[Hardware] Linux or Landfill? End of Windows 10 Leaves PC Charities with Tough Choice

[King_of_dark]

Unless Microsoft changes its mind at the last minute, Windows 10 will stop receiving free security updates this coming October. For those who can upgrade to Windows 11, the solution is obvious: Run the new OS even if you don’t like it. But there are hundreds of millions – by one estimate 240 million – PCs that don’t meet Microsoft’s stringent Windows 11 hardware requirements.

If you’re a consumer or a business, Microsoft and the PC industry would very much like you to toss these systems in the trash and buy new computers to take their place. But forgotten in this capitalist crush are all the charities that refurbish older computers and give them to people who can’t afford to purchase one.

These non-profits are sitting on a plethora of still-working computers that can’t run Microsoft’s latest OS. Do they give clients a soon-to-be-insecure Windows 10 computer, send older computers to an ewaste recycler, toss them in the trash or try to install some form of Linux?

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And Windows 11-ineligible PCs can be pretty recent and powerful. Microsoft’s list of system requirements for Windows 11 seem basic at first glance. You need a 1-GHz or faster CPU with at least two cores, you need 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, Secure Boot capability and TPM 2.0 compatibility.

However, Microsoft’s supported Intel CPU list for Windows 11 only goes back as far as 8th Gen chips (Coffee Lake), which first came out in 2017, and its AMD CPU list only incorporates Ryzen 2000 series (from 2018) and above. That means computers which came out in 2017, 2018 or maybe even 2019 (with a last-gen chip for the time) are ineligible. They could have 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD and still not make the cut.

Some of these ineligible computers will continue to run old Windows, others will be loaded with a different OS entirely. Some will end up in ewaste recycling where most of the parts can be reclaimed. However, a good chunk will end up in landfills. According to one estimate, only 14 to 40 percent of U.S. ewaste gets recycled at all.

My 12 year old son and I recently joined a local computer refurbishment charity where we live on Long Island. The folks who run our organization are still installing Windows 10 on non-Windows 11-eligible computers because they don’t want to give our clients an unfamiliar user experience.

Link: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/linux-or-landfill-end-of-windows-10-leaves-pc-charities-with-tough-choice