Comment by theandrewbailey
2 months ago
I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company. Due to licensing costs and our certifications, we can't sell anything with Windows. My coworkers install Ubuntu, but I install Linux Mint. We don't have any clue if people keep using Linux or install Windows, but it's cool to think we're helping to move this needle.
Edit: might as well link to the merch: https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling
I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines? A new machine for an enterprise or gamer will probably retain windows because it's needed but people not using their computers for more than surfing will be happy enough.
On that side-note I would also not be surprised if people are leaving "computers" altogether in favor of phones, it's a capable enough computer today for most lay-people, my ex and her parents don't have computers anymore and my daughter hardly uses her either.
Those that actually need computers such as developers are more prone to use Linux anyhow (especially when Microsoft is pushing annoying features such as forced reboots for those dropping their computers anyhow onto powerusers).
Anecdotal evidence, but Steams' Proton compatibility layer that lets you run Windows-only games on Linux works really really well. I haven't had to log into years and years by now.
I've been gaming on Linux for about a decade now full time, and somewhat before that too. I don't have a single Windows machine any more. My laptops are running Arch, my wife's personal Laptop runs Mint, her work machine is Windows because it has to, my work machine is Ubuntu, and my 5yo plays Minecraft on an Arch + Gnome laptop.
7-8 years ago it was pretty frustrating to spend £4k+ on a gaming rig to be unable to play a bunch of titles but I will not use Windows, I just accepted it.
Fast forward to today, and I'm playing Helldivers 2, with its anti-cheat and everything online with my nephew who's on Windows and getting far, far better performance (granted my PC is also more powerful). I can play the modern DOOM games with better performance than if I was running Windows on the same hardware.
My point is, Linux gaming is only getting better, I now also own a ROG Ally which I "flashed" (installed the same way you would any other Linux distro) with Bazzite straight out of the box without even booting Windows and I can play the single-player games I like to while travelling, or can have a quick game of Helldivers with my nephew if I'm not near my PC but have a stable connection. When I need/want to I can plug it into a monitor/kb/mouse with a single cable and have a full desktop with HDR, VRR etc.
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The case that this is true is only if you don't have an Nvidia GPU or don't play D3D12 games.
I tried it, discovered that Nvidia has a known regression that causes anywhere up to 25% lower performance compared to Windows in GPU limited games in D3D12, and immediately went back to Windows.
I'll never understand why people keep championing Linux for gaming when it has such a severe regression on the most common gaming GPU vendor. Steam says 75%. An Nvidia employee even stated that the fix is not trivial so they're not committing to a timeline for a fix. This is a year+ old issue. They're never fixing it because it doesn't affect CUDA.
https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/issues/164#issuecommen...
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I hear this all around and I am myself running GNU/Linux almost all the time, but running games on Steam on my default OS, which is a Debian with KDE currently, that is more miss than hit. I even know someone who has almost the same hardware, also runs a GNU/Linux system and for them almost all games work using Proton. For me however they don't. I already tried proprietary graphics card drivers instead of the ones that come with the OS for amdgpu, HWE kernel, another distro, using Steam installer downloaded from website ... nothing seems to fix the issue. When I click on the big green "Play" button in Steam, for many times it loads for a moment, and the button turns into a blue "stop" button, but then just turns back into a green "play" button, never starting the game. Mind, some games work, like Stardew Valley for example. But I think those are mostly already made to work cross platform.
I have no idea what I can still try, and it annoys me, that for most games I still have to reboot into Windows to play them. I seem to have had more luck following guides for using WINE for specific games in the past, when I made games like StarCraft 2 work better than on Windows, than I have had with Steam and Proton so far.
So anecdote. It is not smooth sailing for everyone yet, unfortunately, and I don't know what the issue is.
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Same. Finally no reason to boot Windows on any machine.
For me Proton works sometimes, but I've had much more success with the third party Glorious Eggroll versions that include the Microsoft Codecs used by many games for in-game video.
I’ve been wanting to do this for years on an old (and severely underpowered) MacBook Pro which I use with Windows exclusively for Games.
Do you have any recommendation for an extremely lightweight Linus distro which installs and runs Steam fine? It would be used exclusively for that, so it shouldn’t run a ton of background stuff.
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> I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines?
I know that a large portion of our business is to other resellers and businesses. FWIW, long before I started working here, I replaced XP with Xubuntu on my parent's computer about 15 years ago. I told them that "it works like Windows[0]", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer and scanner worked great! I expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)
[0] If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that most people don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. They care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs.
One thing I wonder about with people moving to linux is whether "it works like windows" can act as a safe and comfortable landing point, but then how many people explore and prefer the options that they then have access to.
One aspect MS has been criticized for over the past few versions of windows is that they are opinionated about how the base windows UI operates and looks for a very large number of users. One of the things I find interesting on the subreddits for some distros is a lot of posts is showing off how they've customized things, so you can nudge people towards the theming support or panel components you can swap out, or that you can have drastically different DEs with different operation models yet handle the same applications.
> I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines?
I got my hands on a Dell that was retired out of an office somewhere for $30+shipping. Add the cost of a couple HDDs, time spent removing a disc drive and installing Linux, I got myself a cheap backup server on my LAN.
They're great for machines you don't want to drop a lot on for basic utilities.
Would just like to add it’s not needed so much now. I’m a pretty avid gamer and I’ve been using Bazzite as my OS now for months without issue.
Proton has completely changed the game (pun not intended). All that’s really missing now is the big studios who won’t release their anticheat for Linux.
My intuition is that most people, unless they have specific needs, just keep it.
Most people likely don't have an opinion besides being able to browse the web and will not even be aware that they are not using Windows.
So this is great work! Keep it up!
I've sold linux mint laptops on ebay and I always reach out after sale basically saying "just to be clear, this isn't running windows, it's linux. I'll be happy to cancel if this isn't what you expected"
and 100% of the time the person was like "yes! Linux is what I wanted"
Well alright then, there you go...
Actually, as a long time Linux Desktop user, i have at least 4, refurbished bought Notebooks in my place yet. Beside the 4, another 3 new new bought Notebooks.
The reason why I buy refurbished is, that my use-cases don't need the newest hardware and for a long time, older hardware was more compatible with Linux and BSD for me. Also, you get for a small price, high quality hardware.
If you now ask yourself, why that many notebooks? Notebooks are like handbags. They have to match the occasion.
I am the same. I decided a few years ago that I really really like the thinkpad t450, and have gradually bought 5 of them online for a total cost of about 300 USD. I may never need to buy a laptop ever again.
Yes, over the past 15 years I bought at least a dozen used thinkpads of the X series (x201, x220, x230 and x1). Most of them are now with other family members and friends (they are now also Linux Desktop user). And I still use 3 of them. One daily, the other weekly, and the 3rd for conferences. Beside that, I am also a fan of the T and yet of the P series. And I have a small collection of thinkpads with the big blue logo from the A and R series, but that's mostly just for fun.
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Agreed! Old laptops are more than powerful enough for Linux, and I like having purpose-oriented computers. The hobby programming computer doesn’t have games on it and is at any rate too weak to run them. The music laptop has every flac I ever ripped from a CD, and precious little disk space for anything else. And so on.
I did something similar back in the before times, an initiative that takes donated devices and give them a second life to people who need it. We had major resistance back then to anything linux.
I thought the Windows license was burned into the BIOS, so a reinstall would pick it up automatically?
It’s not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft maintains a database mapping licenses to hardware identifiers. But transferable licenses still exist, and enterprise volume licenses are yet a different beast, so it all depends on what Windows license the PC was originally sold with, if any.
>It’s not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft maintains a database mapping licenses to hardware identifiers.
Wrong. IT IS 100% stored in the UEFI firmware, specifically ACPI tables, MSDM field. Only if that exists, it is then verified on-line for activation to make sure the license is genuine and matches the device ID you're referring to for witch the license was sold(typically for OEM) or if it's portable.[1]
On linux you should be retrieve the license via something like:
OR
[1] https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-find-windows-10-oem-prod...
I worked selling refurb computers and this wasn't the case from Windows 95 - XP. The rise of TPMs and EFI is after that time so it's possible some newer system provides a way of tying licenses to computers, but it's not BIOS.
Well, it's been 2 decades so things do have changed.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/activate-windows...
https://superuser.com/questions/1575650/how-does-a-windows-d...
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Windows XP has been launched 23 years ago. Things may have changed inbetween.
The biggest issue right now is really the upcoming EOL of Windows 10. Most of these machines will be old enough (pre Intel 8th gen or Zen 2) that they won't be officially supported by Windows 11.
I make a note of both in listings where that is applicable.
It’s in the ACPI tables, in ACPI Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM), not the BIOS. An home user might be able to active it, but the repair shop probably can’t legally.
If it's tied to the hardware, there is no valid reason why the repair shop wouldn't be able to activate it -- a repair shop will use the same public license servers as consumers will.
Btw ACPI is a specification, not a separate piece of hardware. ACPI tables are stored in BIOS nvram, there is no other place for it to go.
On most machines we sell that's probably the case. I don't know of anything that stops me from linking people to the official Windows installation media on Microsoft's site, so I do that even on the listing.
That might be even worse then, you'd be reselling a machine which was licensed under the previous owner's Windows key
How is that worse when the key is bound to the hardware and non-transferable anyway?
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In case of OEM, the license is never directly owned by the owner of the machine; the license is tied to the hardware, and you're selling it on with its license key attached. If you activate Windows using a bought license, that license does not get copied into the hardware.
The link is appreciated! I like the selection of ruggedized laptops.
Thanks! I've been going through my to-do stack, and there was quite a few there. They've been selling fast! I've got a stack of Toughbooks to go through, too... someday.
Hey, that seems like a cool gig
It is! If my supervisor didn't kick everyone out at 5 and lock the place, I'd probably work all night everynight nerding out over everything in there.
Have you considered ChromeOS Flex?
How do you keep them auto-updated? I've just started on Mint and I'm disappointed how the software installer/updater still needs the admin password.
You can either configure unattended updates (e.g. cron-apt or unattended-upgrade), or you can give system administration privileges to other users so they can accept pending updates. I don't think the latter is granular enough to only allow package upgrades, it also allows installing/removing packages.
That’s surprising to hear. It’s been many years since I ran Ubuntu, but I never get a password prompt for the updater on Fedora.