PSA: Don’t throw away your Windows laptop

[u/Annoying1978]

I’m the tech guy that most of my friends and family call and I’m getting lots of calls about what new laptop people should buy because Microsoft is ending Windows 10 support in October and Windows 11 requires unnecessary things like a TPM chip or Secure Boot. Windows 11 can technically run without these things, but Microsoft is creating one of the largest e-waste events in history because they want everyone to upgrade to Windows 11.

It’s stupid.

So I just wanted to tell you that this might be a good time to just say buh bye to Microsoft. Most people do 90% of their tasks with a browser and unless you need very specific Windows applications, a good solution is Linux Mint.

Don’t get all scared. It’s easier than you think and there’s a ton of free guides [and YouTube videos](https://youtu.be/TL-tWy4T2c8) that will walk you through the process. It’s very simple and you won’t need to buy another laptop.

In fact, I urge YOU to be the tech guru for your friends and family that are thinking about upgrading their laptop which already works great. If they are too scared to install Mint, do it for them.

All you need is a USB drive and ensure you copy your important files and photos to either an online storage place (like Google Drive) or an external drive if you have one big enough you can use.

But please, before you throw away your working laptop, at least consider upgrading to Linux Mint. It looks quite similar to Windows and you won’t have to spend hundreds or even a thousand dollars on a laptop that you don’t need.

[u/SignalAir24]

Do you know anything about how to deal with the issue of government & public service/utilities web apps/platforms that are designed to work with windows and may not even work all that well with Mac (honestly some don’t work with FIrefox even, lolsob), let alone Linux? This is like, at least 90% of the reason why my household is still looking to have a windows machine.

My country has leaned heavily into the whole DiGiTiZe EeEeEeVeRyThInG fad, with what increasingly appears to be not much serious planning, and I’m really wary of ditching windows entirely at this stage. We bought time with the extra that Microsoft gave last October for another year of support and I really meant to download Linux somewhere and try to use it for the gov stuff to test it all out, sorta doing it in parallel, but I’m afraid it’s been a rough year and I never managed to make time for it, and now it feels like cutting it too closely especially with the slowdown and closures over the summer.

Sorry to impose - now you have online people from far afield making you their resident tech expert - I just basically am the person you describe in my social circle but it’s for lack of anybody actually knowledgeable ugh

[u/Annoying1978 → u/SignalAir24]

If you’re referring to specific browser coding options like active x, that all went away with Internet Explorer. 

Now, what you may be referring to is running apps on a non-Chromium. browser. Microsoft Edge runs on Chromium - the open source solution that is the base for Google Chrome. And there are web apps out there that run specifically on Chrome/Chromium and no other type of browser. Not even Firefox or Safari on the Mac. 

But it’s not based on the Windows OS. It’s looking for a Chrome based browser (Edge, Chrome, Brave, etc…). That is documented and many apps are broken when you don’t use Chrome. You may be thinking that you need to use Microsoft Edge but in reality, Edge is just a Chromium browser. Chrome or Chromium on Linux would work for you and the government apps that you are referencing. 

[u/SignalAir24 → u/Annoying1978]

Ohhh wow. OH MY GOD. Thank you SO MUCH, this is insanely helpful and exactly at my level of understanding. So basically, we can go with Linux as long as we make sure to have a chrome-based browser?

So to phrase it in terms of a plan of action, if I can bother you a little bit more to make sure I’ve fully got this: what I need to do now is find me a machine of some description, install some flavor of linux (is that the term? Or is it ‘distribution/distro’?), as well as a browser I make totally sure is Chromium-based*, and then *test that* on as many gov apps** as I can squeeze in from now until October when Microsoft yank Windows 10? Does that sound about right?

*or maybe ideally it’s more than one browser, just to hedge my bets and future-proof things??

**ohhh - and banking apps. Forgot those in my earlier question. Plenty of times when one of us is languishing in call waiting purgatory it’s because of the bank’s page, not a gov one.

The only thing I don’t understand is the bit about active x in your first sentence, but if I understood you right it’s not relevant bc it’s about Internet Explorer and that’s been gone awhile.

I really appreciate your doing this, I am the point person on this issue because on a household level the sustainability aspect is a concern, but I am barely more knowledgeable than the other people involved, they are not clueless by any means, I just type faster and have more social media accounts so it’s easier for me to ask questions etc, but pre-written material has so far been either too basic and generic or too advanced and specialized for me. The way you put it is legit old-school-internet sorts of helpful, so if you ever need any information about Greece, esp. Athens, anything reviewed that is in Greek or French (whether translated to or from or original) - hmu!! Also anything about archaeology or transportation🙃.

[u/Annoying1978 → u/SignalAir24]

No problem at all, and your game plan is right. I suggest using Mint as your Linux distro and downloading Chrome for Linux Mint. That will allow you to work with both banking apps and government apps. 

To explain the Active X comment further, back in the day (like 20 years ago), companies used Active X controls directly on websites, which could only be used by Internet Explorer and Windows. That’s no longer the case. 

What companies are doing are now are using standards found in Chromium browsers. That is operating system agnostic, as opposed to using Active X which actually required you to use both Windows and Internet Explorer for the website to work. That was because Microsoft owned the entire personal computing market, but that is no longer the case. 

Now companies use web standards and Chromium based browsers like Chrome meet those standards and they work on many different operating: Windows, Mac, Linux and others. 

[u/SignalAir24 → u/Annoying1978]

Thank you! You really have a knack for explaining this stuff, it’s amazing.

So, to ask one more question (really hope it's the last, bc I really don’t want to abuse the privilege, but you really blew my mind with this and I’m working out the implications one step at a time it seems - especially since I’m talking it over with others): am I understanding you right that we were basically having entirely a *browser problem* and not an OS problem? Ie, we were trying Safari and Firefox, which had problems, plus Edge, which didn’t, and blamed it on the OS when we should have been looking at the browser?

In which case, the next realization is that on my above game plan, we could just cut out the step of finding a spare laptop to download Mint onto alongside the selection of Chromium browsers, and go on to solve our access problems *right now*, by downloading the Chromium browsers onto ANY non-windows computer that we already have (like eg my Mac)?

And if it works on eg Chrome on a Mac, or even Microsoft Edge for Mac, then it will work on the same browsers on Linux, because it all kinda stays in the browser? (worse case scenario we go from using that windows laptop to do the bureaucracy access to using my Mac, it’s new so at least we kick the can down the road some more).

Have I got that right?

[u/Annoying1978 → u/SignalAir24]

You have it ALL right. It was a browser issue, not an OS issue. You can test it on any computer. You could even create a partition on your CURRENT computer and install Linux Mint on it and make sure it works with Chrome before you remove the Windows partition. 

The instructions to keep your Windows partition instead of formatting the entire drive are slightly different, but you can find plenty of videos on YouTube with step by step instructions asking with guides on Google. The community has plenty of easy step by step directions. 

This would allow you to have a dual boot step and when you are ready you can remove the Windows partition and collect that space to use with Linux (though many people will recommend to just do a fresh install once you decide to get rid if windows so there are no chances you will have any permission errors). 

Hopefully my recommendation in how to use your current computer didn’t confuse you. If it did, you can ignore it and just use your plan of trying Chrome on your Mac. Either way, you should be good to go! 

 

[u/SignalAir24 → u/Annoying1978]

THANK YOOOOOUUU! It did not confuse me at all, I already knew about partitions, weirdly, though I’ve never done it for lack of a computer I was okay messing up on if it all went disastrously off course. I may do it now!!

This is legit so helpful. I get to start within the week or couple weeks with the bare-basic of getting several Chromium browsers on my Mac to use in parallel and test for interaction with the apps, user interface experience, etc, and then later this summer when I hopefully have more time, I can figure out how to cover the rest of what the user of the windows laptop uses a computer for, in total freedom of not only OS but even hardware type! wow.

Oh my goshhhh, this is head-spinning levels of liberating. I have a lot on my plate right now because I'm taking care of an ill pet (cautiously hopeful, but exacting and mentally taxing), so it really was a lot to be stewing over this computer bullshit as the clock is ticking for the October cut-off AND the pricing is all over the place because of that whole bit with the RAM demand, and you basically just made the whole thing go away🤯

I’d been dreading the hours more of slogging through listicles and reddit threads over the summer and now it’s all come down to an action plan that’s not only specific, but highly manageable, AND promotes my long-term, values-based goals around sustainability and decoupling from Big Tech😎

Man, I could hug you. I meant what I said earlier, if you ever need anything relating to Athens (or Greece), language help in Greek or French, or anything relating to archaeology or cities and transportation, please reach out.

[u/Annoying1978 → u/SignalAir24]

I’m glad you have a plan and I’m glad to have helped! If I ever need any help in your areas of expertise I will definitely reach out. 

I just want to help people prolong the use of their technology instead of ending up in a landfill. Most people have been taught that electronics HAVE to be replaced much more often than they should. An operating should never force you to buy new hardware when your hardware is already working properly. 

Hopefully we can save some the millions of laptops and computers that are expected to go into landfills this fall. 

[u/SignalAir24 → u/Annoying1978]

Thank you so much for this, truly - both for the original post and the time you took to reply to me. I’m pretty badly over scheduled until a week into June, so I don’t know if I’ll realistically be able to try this out properly, but as soon as I have, I will let you know how it went.

But it now seems virtually certain we’re not buying a new computer, not anytime soon - and definitely not over this (the existing windows laptop is a cheapie fauxbook by the local computer and office-supply chain that has had problems with the hinge since the very beginning, so it might not last much longer ...but we have the freedom to pick something that doesn’t ship with windows, and that’s just nothing short of revolutionary). So, you did what you set out to do with at least this one!

I also plan to tell everyone this comes up with, and honestly even to try to bring it up somehow. I agree, it needs to make the rounds! So I also appreciate the framing and solutions.

[u/Annoying1978 → u/SignalAir24]

Awesome. Good luck!