kid bought a copy of Linux from “the best/most-famous hacker in the world!”. We had a come-to-Jesus talk about that horseshit.
Taleya@aussie.zone 14 hours ago
I recently virtualised an XP machine that had been running since me immemorial, and will continue to (virtually) do so.
bollybing@lemmynsfw.com 11 hours ago
But you don’t want to do anything that requires security on them like shopping, email, or anything that requires you to log into to an account that you dont want stolen.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 8 minutes ago
Not true. As long as you keep updating your browsers etc you’re going to be generally ok.
DosDude@retrolemmy.com 8 hours ago
You can, if you install Linux
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Im hearing proton is good for games?
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 47 minutes ago
Proton is so good that even when a game has a native Linux version, I often opt for the Proton version (so my games are all in one place). I was even able to install mods for games like Baldur’s Gate 3 (albeit with a bit of tinkering)
Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 31 minutes ago
When I installed the Linux version of “7 days to die” the graphics were washed out and bad. I switched to the Linux version with proton and it fixed the game.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
It is outstanding
utopiah@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Been playing for years on a nearly daily basis, from Baldur’s Gate 3 to Elden Ring to now Clair Obscur… to VR with e.g. Half-life : Alyx. That’s on my desktop and often also on my Steam Deck. So… yes, Proton is very VERY good for games!
binom@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
i second @FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
it’s fantastic for like 85% of all games, and good to acceptable for like 10%. the only big issue is games with kernel level anti cheats, which is a big problem for many gamers, mainly AAA and fps lovers.NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
Games with kernal anti-cheat should be treated with precisely the level of respect they show to us.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 12 hours ago
Ahh what’s what the previous person meant by competitive games.
FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee 13 hours ago
It’s fantastic. Unless you’re playing a specific few multiplayer competitive games, it’s just like windows (sometimes even better in terms of performance - and sometimes better in terms of retro compatibility)
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Nice! So long as i can still play with by siblings on some private games ill be ok.
Gibibit@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Seems like a good website to direct people to via posters in your local community center or church. Or you can call a repair club in your area to ask if they want to be listed. Those are likely to have some Linux enthousiast members and already have a location.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Part of me still does not think Microsoft is going to go through with it. There are too many Windows 10 PCs that will just become infected.
Part of me thinks the government will intervene as I think it could genuinely be a security issue to have so many unsecured devices in the wild.
But, another part of me has no hope for the future.
Sooo… I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Sadly people said the same for xp and 7 soo…
shalafi@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
No lie. We play this game every 7 years or so. I was training on a Win10 machine at work yesterday. Think they’re updating that? Nah. Hell, it probably could take an 11 upgrade and they haven’t bothered. Why? It’s a locked down machine. And if IT don’t care, home users certainly won’t.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
At least there was an upgrade path from them.
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I’m doing my part!
I’ve loaded Mint on my prime system and a laptop, another laptop with Fedora, Manjaro on another main system I test with and EndeavorOS on all my media systems. I’ve also loaded about 8-10 other distros on Proxmox to play/test with.
Where I had doubts on whether I needed anything off of the old MS system, I P2V’ed the OS and spool it up on Proxmox if needed to review any history within the OS/browser.
I still have a couple of W10 VMs lingering and a Windows server. I’ll “upgrade” the workstation VMs to W11 (and shut them down) since I have the license and I can see sometimes having to use Windows for whatever dumb reasons. I’ll leave the Windows server for now to maintain the domain as that allows me to block telemetry with GPOs. I may tire of that at some point though as MS will further wane away on my network.
My summer task is to convert all my 'Arrr software over to Linux versions. Still on W10 there. Wasn’t sure which distro to go to for that…
Velypso@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Windows 10 users encountering this post: this sounds like a lot of work. I’ll just stick to windows 11.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Disabling all the dumb shit and ads on win11 is less work than switching to linux and learning to use it.
FapFlop@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Re: Arr software, spin up an Ubuntu VM and install Docker. Spin up portainer and then use that to spin up all thr arrs. Ezpz
ripcord@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
KDE Neon here. I really really like it.
nothingcorporate@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Been on Linux full time for al about 2 months now… Proton and Bazzite have made the transition soooo much easier as gaming is what was always holding me back.
KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 17 hours ago
Yea, gaming has come a long long way thanks to Valve. I was also holding back due to this (and not wanting to spend too much of my spare time learning a new OS and commands etc) but I just installed Zorin (chosen for minimal effort) and hardly had to do anything. I struggled a bit to get Proton to work at first but now my entire Steam library works perfectly and I’m so much happier with it than I ever was using Windows. Gonna be getting my friends and some family on it as well!
kemnz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
I switched in January because my PC doesn’t support TPM 2.0 (gen 1 ryzen) after having not tried Linux since like 2011 gaming honestly kind of blew my mind, basically as “plug and play “ as windows.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
I’m so happy that I went intel instead of gen1 ryzen that generation.
I still use it for work and would be so pissed if I needed to buy a new computer just to use Windows 11.
I genuinly need windows or mac for my work. I use linux on my personal laptop.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I upgraded my Win 10 laptop to IoT Enterprise LTSC recently which is stupidly easy and grants you support till 2032.
Aside from some weird app incompatibilities it’s been working fine.
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 12 hours ago
I don’t think that many people want to buy Windows Enterprise, which they typically want you to also buy a support contract for.
Unless you pirated it, but I don’t think telling people to “just run this pirate code” is that good of an idea.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Of course it’s up to you whether you want to use something that, according to Microsoft, you’re not supposed to use, but the only “pirate-code” I had to run was to activate it. The upgrade itself was pretty straightforward.
IMO it’s a better option than to buy a new computer to run Windows 11. I’m not including Linux because I specifically wanted to keep Windows on the Laptop to run apps that don’t work on Linux.
JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
I did an upgrade, instead of a clean install, to the same version. I just had to reinstall my graphics driver and everything works as before, I just went through another step to remove some programs and it’s been smooth sailing since.
Massgrave.dev provided what I needed. Was a breeze.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I did an in-place upgrade as well. I was surprised how easy it was; it’s just one Registry key and from there you can just do a normal upgrade.
Way easier than installing Windows 11, which wouldn’t even officially run on my ThinkPad T540p…
besselj@lemmy.ca 22 hours ago
Check out PostmarketOS for older machines/phones too. I got it working on an old Microsoft surface RT that would have been e-waste otherwise
DJDarren@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro running MX Linux. It’s no match for my M2 Air, but it’s still surprisingly useful.
Was up the council recycling centre the other day, looking at some of the dumped computers, wondering just how many of them could still be very useful.
Godric@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Whatever will I do without my deshittified emotional support laptop :'(