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.

    • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      things have generally been going good in this section of the thread, but just a general reminder to all participants that thoughtful comments with some time put into them (as a few of the replies to this comment have been) are going to lead to more constructive discourse than quick, impulsive ones. you’re also definitely not obliged to respond to everything you disagree with or anyone who replies to you, so keep that in mind

        • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          what ticked me off was "Go ahead, hope you read all the patch notes for the 1000s different updates you are about to get!” since that is relavant for only arch and some of its deriatives. It sounded like someone who has heard/read others talk about linux but never used it themselves hence my assumption. I am sorry that you had such a negative experience beforehand but I swear its much more stable nowadays. My obssession for linux comes from the free software movement and it’s alignment with my personal values, so I tend to take some linux related criticsm personally I guess. 😅 Anyway have a nice day

            • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              Manjaro spesifically is the arch deriative that is bound to break no one reccomends it nowadays. And Ubuntu and fedora aren’t distros that tend to break really, Linux doesn’t auto update either. if you are installing custom kernel modules it is your responsibility to check if they’re updated not before you update your system as long as that stuff doesn’t come with the distro (than it’s the distro maintainers responsibility). You are doing modifications that are meant for experienced users when youbson’t know what you are getting into. User error user error user error. Linux kernel is also far more compatible with any congifuration rrally than windows ever could be, it’s the reason linhx works so well in older machines too. and distro maibtainer don’t have to accojbt for every set up it juat doesn’t work like that windows doean’t do that either. Kindly I propose stopping this stupid discussion because you only half know what you are talking about.

    • SciPiTie @iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      How the narrative has turned Nvidias active sabotage into Linux maintainers fault is beyond me.

      Latest for their reluctance to act on scalpers it should be transparent what you’re getting into with Nvidia.

      And then people like you write thing like this… Why?!

    • senseamidmadness@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I think you’re massively over-generalizing here to make Linux look like an unstable mess. Rolling release distros are the ones that want you to read the patch notes. Arch is the poster child for those. Stable distros like Mint and Ubuntu and elementaryOS don’t brick your system with every update. They hold back updates and stick with older kernels to ensure stability. Linux is, already, very good. It sounds like you haven’t used it for any length of time. Valve’s work on Proton has made Linux gaming viable for a whole lot of people, but the majority of computer users don’t play intense video games. They want web browsing, email, office software, that kind of thing. Linux does those just great on almost any device all the way down to Raspberry Pi boards.

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          1 year ago

          In seriousness, I have used Mint as a daily driver for probably 7 years now and I have found only the MATE and xfce flavors to be properly reliable and stable. Cinnamon, no matter how many times and on what hardware I’ve tried it, has a lovely habit of crashing and freezing at random times. For normal desktop tasks, Linux Mint xfce has been more reliable than any Windows I’ve ever used.

    • S410@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Both Intel and AMD GPUs work fine on Linux. Both work fine with Wayland.
      Wayland has been around for over a decade and has been in a usable state for the last 3 or so years.

      Attributing the fact that Nvidia stuff still barely works to the fact that some distros have made Wayland the default is just stupid wrong.

      Besides, Nvidia experience isn’t/wasn’t the smoothest even on Xorg. Linux desktop is simply not a priority for Nvidia.

        • S410@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          k, so for the least used hardware, linux works fine.

          Yeah, basically. Which raises a question: how companies with much smaller market share can justify providing support, but Nvidia, a company that dominates the GPU market, can’t?

          The popular distros are what counts.

          Debian supports several DEs with only Gnome defaulting to Wayland. Everything else uses X11 by default.

          Some other popular distros that ship with Gnome or KDE still default to X11 too. Pop!_OS, for example. Zorin. SteamOS too, technically. EndeavorOS and Manjaro are similar to Debian, since they support several DEs.

          Either way, none of those are Wayland exclusive and changing to X11 takes exactly 2 clicks on the login screen. Which isn’t necessary for anyone using AMD or Intel, and wouldn’t be necessary for Nvidia users, if Nvidia actually bothered to support their hardware properly. But I digress.

          Worked well enough for me to run into the dozen of other issues that Linux has

          Oh, it’s no way perfect. Never claimed it is.

          I like most people want a usable environment. Linux doesn’t provide that out of the box.

          This both depends on the disto you use and on what you consider a “usable environment”.

          If you extensively use Office 365, OneDrive, need ActiveDirectory, have portable storage encrypted with BitLocker, etc. then, sure, you won’t have a good experience with any distro out there. Or even if you don’t, but you grab a geek oriented distro (e.g. Arch or Gentoo) or a barebones one (e.g. Debian) you, again, won’t have the best experience.

          A lot of people, however, don’t really do a whole lot on their devices. The most widely used OS in the world, at this point in time, is Android, of all things.

          If all you need to do is use the web and, maybe, edit some documents or pictures now and then, Linux is perfectly capable of that.

          Real life example: I’ve switched my parents onto Linux. They’re very much not computer savvy and Gnome with it’s minimalistic mobile device-like UI and very visual app-store-like program manager is significantly easier for them to grasp. The number of issues they ask me to deal with has dropped by… A lot. Actually, every single issue this year was the printer failing to connect to the Wifi, so, I don’t suppose that counts as a technical issue with the computer, does it?

          wacom tablets

          I use Gnome (Wayland) with an AMD GPU. My tablet is plug and play… Unlike on Windows. Go figure.

            • S410@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              You’re linking a post… From 2010. AMD replaced radeon with their open source drivers (AMDgpu) in 2015. That’s what pretty much any AMD GPU that came out in the last 10 years uses now.

              Furthermore, the AMDgpu drivers are in-tree drivers, and AMD actively collaborate with the kernel maintainers and developers of other graphics related projects.

              As for Nvidia: their kernel modules are better than nothing, but they don’t contain a whole lot in terms of actual implementation. If before we had a solid black box, now, with those modules, we know that this black box has around 900 holes and what comes in and out of those.

              Furthermore, if you look at the page you’ve linked, you’ll see that “the GitHub repository will function mostly as a snapshot of each driver release”. While the possibility of contributing is mentioned… Well, it’s Nvidia. It took them several years to finally give up trying to force EGLStreams and implement GBM, which was already adopted as the de-facto standard by literally everybody else.

              The modules are not useless. Nvidia tend to not publish any documentation whatsoever, so it’s probably better than nothing and probably of some use for the nouveau driver developers… But it’s not like Nvidea came out and offered to work on nouveau to make up to par and comparable to their proprietary drivers.

    • frog 🐸@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I have to agree with this. I tried Linux a couple of months ago, and ran into those issues with Nvidia. My computer was reasonably stable in the desktop environment using a particular version of the drivers, so as long as I was happy to never update the drivers and never do anything but email, web browsing, and word processing, Linux would have been fine. If I wanted to play any games or do any digital art or anything else that required my graphics card, it was either unstable or running barely faster than continental drift, depending on which set of drivers I was using.

      Like, I do think Linux is pretty cool, but it very much feels like a project for people who have the time and money to continuously tinker with their computer to get it working exactly as they want. It’s not there yet on the “it just works no matter what you do” front, which is what the vast majority of computer users need from their operating system. Windows, for all its many faults, is broadly stable and can largely be ignored once it’s installed - although I do think it benefits from a reformat every 12-18 months.

      • r00ty@kbin.life
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        1 year ago

        I think Linux blows windows out of the water as a server operating system. I’ve been using it that way for over 25 years now.

        For desktop, there’s a few problems. First is that the average user cannot install an operating system. So unless it comes pre-installed they’re going to be out of luck. The second is that I’ve not found a distro that won’t occasionally just blow itself up on an upgrade. Driver issues, circular dependencies, and all manner of other things that a normal user just doesn’t know how to deal with.

        Then you get to gaming. Which is WAY WAY better all the time. But, knowing what works and what doesn’t, which drivers to use, the best distro that has most of the gaming stuff already sorted for you. Not to mention the Wayland + NVidia issues that people are also talking about here. Also, I’ve never proven it. But on FPS games it feels like there’s just a bit more latency on linux (albeit I think overall most games run smoother on linux).

        I think Desktop is still great on Linux. But for mass consumption, it still has a way to go and I do wonder if, while windows exists and is preinstalled on everything if it will ever be more than a niche thing. Most users don’t know there’s an alternative and for sure would have no clue how to go about installing it.

      • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        And if your machine was to be tossed in the trash otherwise, how well do the proprietary drivers operate in the dump?

        • frog 🐸@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I might as well have tossed my computer in the trash if I’d kept Linux on it, since I couldn’t actually do anything with it.

          • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            It is perfect for a poor person that just needs internet and email. But yup, because it didn’t meet your use case it is trash. That there is some thinkin’.

        • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          That is because your statement is not particularly reasonable or rooted in reality.

          If you want to dis linux that is fine, go right ahead. I crap on Mac all the time and hate MS with a burning passion. I still use them, which I suppose is why I hate them. I frequently hate linux too, that is just the nature of being in IT.

            • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              And multiple people are disagreeing so that claim means nothing. The real issue is that your top level comment reads like it was written in the 1990s when entering the wrong monitor refresh settings could set it on fire. Other parts dont make any sense :

              “If that’s the state of Linux where my 8-year-old Windows 10 machine still gets updates regularly and runs fine.”

              Your next sentence :

              "“Go ahead, hope you read all the patch notes for the 1000s different updates you are about to get!”

              Is clear hyperbole. If you run a modern desktop focused distro like Mint then you click upgrade and let it do its business. Or dont, you dont have to.

              I get it, you had some bad experience with linux and were frustrated by some driver issues that were a PITA to remedy so you gave up. Totally valid, but not a failing of linux as a whole. Windows comes pre-installed so you do not have to deal with all those driver issues because someone else already did that work before you ever press the on button.

    • ares35@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      “most” desktops are used in business and other organizations, not by gamers, and it is these customers and their systems that will be the bulk of the e-waste generated by the forced-obsolescence of their hardware due to 10’s EOL and 11’s ‘new’ requirements.

        • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          only 754,633 office workers

          Did you actually think about this for a second? Do you really think only 0.2% of the American population or 0.4% of American workers are working in the office? This should be a lesson on not to pick the first Google result.

    • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Linux is only a problem for folks used to someone else. Also, the article is about ewaste. Meaning, these machines are going to be trashed unless someone puts linux on them. So I’d say your diatribe of misinformation was misplaced.

        • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Yes being pedantic is easy. Did you have a point? What does nvidia’s failings have to do with anything? Pull that garbage out, drop in linux mint and donate it to a poor kid that needs it for school.

        • RachelRodent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          minecraft works without problems on linux and there is, libre office, only office and hell even google docs on linux. and fortnite is one of the few games that don’t work on linux because of the anti cheat that normally supports linux but doesn’t spesifically on fortnite because epic hates linux