Old Tech, New Heck

📆 10 Jul 2026 21:45 UTC +01:00
📕 669 words ⏳ 5 min.
🏷️#Linux

For a lot of people, once their computer starts slowing down, bits start falling off, operating system stops updating/supporting the hardware, they throw it away and buy a new one. This is extremely common with people who use Windows and MacOS, but also kind of fits iOS as well; so basically anything Apple. This, of course, leads to tons of e-waste, with approximately 62 million tons produced globally in 2022 - according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). E-waste is bad for the environment and for us, it can leak toxic gases, and materials into the atmosphere and into water sources, which propagates the toxicity out to every living thing, from plants to animals, leading to health issues - which, obviously. isn’t good.

Why Though?

The biggest reason is that majority of the world use devices running either Windows or MacOS (or iOS/iPadOS and Android for phones and tablets), these operating systems are well known for dropping support for hardware. This happens quite quickly, in the case of iOS, it’s 5 years before the iPhone loses the ability to update to newer versions, and about 7 years before Apple stops pushing security updates. Where people don’t know about alternative operating systems, such as Linux, which doesn’t cut off support for old hardware until it is centuries old (a slight over exaggeration).

What I Use?

I have an old Lenovo Ideapad 110 (from when I started secondary school in 2016), which has some quite outdated hardware. Windows dropped support for it and was very slow and sluggish when it was installed on it. The CPU in this thing is an Intel Celeron N3060, running at 2.48 GHz. A very slow machine even on Linux, but at least with Linux, it’s somewhat usable. I can’t game on it, I can’t render a 3d model in Blender, but I can write, I can code, and I can do basic image editing (slowly) and pixel art.

And, you might ask, why use something so old? And the reason is, it works just fine, a bit slow at times, but for my main tasks, it is just perfect. I have never had any issues with the running of this laptop. The hardware is all still completely functional, there’s some cosmetic damage on the chassis here and there, mostly on the corners from when I took it to school for two years. Software has of course caused problems every so often, but that’s the nature of the beast when you’re a kinaesthetic learner (learn by doing) and spend hours tinkering with things, which inevitably breaks things.

What Can You Do?

The problem of e-waste is a big thing, as mentioned earlier, it’s a worldwide problem, not a local one. When your hardware is no longer support by the operating system on your computer (your desktop, your laptop, your server, heck even your tablet), you can switch away from the proprietary garbage dump that is Windows and install Linux (any distro will do, for beginners though, I recommend Arch - I will write a blost specifically about why soon). This will breath new life into your device and allow you to save money on both hardware and the software licenses. Plus once you come to the Linux side of the world, you will never want to go back (unless you plan on playing some massively multiplayer game with certain anti-cheats who see all Linux users as hackers - we’re not, I promise, I have zero idea how to access your network drives storing all those Linux ISOs).

For other devices, such as Apple, I don’t really know what to recommend (apart from not buying them in the first place). Maybe someone in the Fediverse comments of this blost can suggest how to stop Apple iDevices from becoming e-waste just because Apple drops support.

End of Blost

And that’s that. There’s not much else to say. Let me know your thoughts either by email or in the Fediverse comments. BYEEE!!!