Multiple sites are reporting from Reuters that new digital restrictions management requirements in Vista11 will send an estimated 480 million kg of otherwise viable desktops and notebooks prematurely to the landfill as e-waste.
Multiple key barriers prevent Windows 10-compatible PCs from running Windows 10, including a need for a 64-bit processor listed by Microsoft as a 'supported CPU,' at least 4 GB of RAM, a minimum of 64GB storage, and UEFI firmware with Secure Boot capability instead of the older BIOS. Additionally, a crucial requirement is TPM version 2.0 for enhanced security, which supersedes the TPM 1.2 version supported by some Windows 10 devices. In addition, Windows 11 also demands a DirectX 12-compatible GPU with a WDDM 2.x driver, which leaves out many older iGPUs. Many systems are still running outdated CPUs and using BIOS instead of UEFI with no SecureBoot support.
Canalys believes that a staggering 240 million PCs do not comply with Windows 11's requirements and are set to be rendered obsolete by Windows 10's October 14, 2025 support deadline. While recycling remains a viable option for these systems, the lack of compatibility with the latest Windows iteration significantly devalues them, making refurbishment less feasible. Consequently, despite growing capabilities in the refurbishment sector, many of these devices are still destined for landfills. This situation highlights a critical challenge in managing and disposing of electronic waste, Canalys believes.
The effective lifespan of these devices could be preserved, and the waste reduced, by upgrading to more efficient, open software such as the GNU/Linux distro of your choice.
Via:
Tom's Hardware: Microsoft's draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025
NDTV: Microsoft Ending Windows 10 Support To Affect 240 Million Computers: Report
The Economic Times of India: Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 could send 240 million PCs to landfills: report
NeoWin: 240 million PCs could end up in landfills when Windows 10 support ends
Related Stories
The KDE community has an outreach campaign encouraging the use of the Plasma desktop by people with older, but usable, laptops. Vista10 support will come to an end and Vista11 has been designed not to run on many still viable models of computer due to several factors including Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) requirements centered around TPM-2.0. GNU/Linux can not only keep the old system working, it can improve its performance, ease of use, and general security. KDE Plasma can be part of that.
Even if you agree to this tech extortion now, in a few years time, they will do it again as they have done many times in the past.
But things don't have to be this way...
Upgrade the smart way! Keep the machine you've got and switch to Linux and Plasma.
Linux can give new life to your laptop. Combined with KDE's Plasma desktop, you get all the advantages of the safety, stability and hi tech of Linux, with all the features of a beautiful, modern and powerful graphic environment.
Their campaign page covers where and how beginners can get help, what the differences are, the benefits gained, and more.
[Editor's Comment: This is obviously a KDE/Plasma centric promotion - which doesn't mean that it is bad but there are lots of other options too. Which Linux OS and desktop would you recommend for someone wanting to make the move from Windows to Linux? Which are the best for a beginner, and which desktops provide the most intuitive interface for someone who has never sat down in front of a Linux computer before?--JR]
Previously:
(2025) Microsoft is Digging its Own Grave With Windows 11, and It Has to Stop
(2023) The Wintel Duopoly Plans to Send 240 Million PCs to the Landfill
(2023) Two Security Flaws in the TPM 2.0 Specs Put Cryptographic Keys at Risk
(2022) Report Claims Almost Half of Systems are Ineligible for Windows 11 Upgrades
(2021) Windows 11 Will Leave Millions of PCs Behind, and Microsoft is Struggling to Explain Why
(2019) Microsoft's Ongoing Tactics Against Competitors Explained, Based on its Own Documents
(2016) Windows 10 Anniversary Update to Require TPM 2.0 Module
For most people, Windows 10 will stop receiving critical security updates on October 14, 2025, roughly a decade after its initial release. For people using computers that can't upgrade to Windows 11 or organizations with dozens or hundreds of PCs to manage, Microsoft is making another three years of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) available, but only if you can pay for them. And the company is ready to start talking about pricing.
In a blog post published earlier this week, Microsoft's Jason Leznek writes that the first year of ESUs will cost $61 per PC for businesses that want to keep their systems updated.
And as with the Windows 7 ESUs a few years ago, Microsoft says that the price will double each year—so the second year of ESUs will cost $122 per PC, and the third year will cost a whopping $244 per device.
[...] Though Windows 11 launched in October of 2021, its adoption has mostly stalled out this year, and Windows 10 remains the most widely used version of Windows by a substantial margin. Statcounter data says that Windows 10 runs on 69 percent of all Windows PCs worldwide and 67 percent of PCs in the US, compared to about 27 and 29 percent for Windows 11 (respectively). The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows Windows 10 running on 54 percent of surveyed gaming PCs, compared to about 42 percent for Windows 11.
Related stories on SoylentNews:
(Score: 1) by Splodgy Emoji on Tuesday December 26 2023, @11:05AM (16 children)
It is possible to design electronics for upgradeability and maintainability. In other words, it is possible to design PCs such that critical components and subsystems can be completely swapped out or firmware upgraded. However, it is a completely different priority for design and it can increase costs. Unfortunately that is not in the interest of PC manufacturers who want to sell as many PCs as possible. Maybe the EU is on the path of creating strong legislation for upgradeability and maintanability of electronics.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:28PM (15 children)
Indeed. I bought an Asus laptop a couple of years ago and installed Linux on it dual boot. I'll never buy that brand again, and not just for the brain dead design idiocies like having the power button next to and identical to the escape key. No problem with installing Linux, although it won't run. Grub didn't load and going in through the BIOS is no help. It only ate a part of its hard drive.
Any more computers I'll demand Linux compatibility before I hand over a dime.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday December 26 2023, @04:06PM (3 children)
Asus used to have a good reputation, but I stopped buying their motherboards about 10 years ago. I got too many that didn't work out of the box, and their return procedure is terrible. I stick w/ MSI and, if they're not available, Gigabyte. I've also had quite a few Asus laptops come across my bench and I agree, their build quality is poor.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by boltronics on Wednesday December 27 2023, @08:53AM (2 children)
Asus have especially had their name tarnished this year, due to their motherboards automatically overvolting and frying AMD CPUs, and their ROG Ally handhelds frying MicroSD cards. They seem to be more interested in churning out lots of products as quickly as possible, rather than spending the time to do proper QA testing.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/asus-issues-official-statement-motherboard-controversy/ [digitaltrends.com]
https://www.dexerto.com/tech/asus-finally-admits-major-issue-with-the-rog-allys-sd-card-slot-2210054/ [dexerto.com]
I also used to use Asus up until around 10 years ago, but they've really gone downhill in the time since. I don't think I'd use them again unless the hardware was given to me (or I found a motherboard in the e-waste bin).
Having said that, I think even less of Gigabyte (or maybe Asus has fallen so far that they're now on the same level). Their products are not of a high quality (the motherboards are often far thinner and more cheaply constructed than competing products, at least in my experience) and they do not support GNU/Linux at all. Gigabyte usually doesn't even acknowledge that GNU/Linux is a thing that exists.
I do actually use a Gigabyte board (a B660M Aorus Pro released just last year) in my home living room build though because, you guessed it, I found it in e-waste. I have since identified an issue with the board where the system boots too quickly for any attached SATA drives to initialise (despite fastboot, etc. being switched off) so every once in a while I have to hit ctrl+alt+delete to have it reboot a second time. Eventually I'll replace the SATA drives with a large secondary M.2 drive and bypass the issue, unless Gigabyte decides to release a BIOS that fixes it first (which seems unlikely, although the board is still "supported").
ASRock is basically ASUS, but with even worse quality in my experience.
That really just leaves MSI, which has been the choice for my last two desktop builds, and I've been satisfied with my purchase each time.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:56PM
Since Covid, the problem I have is they're never in stock at my wholesaler (Ingram Micro). I agree that Gigabyte is a less desirable choice but at least their stuff works.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 27 2023, @02:09PM
I went with MSI. I did no research, and just got what was a cheap option at the time. Seems to work fine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by grant on Tuesday December 26 2023, @04:51PM (10 children)
I pulled an Asus laptop out of the e-waste bin at my old work. The secret to getting the thing working was finding out that Asus used a 32 bit efi bios on a laptop with a 64bit processor.
I booted a 32bit live debian ISO. Used debootstrap to install amd-64 debian to the hard drive. Chrooted in, and added i386 as second arch (debian mulit-arch), installed i386 version of grub (also Installed kernel, manually set timezone, created fstab, added users/pwords etc., stuff that deboostrap does not do for you, while in the chroot). Booted into Debian fine after that.
The Broadcom wireless on that laptop was also a pita though (multiple diff hardware that requires diff firmwares, all called the same model number by Broadcom?!!! And, of course, the firmware shipped with the kernel is for a diff hardware rev).
Found out later later why my old work trashed that model laptop (it was less than 2 years old). They couldn't install their preferred version of windows on it due to the 32 bit efi on the damn thing either.
"Installed fine, but wouldn't run" makes me think you used install media that supports both 32bit and 64bit systems, but the installer installed the 64bit grub, and your Asus also is using a 32 bit efi. Since linux is already installed, (depending on distribution), you could just chroot into it and add i386 arch, uninstall the existing grub, and install the 32 bit version of grub (manually running grub-install/update-grub afterward). Good luck!
* If you used LVM, in addition to mounting /sys and /proc, and bind mounting the host's /dev into your chroot env, also bind mount host's /run-- redhat made a change to upstream lvm device mapper stuff a few years ago that breaks lvm userspace (that the grub config generating scripts need) in chroot without it.
The laptop was left unplugged for a month, powered "off", but apparently Asus only soft powers off, and its BMS is shite, so the battery discharged too far to ever charge again. So, the laptop ended up back in the e-waste bin.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday December 26 2023, @05:19PM (7 children)
This explains why the "Year of the Linux desktop" is nothing but an eternal pipe-dream. No normal user would ever go thru that process to get things up and running.
(Score: 4, Informative) by grant on Tuesday December 26 2023, @06:17PM
To be fair, they couldn't get newer versions of windows to run on the damn thing, at all.
And, for some of us, the year of the Linux desktop already arrived :)
For me, it was 1993, immediately after Patrick Volkerding released Slackware (well, immediately after downloading a zilliion floppy disk images); after installing slack, almost everything I did, at the time, was done on linux+gcc, then copied over & tested/modified on solaris/sunos+att's compiler-- gnu/linux has been my primary OS for 30 years. And, I was running Linux on a laptop, without issues, in '94 (that was still in the 0.x kernel version days). Shitty hardware is shitty is the only lesson that should be drawn from the Asus example.
Also, personally, I don't see how having e.g., insurance salesmen and Instagram influences using Linux instead of Windows/Mac (or, more likely their phones/tablets) does anything to help make Linux ecosystem any better, other than *possibly* hardware manufacturers caring a tiny bit more about their stuff running under Linux. Am I missing something?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2023, @06:30PM
My System76 laptop works great. So does my System76 workstation at work.
(Score: 3, Touché) by stormreaver on Tuesday December 26 2023, @09:57PM
Hardly. No normal use would pull an old laptop from the trash and try to install anything on it -- Windows, Linux, or anything else. That posting was obviously not aimed at normal users, but you already knew that.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:20AM
Year of the Linux desktop?
July this year marked my third decade of having a Linux desktop.
As to the article, I'm already seeing systems which can't be upgraded being offloaded to Industrial auctioneers and not selling, I picked up a sample last week, wiped the Win10 install, partitioned the 1TB disk to hold the three linux distros I usually install, and have been soak testing it since. So far, so good, it looks like I'll be doing a spot of haggling for a bulk deal on their remaining boxes at some point in the next week.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:26PM (2 children)
I've done plenty of Linux installs over the years, beginning in 1999. It's gotten steadily easier to do one since then, to the point where it's now something along the lines of "follow the instructions on how to boot to the USB stick, do what the screen tells you for a few very simple selections like what the default language should be, and then wait about 15 minutes.
Which is if anything less complex than the equivalent process for Windows, because (a) all the key software comes in the initial install rather than having to piecemeal in things like anti-virus or an office suite, and (b) it isn't trying to install as much spyware as humanly possible, and (c) wants you to voluntarily give them information that can be used for advertising later.
Which means the only thing keeping people on Windows is that it's the default OS from certain OEMs. That's it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday December 27 2023, @01:18PM (1 child)
You, and me and a lot of people here, are not "normal" people in this regard. Most actual normal people don't install Windows on their machines either. It comes pre-installed. You know this, I know this, everyone here knows this. The once that are for some reason brave that build their own or similar and need to install Windows probably feel it's a massive pain. What stops them from installing Linux of some kind is probably more of their own fantasy and imagination in that it's going to be hard and weird, or they just actually want Windows, cause they don't know better or they want it to be compatible with their other software or whatever. Most people just don't install their own operating system. Period.
So one could argue or think that they'll install Linux on their machine when it becomes old or W11 doesn't upgrade or install. Nope. They buy a new machine with the brand spanking new version of Windows already installed on it. Or MacOS or whatever the Google atrocity is called for their pads etc. Normal people do not install operating systems on anything. So in that regard the Year of the Linux Desktop is never going to come, if it's coming it's already here and Google managed to sneak it in on their tablets, that is as close as it is going to get. Even tho it's not a desktop computer but still, close enough or as close as it is ever going to get.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 28 2023, @04:06AM
I'm not so sure. Mostly because at this point there's been a company who has successfully sold several million Linux-based gaming PCs to mainstream consumers just in the past couple years.
I'm talking about Valve's Steamdeck of course. Sure, it's a handheld gaming form factor running a simple console-like program launcher, but close the launcher and it's laptop PC hardware running a Linux desktop OS, easily accessible to anyone who's interested. Add a wireless keyboard and mouse and you can do your homework on it. And it's embraced running as much Windows software as possible out of the box without jumping through any special hoops.
Perhaps most importantly, it's proving that desktop Linux can be every bit as simple and easy to use as Windows, to a bunch of people that mostly don't really care about Linux or Windows - they just want their games to work.
If Valve decides to resurrect their "Steam Box" program now that they have a proven-successful flagship product, that could be exactly the shot in the arm that desktop Linux has needed to break into the mainstream for a long time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GloomMower on Tuesday December 26 2023, @10:57PM
> The laptop was left unplugged for a month, powered "off", but apparently Asus only soft powers off, and its BMS is shite, so the battery discharged too far to ever charge again. So, the laptop ended up back in the e-waste bin.
This is so infuriating. I bought a Asus tablet that does this as well. Why would anyone design it to be like this? :(
(Score: 2) by UncleSlacky on Wednesday December 27 2023, @02:05PM
I've always found this page helpful when installing on 32-bit UEFI systems (not just Macs):
https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/ [mattgadient.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 26 2023, @11:09AM (6 children)
Please divert one of these doomed Skylake PCs into my hands so I don't have to spend $50-100 on it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jasassin on Tuesday December 26 2023, @01:48PM (1 child)
I came here to say the same thing you just said. I was thinking it would be cool if someone setup a website to list their computers they want to get rid of so someone local could come pick it up so they don't have to deal with carrying it out to the trash, let alone responsibly recycling it. Alas, scammers would just ruin it like they did craigslist.
I'm happy with my i7-4770, but I'd love a a free 6th gen (I'd probably take two or three of them just in case one died).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Tuesday December 26 2023, @02:12PM
I have used my local "Freecycle" group for such things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network [wikipedia.org]
Basically if you ever have something you no longer need, but it is not worth the hassle to sell it on ebay or equivalent, I always offer it up there before disposing of it. 90% of the stuff I offered there was taken by someone, including old hi-fi equipment that didn't work anymore.
Likewise every upgrade cycle, my local group would offer laptops and PC's that are no longer usable for them, and thanks to them I have saved a lot of money. Last thing I got was a month ago, an old Lenovo X201 laptop, which is in really good condition, but far too old to run current Windows in any decent way. Running Devuan Linux and a 1TB SSD and the thing flies for my needs.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday December 26 2023, @02:10PM (1 child)
I guess they ruled out, for cost, that breaking down the systems into components wouldn't be viable. The labor, storage and sale costs would probably make it not viable as an option. Guess it's the drawback of buying pre-built system. They age out. Stocks of components last a lot longer, after all old computers might want a newer CPU or more RAM or more storage or more whatever. Prebuilt apparently just takes a dirtnap when it ages out.
If it's not even viable to ship them to China or someplace with dirt cheap labor to strip them down then landfill time. Which doesn't really make sense either. I wonder if in 30-40 years some future YouTube star will track them down and dig them up for the ultimate retrofest. Sort of like with those ET cartridges.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by owl on Tuesday December 26 2023, @02:44PM
While TFAs do use the term "PC" it is not safe to assume that the journalist that wrote the wire story had any knowledge of computers beyond the fact that they had one on their desk to write the story. It is very likely that a sizeable portion of what is generically labeled "PC" here is actually laptops, and laptops are (sadly) very custom designs that don't "part out" well at all (except to those few others with the same laptop that need a new X for their broken X).
I.e., for any journalist, it is safer to assume until given explicit evidence to the contrary, that when they write "PC" what they mean is "a computer which is not made by Apple and does not run MacOS".
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Wednesday December 27 2023, @02:13AM (1 child)
From my experience: Linux will get missing features required earlier than Windows. Officially it may not have a strong requirement, but without them, it will be unusable in anything except being a textmode-only router.
Unfortunately, that's how it works. Wirth's law hits hard, such situations always lead to increase of requirements for software and modern "programmers" will always add more abstraction layers because their programs are of course the only thing running in the OS ;-).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday December 27 2023, @04:51AM
In my experience, computing requirements such as CPU performance, features, and RAM have plateaued for many use cases. Which is why you can do plenty with a $100 netbook, N100 box [notebookcheck.net] (Gracemont E-cores are like low-power Skylake cores), or old office PC. The best upgrade in recent memory is still the switch from HDDs to SSDs, which is an easy upgrade for old systems.
I think a bunch of factors have stopped Wirth's law in its tracks, including:
Now we've exited the quad-core stagnation era and people are complaining about 16-core stagnation (Zen 2 through Zen 5). However, we have more processing power than we know what to do with, especially since many programmers can't deal with multithreading. The best iGPUs are more than capable of replacing discrete GPUs for many people. Things like AI/ML accelerators are being integrated into x86 CPUs so that they can eventually reach every new x86 device, but market penetration will take years. AVX-512 as a potential widespread requirement has been delayed or derailed by a clumsy Intel rollout. AVX10 is intended to fix that, but it will take time.
If anything can push "requirements", it's gaming, specifically the game consoles which are on an approximately 7 year cycle (with some lag time before games stop targeting the previous generation). If you don't care about gaming or the hot new generative AI, what is it that requires a computer newer than 10 years old?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MonkeypoxBugChaser on Tuesday December 26 2023, @12:26PM (3 children)
Like for real. There is going to be some cheap cheap hardware available soon. Not so much on the other requirements but with the TPM 2.0. I don't think I'm very into windows 11 either. After trying it, it's truly a horrible OS made for itoddlers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jasassin on Tuesday December 26 2023, @02:04PM (2 children)
I'm not so sure much will change. The people who care about security updates, or are well to do (the average consumer probably doesn't know anything about security updates), will buy a new computer and probably just throw the old one in the trash. The average consumer will probably continue using Windows 10 until the computer dies.
I think it's unrealistic to expect an average consumer to install Linux. It's just not going to happen. I've even taken support calls from family members to get Windows 11 out of S mode, so you can imagine the nightmare Linux would be.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:36PM
The average consumer will probably continue using Windows 10 until the computer dies.
And he should be able to without worry. It's just WRONG that companies are allowed to simply stop putting security updates on "old" computers. My last car was ten years old when I bought it and it was under recall. Almost ten years later it was still under recall when I traded it. Whoever has that twenty year old junker can have the ignition switch replaced for free by any GM dealer.
There's no excuse for letting computer manufacturers get away with anything less.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stormreaver on Tuesday December 26 2023, @09:35PM
That's because installing and maintaining Windows is damned hard, while installing and maintaining (for example) Kubuntu is incredibly easy nowadays. I just recently moved up to an SSD from a hard drive, and the time from booting from a flash drive to the time Kubuntu was installed on the SSD and ready to use was about 10 minutes, about 6 mouse clicks (I didn't actually count) to answer simple questions, and entering a username, password, and computer name (a regular user can just not change the default name). The whole process was very smooth, quick, and simple.
I also built three new computers for a business customer, and the time from booting from a flash drive to the time Windows 11 was minimally usable on the SSD was close to an hour on each one. The install process sucked by comparison, the install options were incredibly unintuitive, and the computer had to reboot 3 times (I didn't actually count). I had to start over twice because the options made no sense and I chose the wrong ones. Not to mention that each Windows install required a separate Microsoft account, tying that install to a particular person. It's really a horrid experience from start to finish.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday December 26 2023, @01:44PM (6 children)
the day support ends. It ages and becomes more and more obsolete. But unless you're really unlucky and the software had a major vulnerability that gets discovered later on after support has ended, it's not going to become any less secure than it was the day support ended. And if it does and the vulnerability is bad enough, Microsoft will release an exceptional update, just to avoid looking like they're letting rotten things rot. They've done it before.
And then when it gets really bad, you can format the machine and install a FOSS OS to extent it's life yet more.
People need to be a bit more critical of the update treadmill. Everybody survived fine before OS manufacturers started convincing everybody that it was urgent that their computers be running the latest and greatest code right this minute: yes, critical vulnerabilities warrant an update. The rest can wait.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 26 2023, @02:52PM (2 children)
While there are probably older examples, I think the update treadmill started in the aftermath of Y2K. There was a huge surge in new computer equipment buying because everyone was afraid of what would happen to their old gear when the year flipped to 00, I mean 2000.
After that, it didn't take a lot of thought to figure out how to trigger more of that by forcing updates.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:39AM (1 child)
I still have several old DOS 6.2 / Borland Turbo C++ systems runnning embedded.
And I just got some vintage laptops to run win98, XP, and 7. To support softwares that assist in maintaining old cars.
I don't believe throwing stuff away only because something newer is out. Many things, if they were made right, last damn near forever.
I have noted a lot of newer stuff is deliberately designed to fail at the drop of a hat, ( or a permission-granting server), or simply a timeout to enforcing a subscription model.
A lot of this focus on security appears to me to be the business community's effort to protect their rent-seeking plans but ensuring we don't simply fix our things and keep using them without them having any after-sale leverage to enforce customer lock-in.
A fellow soylentil has a tagline down the line of "Beware of those who will keep you ignorant, for in their heart, they want to be your master".
See what's going on here? This is a trap. Soon none of us will be able to do anything without permission, and the permission-givers will control us all.
John Deere ( farming equipment ) and others have been testing the waters to see how easily we will surrender our rights to knowledge as to how our stuff works and getting enforcement ( legal - using armed intervention if necessary ) to enforce obedience.
The machines are being deliberately designed to be people obedience monitoring and enforcement mechanisms toward those who embrace this paradigm by buying into it. Many of us will resist this, and eventually, if enough of us fail to resist, we will be terminated through social ostracizing and denial of economic activity. I feel this is what CBDC is all about. And all these laws about freelancing. Everyone is accountable to someone else. Single point of failure. Someone may deny permission.
When it comes to generic public design, I am definitely in the KISS camp. Make your own stuff as complex as you want, but the infrastructure has to be simple and maintainable. Already, we are seeing things our ancestors built that we don't know how to maintain.
We make way too much trash. We build houses out of wood, yet we use nearly indestructible plastics to build one,-time use cups and food wrappers.
Exactly the opposite of a robust resilient design.
Wake up, people! Before we agree to slavery by a click of a mouse!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:42AM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by owl on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:12PM (2 children)
TFAs failed to indicate (or I did not see any indication) what percentage of these 240 million "PC"'s (likely used by the Journalist to mean "Not a Macintosh") were also "corporate PCs" that are on the "corporate upgrade treadmill". And by "corporate upgrade treadmill" I mean the fact that the vast majority of $work supplied computers are upgraded (meaning "new machine") every 4-5 years like clockwork, regardless of whether the hardware would operate fine for another 20 years before actually failing.
Note, I'm not saying this is not a huge waste of product, as it is. Most of these machines would be far faster than the lowly human using them needs for the tasks that human's putting them to.
But, knowing that (pulling number out of a**) say 75% of these 240 million "PC"'s are on the corporate upgrade treadmill, and are going to be replaced with new hardware, no matter what requirements MS imposes with W11, puts the big flashy click bait number in the titles into perspective.
Yes, 240 million are going to the secondary market or to the landfill. But 180 million of those were per-ordained to go that direction on the day they were bought, because they were bought by businesses that run a 4-5 year "hardware refresh" cycle.
Still a waste, but not all a waste simply because MS has newer, tighter, requirements for W11. W11 could have had exactly the same hardware requirements as W10, and 180M PC's would still be destined to be swapped out with new hardware.
The one good outcome here is that high-end workstations on ebay may drop in price if this flood of swapped out machines does come to pass.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Wednesday December 27 2023, @02:22PM (1 child)
Don't knock the treadmill.
I don't know if you've seen a 5-year-old corporate laptop, but it's usually on its last legs. Cheap plastic components worn out, coffee spills on the main board, glitchy screen and keyboard, and nonexistent battery life (with replacement parts non-existent or only available from expensive aftermarket). These things seem engineered to fail spectacularly at the end of their warranty life; at least from a fleet-maintenance perspective.
Besides, while the C-suite and beancounters could get by with Chromebooks, those of us who still do Real Work (TM) still benefit from Moore's Law in a significant way. Getting a new workstation and being able to render 3D assembly models locally that used to require batch processing at a server farm is fantastic, and routine upgrades on the server farm mean that the jobs I do send there come back sooner.
Don't get me wrong: computers falling victim to the corporate lifecycle could easily serve well as a school laptop for underprivileged students, provided that they don't mind short battery life. A large portion of them, though, are unsuitable for any use; attempts to donate them might well cause PR nightmares because even a few lemons handed out as charity would cause enormous ill-will to the corporate donor.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Wednesday December 27 2023, @03:00PM
Self-replying, because I realized I misunderstood your point. You were saying that those laptops were headed for scrapheap regardless of Win11 requirements, and you are completely right. Please interpret my previous comment as a +1 agree on your post, with a note that those boxen deserved to be on the scrapheap regardless.
I'll also point out that my current view of The Treadmill (TM) sees several models being kept on win10 until normal EOL, others being upgraded if they meet The Requirements (TM), and new computer purchases being made based with Win11 compatibility as a requirement. Out-of-cycle replacement to meet arbitrary Windows version requirements is an unnecessary expense. What it has been is leverage for the IT department to pry budget out of the clutches of the Beancounters, who keep trying to extend the lifecycle as long as possible (they hate the initial purchase costs). The IT department hates the ongoing maintenance costs, and promotes the benefits of Moore's Law for productivity, but those recurring costs (and unrealized gains) don't show up on the Beancounters' leger. Waving a requirement under their noses helps hold them to the agreed replacement timelines.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Isia on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:05PM (2 children)
And all you lemmings believe it.
No UEFI firmware required.
No "secure" (hahaha) boot required.
No fucking TPM required.
No DirectX 12-compatible GPU required.
No CPU virtualisation features required.
The real Windows 11 requirements are just:
* 4 GB RAM.
* 12 GB storage space.
* 64 Bit CPU with 2 cores.
Here is Tiny W11 a trimmed-down W11 that you can just burn and install: https://archive.org/details/tiny11-2311 [archive.org] with just the minimum requirements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jili3CD_74s [youtube.com]
You probably want to be able to test all Tiny W11 features.
A very clever guy has found an interesting way to ask MS to archive that.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=W10+Digital+Activation+by+Ratiborus [duckduckgo.com]
Version 1.4.8 5512D79C0FC3A0813A9FB9540CFED662C5BA607C
Belief in a higher being is for the stupid, the weak and the cowardly.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 26 2023, @05:46PM
I have not been bullshitted. I'm aware of the true minimum requirements. I just don't have any plans on running Windows 11 and would like some of these OptiPlexes, ProDesks, and other perfectly good mini PCs that are going to be junked by corporations.
The popular N100 boxes being sold right now are slower than the landfill-bound i7-6700.
The 240 million number is a gigantic overestimate but there will be millions of these floating around. They already are on ebay and Dell Refurbished, but we can always use lower prices or FREE.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2023, @06:31AM
I've got Win11 VMs that were installed by bypassing stuff and nope you can't update to the next release easily.
So it's not bullshit if you want to keep getting updates without extra work. If you didn't care about getting updates you might as well stay on Windows 7 - it's far more stable than Win 10 or Win 11.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rufty on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:06PM (2 children)
So, what soon-to-be-unsupported laptops are best for linux. Or even a hackintosh?
(Score: 4, Informative) by fliptop on Tuesday December 26 2023, @04:12PM
Not sure how up-to-date it is but this is a good place to start [linux-on-laptops.com].
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by GloomMower on Tuesday December 26 2023, @11:06PM
I think a large chunk of used laptops that get put for sale instead of trashed are corporate sell-offs. TPM 2.0 started to be intruduce in 2014, so I'm not sure there will be a flood of them over what we already see now, as likely corporations have already phased the "unsupported"(I know it can be bypassed) ones out.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 26 2023, @03:10PM (3 children)
I remember the good old days when a "new" PC actually gave us new stuff that we actually NEEDED. A new CPU might be an entire 4 times faster than the old one, or 3d rendering opened up a new class of games, or the amount of RAM made it feasible to run something that wasn't before, or so on.
So what does a new PC get us these days?
Go on, I'm waiting. But don't parrot "its more shecure!" without specifics on how it benefits ME. DRM actually takes things away from me. Why the fuck should I want that?!
Unfortunately, the moment Microsoft drops their magical OS "support", all the other "support" dries up. These days hardware support, development environments, driver support, user application support all seem to dry up instantly.
I think it is time that people start demanding electronic devices stay supported longer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 26 2023, @07:22PM
Most of the PCs being melted into scrap are going to be using Intel, because they dominated office PCs and still do as far as I know.
6th gen (Skylake) and older do not make "the cut" for "official" Windows 11 support, and maybe some 7th gen (Kaby Lake).
The big difference is going to be the multi-threaded performance. Skylake and older mainstream desktop CPUs (not workstation/Xeon) are quad-cores at best. 8th gen (Coffee Lake) introduced 6c/6t i5 and 6c/12t i7. Immediately after, 9th gen (Coffee Lake Refresh) went to 8c/8t i7, and 8c/16t i9, which were competing with AMD's Zen 8-cores at the time. 10th gen (Comet Lake) went to 10 cores and stopped trying to segment hyperthreading for most parts. 11th gen (Rocket Lake) regressed back to 8 cores.
12th gen (Alder Lake) introduced the hybrid/heterogeneous x86 microarchitecture, with up to 8 (performance) P-cores and 8 (efficiency) E-cores. At the same time, the P-cores had the most notable instructions-per-clock (IPC) increase in several years.
Intel Core i7-2600S [cpubenchmark.net] = 1735 single, 4628 multi (4 cores)
Intel Core i7-2700K [cpubenchmark.net] = 1821 single, 5750 multi (4 cores)
Intel Core i7-6700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2294 single, 8091 multi (4 cores)
Intel Core i7-7700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2462 single, 8659 multi (4 cores)
Intel Core i7-8700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2652 single, 12897 multi (6 cores)
Intel Core i7-9700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2757 single, 13261 multi (8 cores)
Intel Core i9-9900 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2844 single, 16605 multi (8 cores)
Intel Core i7-10700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 2910 single, 16552 multi (8 cores)
Intel Core i9-10900 [cpubenchmark.net] = 3038 single, 19958 multi (10 cores)
Intel Core i7-11700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 3153 single, 19982 multi (8 cores)
Intel Core i9-11900 [cpubenchmark.net] = 3448 single, 22980 multi (8 cores)
Intel Core i5-12400 [cpubenchmark.net] = 3536 single, 19455 multi (6+0 cores)
Intel Core i7-12700 [cpubenchmark.net] = 3923 single, 30876 multi (8+4 cores)
Intel Core i9-12900 [cpubenchmark.net] = 4055 single, 34300 multi (8+8 cores)
It took a pretty long time to double single-threaded performance, and that was mostly using higher clock speeds, but multi-core performance started to pick up dramatically after a stagnant quad-core era. 8th-gen 6-cores and 9th-gen 8-cores were notable improvements. I chose mostly the "65W" variants above, but you might find more of the "35W" variants like the i7-6700T represented in office PCs.
I'm not as familiar with the desktop integrated graphics performance. I think there were pretty slow improvements after 5th gen Broadwell. If anyone can find a good graph illustrating the performance evolution over a decade, that would be nice.
Newer models have improved hardware video decode/encode capabilities [wikipedia.org].
6th gen added HEVC (H.265) decode/encode. 7th gen added VP9 decode after having "partial acceleration" on Linux only. 11th gen added AV1 decode. You don't always need this, software decode can be fine, but it may be more important to you in laptops.
Some of the newer CPUs are allegedly more shecure from having no need for security mitigations that can lower performance slightly or dramatically depending on the specific circumstances. Call it planned obsolescence if you want.
There's no question that the old quad-cores can be plenty fast enough for basic computing tasks, and I will sift through the trash for them, but the newer CPUs do have benefits. We can get into the weeds on extras like PCIe SSD support.
On the horizon, AMD's Phoenix desktop APUs will be capable of running newer games well at 1080p. Both companies are going to continue to increase single/multi-threaded performance. AMD has increased single-threaded by about 20-30% each major generation (Zen 1, Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4) from a combination of higher clock speeds and IPC gains. They are starting to include AI accelerators for what it's worth (not much right now). H.266 support will be integrated in about 2 generations. Intel fumbled the ball on AVX-512, AMD caught it, but Intel will come back with AVX10 [tomshardware.com]. And so on.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday December 26 2023, @07:58PM (1 child)
And right there you see the reason for the "upgrade treadmill" and the "forced obsolescence" by arbitrary requirements.
Back in the days when next years computer was 4x faster, or had 5x faster 3D rendering, there were enough folks "upgrading" because they wanted that 4x faster CPU or 5x faster video to keep the manufacturer's production lines humming along making a profit.
But, about 20 some years back or so, things stopped increasing in "performance" by 5-10x year on year, and the base machine became fast enough that for all but those running specific workloads (video encoding, games) that the machine from 5-10 years back was more than fast enough for everything else the user wanted to do. I.e., how fast does the computer need to be to "browse tiktoc/facebook/amazon" (hint: most of the time here, the computer is sitting idle waiting for the user to do something).
The result of this reduction in extreme performance improvement meant that many more folks started hanging onto "last years computer" for another year (or two or five) because it was more than adequate for their needs.
But what happens to a makers production lines when they have been running at a supply level of "yearly upgrades" and 75% of their customers start switching to "upgrade every ten years"? Well, the maker starts seeing, from their viewpoint, a revenue/profit ending apocalypse. And so the end result is every trick in the book gets used to try to keep "next year's production run" being greater than "this year's run". They don't want to have to cut back, trim fat, and adjust to a moderate sales level, they want to stay at the "churn them out as fast as we can" level, because there is much more profit there than at the nominal "replace, because the system is really at end-of-life" level.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday December 27 2023, @02:40AM
More than that, some 60% or so of the computer market stopped buying PCs entirely, because now their phones sufficed.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Tuesday December 26 2023, @05:33PM (6 children)
Does GNU/Linux or BSD or even a specific distro have a rigorously described set of user interface standards [ycombinator.com] like Windows does?
(Score: 5, Touché) by stormreaver on Tuesday December 26 2023, @09:59PM
Since when does Windows have standards? Have you tried using different versions of Windows. They are dramatically different interfaces.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2023, @06:57AM (1 child)
FWIW I suggested a standard "phone support" interface more than a decade ago: https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2580220&cid=38422000 [slashdot.org]
I can't find the relevant suggestions/issue/bug reports anymore, but I definitely made them (gnome/kde etc).
Dunno whether it's because the search engines are crap (try using "phone support interface" to find my Slashdot comment which still exists), or the sites are gone or no longer indexed.
FWIW my opinion on Desktop Linux still stands: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=48387&page=1&cid=1232333#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Note it's not about removing or reducing choice, but about picking good defaults. Microsoft doesn't pick good defaults but they are still dominant so they can get away with it.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday December 27 2023, @06:26PM
The good defaults would be Windows' widget toolkit, which automatically provides keyboard navigation/hotkeys/accelerators (which improves accessibility) and a default interface and experience. This is somewhat in opposition to the UNIX tools-not-rules philosophy, but providing both gives you an Ikea next to a Home Depot. There's great reasons for both to exist, and to pick and choose from each.
(Score: 2) by jb on Wednesday December 27 2023, @09:25PM (2 children)
Yes. POSIX prescribes standards for (amongst other things) the shell. The shell is a user interface. Just because some dodgy company has conditioned the majority of end users to believe the myth that "their" UI is the only one, doesn't make it true.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday December 27 2023, @10:16PM (1 child)
It is an interface, true, I was thinking more about a graphical user interface [utoronto.ca] though. The shell is nice and all, but (e.g.,) drawing programs, spreadsheets, etc. don't work via a command-line, and could probably benefit from a standard set of best practices for designing graphical user interfaces.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jb on Wednesday December 27 2023, @10:49PM
Point taken ... althouh perhaps some of them should. For example, "parametric design" seems to be all the rage in the CAD world these days. That's something that, whilst obviously it needs graphical output is likely to be much more efficient with plain text input. Back in the "dark ages" we had design programs with exactly those sorts of split UIs (text console for input, separate hi-res output), although I haven't seen one like that released in donkey's years.
I guess the point is that it's horses for courses. X11's strengths lie in its flexibility and in its separation of policy from mechanism. Trying to impose Microsoft-style conformity would be a step too far for most of us in the Unix world.
In the Unix world we use standards to establish what will always be there, for any program to use. We tend not to use standards to restrict how programs should work. At the end of the day that's the difference between a system designed to foster productivity (as Unix was from the very beginning: see e.g. PWB) by empowering the end user (here's a bunch of tools: how you choose to string them together is limited only by your own creativity) and one merely designed to sell as a "product" (sales of which, as Microsoft has taught us, can be maximised by actively disempowering the end user).
(Score: 4, Touché) by EJ on Wednesday December 27 2023, @12:46AM (1 child)
Processing all the errors in the story above almost gave me a stroke.
Vista11?
Preventing Windows 10-compatible PCs from running Windows 10?
Lay off the eggnog.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Opportunist on Wednesday December 27 2023, @07:53AM
Or at least proofread the shit your AI produces.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Wednesday December 27 2023, @05:48AM
Don't waste them, send them to poor people, that's to say me.