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.

  • A lot of Congolese children died in humiliating and painful ways for that e-waste. Now many more will suffer and die. The good news is that Microsoft executives are probably getting a great bonus out of it for their stellar leadership and business acumen.

  • 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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

          • 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.

          • 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)

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • Free Geek here in Portland OR used to do this. Might still be doing it too, but I haven’t been back there since 2018 so I’m not 100% sure.

      But yeah, the last I was there, you could walk in and just buy a refurbished laptop or desktop with Linux on it. They would even give guidance on what people needed if they weren’t tech-savvy.

  • 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.

      • 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   ( @Perfide@reddthat.com ) 
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      11 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.

      • 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…

      • And this is why I refuse to touch anything but Windows Pro, stable channel.

        Yes, it costs extra, and it comes with some ads, and I don’t get the “honor” of beta testing the latest bells and whistles for a month or two, and laptop vendors still put their crapware on it… but once I disable all the nasty stuff, it stays disabled.

    • 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.

    •  Quokka   ( @Marsupial@quokk.au ) 
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      1111 months ago

      What?

      Minimum system requirements for installing Windows 11 on a PC mean users must have a processor of at least 1 GHz or faster along with a minimum of 4GB RAM. Storage requirements are also set to a minimum of 64G

      Like you can’t exactly blame MS for people still using old arse components.

      Likewise if people wanted they could keep using windows 10 or switch to a Linux distro to keep the machines running.

      • I have a old gaming laptop that is not supported.

        Intel i7-7820HK, 4cores 8 threads 2.9Ghz.

        Released in 2017.

        That’s not old-arse as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t see the need for an upgrade. I’m going to install Linux on this PC because I have the know-how and desire to check out how electron fares. But I can see how that is not an option for everyone.

        • I’ll be forced to switch to linux when 10 reaches end of life, but I’m genuinely not looking forward to it. I’ve tried it before and given up after hours of hair pulling. Not linux’s fault necessarily. Often driver issues.

          That’s the thing a lot of fanboys forget. They often install linux on hardware they handpicked to be compatible on a pc they assembled themselves. Most casual users are upgrading an existing non-self assembled system, which may or may not be compatible, and contain parts that don’t have good driver support. Eg. a cheap realtek card that was never sold to consumers directly, meaning it would only be installed in windows systems.

          Honestly, I may just not bother. Go on ebay, buy something newer. Shame though. System runs fine. Happily runs Cyberpunk and stuff like that. TBF because I’m a cheap bastard, I only have 500 euros invested in the thing. Bought it at aldi when it was discounted. Upgraded it with second hand ebay parts. LOL.

          •  pbjamm   ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) 
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            211 months ago

            Drivers for new/cutting edge hardware will often lag behind for linux. Installing on hardware that is a few years old will generally be a breeze if you choose one of the big name distros. I personally use Linux Mint for the “it just works” ease.

            • Yeah. In my case linux Mint just didn’t.

              Older hardware, lack of (good) drivers, mini-pc so not feasible to install a new network card, I tried, I really did. But I eventually gave up.

              Great if it works, but sometimes you’re just SOL.

      • What is “old arse” to you might be blazing fast and great for someone else (potentially in a less fortunate area of this world), and besides that, no matter your or my sensobilities, if it works, it works and should be kept that way as long as it has a purpose and the hardware permits it.

      • I think it’s mainly businesses and not users who will keep using it without support.

        As for the other I switched to Linux, but I can’t seem to keep it running. I currently have no computer until I get another distro onto a bootable USB. Fortunately my /home partition seems fine but my root partition broke. It would start in recovery mode but not otherwise. Tried fixing it and now it’s broke worse.

        I’m a very technical person. Expecting people to move to Linux because they don’t want or have TPM2.0 is not going to work.

        • I’m a moderately technical person and every single time I’ve tried Linux in the past 20+ years it went like this: Huh, this isn’t so bad, I might use it more of- oh wait, never mind, a cryptic error message just appeared, because I had the audacity to plug some device in or download some generic application so I had to use the terminal again for some incredibly mundane thing and it only worked after I tried three different approaches from forum posts so old I needed to use the Wayback Machine to be able to read the guides they linked to. Those guides naturally omitted vital details that I only noticed, because I’ve been trying to use Linux for over 20 years and actually read a book or two on this mess. It doesn’t matter which distro, which device, which use case, it’s always like this.

          The very best “Linux for the masses” I’ve used so far (outside of Android) is SteamOS on the Steam Deck, but even it falls apart the moment you venture outside of the user-friendly walled garden that is the Steam application.

          • So issues only when doing something other than browse the web and read email, like most folks only ever do? And a walled garden is exactly what most folks actually need since they won’t avoid clicking everything they see. So like on mobile, most folks want the curated don’t have to worry about it. That was the whole selling point of Apple all these years.

            • Sure, but I’ve experienced hiccups that would never occur in Windows with things as mundane as hooking up a printer, which is well within the realm of what a normal person is using their computer for.

              Also, you can fault Apple for many things, but a lack of polish and a poor user experience aren’t among them. I’ve used Apple devices five times in the last ten years and each time I was, with no prior knowledge nor the need to look anything up, able to help people with their issues and quickly. Linux is the polar opposite of that.

                • Not the person you were talking to, but I used my computer for browsing, development and a few steam games. I’m not trying to do rocket science. You know what seemed to fuck up my system? The system/software updater. Maybe the graphics drivers, but maybe not. That’s pretty basic bitch level Linux.

                  That said, Chromebooks are fine for the demographic you are taking about, and those are Linux.

      • the basic requirements (compute power, ram, storage) to install windows hasn’t really changed at all since like vista or 7. dual core and 4gb ram were common even back at vista’s launch (and earlier, even. many late xp systems shipped with those specs).

        due to bloat these older systems (like dual core windsor am2/dual core wolfdale lga775) fall flat with 10; but swap their original mechanical hdd for sata ssd and feed 'em at least 4gb ram and they run 10 as well as 7 or 8.

    • 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.

      • 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

        • 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.

          • 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

            • 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.

              • 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

  • I don’t think it’s fair to jump on Microsoft for this one. Windows 10 has been out for almost 10 years. Apple gives less support for systems than 10 years, they are closer to 8, which is still a while.

    If you bought a PC in 2018 or later it should support tpm in the CPU, if it doesn’t it’s on Dell or HP or whomever made the system. If you built a pc you can buy a TPM for most motherboards.

    Microsoft said you can pay for updates for windows 10 if you want. If your parents core i5-2700 with 4gb of ram from 2012 will no longer get free updates… that seems fair… or go to Linux, but we know most people won’t. Honestly it would be a great time for a “convert to chromeOS installer”

    • I don’t think it’s fair to jump on Microsoft for this one. Windows 10 has been out for almost 10 years. Apple gives less support for systems than 10 years, they are closer to 8, which is still a while.

      it is absolutely fair to blame Microsoft, because they promised their customers, device manufacturers, and even businesses that Windows 10 was going to be their last OS, and flipped that switch out of nowhere when they realized they could be making more money.

      Windows 12 supposedly going to be subscription based I feel like is a great example.

    • I think that it’s absolutely fair to jump on Microsoft for this.

      There is nothing wrong with this hardware. RAM and CPU clock speed plateaued a long time ago. The overwhelming majority of these systems being thrown away would run Linux flawlessly.

      Microsoft has never given a damn about security before. These new security “features” do more to lock people in than they do to keep them safe.

      • This. It is so sad that these companies get to set arbitrary expiration dates on perfectly good hardware for “security” features nobody asked for. They keep getting away with planned obsolesence and monopolistic moves, by fearmongering about security. Even if the “solutions” does nothing to secure the users. The only thing they care about securing is their profit.

    •  kowcop   ( @kowcop@aussie.zone ) 
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      I think the point of contention is that Windows 10 works fine, there is no need to move to Windows 11 except that Microsoft has found new ways to monetise the OS through its data, so they are making Windows 10 end of life