People are still running Win7 without pause. Don’t kid yourself!
This is a meme about enterprise equipment lifecycles.
Huge corporate entities with machine inventory counts in the hundreds of thousands aren’t going to give a shit about trying to upcycle old hardware - they just want it to not be their problem anymore.
I predict there will be a few companies that pop up to refurbish the hardware and sell it as a thin client solution. Places like call centers live on refurb equipment and are moving to a vdi infrastructure.
Thin client for windows 12 🧠
W11 and anything after it simply does not support any intel cpu before 10th gen, or (with a handful of exceptions) any AMD cpu before the 3000 series.
Edit: serious question: are W12 thin clients allowed to not have a TPM module? Or does that not actually matter for a thin client? I had assumed all machines involved had to have that capability, be it host or client.
E2: clearly I need to learn more about thin clients and related infra
A thin client is basically like a smart TV.
It might have some basic apps on it, but it’s main purpose is to remotely connect to either a storefront or desktop environment that’s being provided by some sort of VDI infrastructure. The OS can easily be a stripped down Linux image.
This is beneficial for businesses because you only have to upgrade your servers instead of hundreds or thousands of desktops.
It’s also beneficial from a security standpoint because you can deliver only what’s needed for the job.
Source: I built and maintained a Citrix VDI environment for a multinational company. We mostly used Zero clients, which were basically Pis that could log into Citrix, but we had some departments that had to use thin clients for various reasons.
🤔 I’m going out on a limb here and assuming you don’t know what a thin client is and that there are rumors windows 12 will be a cloud product?
If you knew that already though, then I’m puzzled by your comment.
My dad’s friend was still running a 486 until last year. It did his spreadsheet.
On Lotus 1-2-3?
Holy shit, nostalgia
They don’t make nostalgia like they used to.
Its subscription based now
generally computers won’t stop doing things they were already capable of doing. tons of machines and businesses may rely on older hardware and software to complete specific tasks.
but yeah, a 486 is pretty past its prime, and the task could have been accomplished on something far more modern.
Windows 7 is the only good version since XP, not even joking.
I agree with you bit 10 was still usable. When 11 hit and I saw the future, I abandoned dual boot.
I know a few orgs that still use XP.
Hospitals, for example. Banks and the IRS still emulate IBM mainframes running COBOL.
But those aren’t affected usually. For them it’s about stability because their certification processes are a lot of work and they won’t risk any interruptions unless absolutely necessary. So they actually pay a lot of money for support beyond the normal EOL.
the organizations I know personally, don’t have those kinds of resources. They use XP because they rely on software that hasnt been ported to the new enviroments since forever, and it doesn’t work on the new versions of windows. (or works poorly). plenty of places have old propriety licenses that they’ve never upgraded to new versions of software because it still works for their needs.
CNC machining, doctor’s offices. Tax lawyers. bakery shops running acocunting software. farmers. You’ll find it in lots of industries.
Not much since Steam dropped support >.<
Yeah Win7 is still good in comparison to win 11
Steam discontinued Win 7 and they told everyone linux would be next, but then why? Linux is up to date
edit: they* i mean Windows 7 users with it, sorry for the confusion!
they told everyone linux would be next
what?
Yeah windows 7 “elitist”, i saw some steam discussions about it. But it was just hot air, that they just bloated up.
Win7 might have been a good OS, but it no longer is unless it never touches the internet.
Yeah, i know just because of the security vulnerabilities, but it was for a long time better OS than windows 10 or 11, and because of that i switched to linux,
I’m sure some releases have become unsupported. The nature of Linux distros makes it a bit harder to define exactly which ones, even harder is you consider flatpak and snaps.
I would be surprised if any of the big ones released at the time Windows 7 was released is not supported. If course there’s no gatekeeping on the upgrades that I’m aware of (in general at least)
I foresee rise in selfhosted sector because of cheap hardware
Actually happen. An i5 with 4 cores + 8 GB Ram and a 256 GB SSD for something like 100 bucks. Years before we paid this for a raspberry.
If its a laptop, then it has a built-in UPS as well. Plus extra peripherals are not needed either!
Homelab go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
“send to landfill”.
No. Just because it can’t run newer Windows versions doesn’t automatically mean it gets catapulted to the landfill
When I was a residential garbage collector, I saved close to a dozen computers from the landfill that just needed a quick cleaning. A lot of people will get rid of their year old Alienware once it fills with cat hair.
80% will.
Now imagine if PC was invented after “post-PC”/iPhone era and you will need a different OS build for every model and there were “promises” of Windows updates for each machine after which it cannot be longer updated. Also basically computers would have locked bootloaders or void warianty when a system is touched.
I wonder how many phones could be saved from the landfill for the last 10 years if there were supported by Linux.
You can get ARM builds of Linux. I have never tried them so can’t speak to how well they work on a phone.
Just running Linux is one thing, but making it working with anything outside the CPU like the motherboard onboard chips and other components is a different task.
Check out a table of what works on one of the Linux distro targetting phones: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
There is no phone with fully working hardware and most barely booting and showing console.
Is there a lot of benefit to running postmarketOS compared to rooted Android?
I’ve had some trouble with flashing an old Asus tablet in that all the old images/info are basically dead links. But that is mostly just your average link rot.
I figured compiling a custom ROM was more trouble than it’s worth but if the main branch is actively maintained maybe less so.
If you want “a phone” with PostmarketOS, forget it now. It can be good as a portable mini computer for remote connecting to a servers and things like that, but until you are about to take sacrifices of for ex. not working camera and do not want to be sure alarm clock app is going to ring at the morning this won’t be for you.
It’s much less polished, stable and pleasent for daily use as Android. But they are good reasons why people are developing it.
For anyone who is interested, I keep my eye on Pine for this sort of thing.
I love me some cheap hardware to put Linux on it. It is a good feeling, plus less ewaste.
Windows 11 doing this is more ewaste not less. It’s more ewaste even if 100% of the existing stock gets reused because some (many?) of those computers will get replaced with new ones.
Windows hits end of life in 2025 you say? Welp.
Well everyone is still going to be using Windows 10
Lol ok.
This is getting to Y2K hype levels, and in a similar fashion, will not do anything.
I get Linux people like to fanboy/shit over Windows but surely you’re tech literate enough to realize this is making a mountain from a molehill.
Y2K was a big deal, but it was well funded and successfully dealt with. Wikipedia:
The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K likely surpassed US$300 billion…
When/if this happens, if I got the money, I hope I find someone selling their old desktop to upgrade to 11 so I can get a cheap computer to use as a personal testing grounds server that I don’t mind nuking if I accidentally mess up something.
At least in the enterprise sector, you’re absolutely right. My company’s already got a massive list of all of the PCs that need to be discarded due to Win10 EOL. It freakin sucks because they’re very powerful PCs, but the damn lack of a TPM2.0 chip means they are basically garbage for our uses. And they don’t let employees take anything home :/ what a waste of
Can i have them?
You should ask them again. Most companies just fear the ways the storage drive could be restored. Maybe they gave them away without the storage.
A couple of years ago we gave old core2duo out for free. I prepared them with dd’ing only /dev/zero over the storage. Should be enough, but replacing would be better.
lol, I wish. Luckily I have plenty of computing power at home already! But unfortunately we’re definitely not allowed to take anything - have asked a number of times :/ has nothing to do with storage and everything to do with capital BS
Maybe they could make an exception to the take home thing in this instant.
I would expect them to keep hard drives, but what’s the point of trashing those computers?
Maybe you can convince them to sell them, but maybe your company is too big to care about that stuff.
You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence - too big to give a f**k. Gotta love the big corpos.
*those
Still rocking my Amiga 500 and Performa 450. Post your old junk:
Yaaassss
What’s the best non win 11 pc we can go for?
Do you have access to businesses upgrading computers or shutting down that division? They tend to have some interesting stuff for playing with on Linux.
Hmm not directly, but I might have some friends who do. Could be a very interesting one
People have tons of old computers laying around that they would be more than happy to get rid of if someone asked nicely.
In fact you may melt them down for precious metals and earn a profit, but that’s for strange people.
Windows 10
That’s a waste because it will be EOL in a year
Unless you plan on upgrading it to Linux or W11/12
Good post
