The city (Brussels) falls short when it comes to preventing the waste of old but working PCs. Oxfam at Chaussée d’Ixelles 252 will only take PCs as old as 5 years. Generally if it has a Win8 or newer sticker, they take it. Win7 or older they reject.
Any PC can be dumped at C2fd (Quai Fernand Demets 54) regardless of age and they decide whether to trash it, sell it, or (I think) pass it downstream to Oxfam or Les Petits Riens. Looking at the machines on the shelves, there is nothing older than 5 years. It’s apparently getting trashed.
The mentality seems to be: if it can’t drive a version of Windows that is still officially supported, it’s trash. Yet I am working quite comfortably on a 2 core machine of nearly 20 years old, running a recent version of linux (used to write this post).
Neglecting business, there should be machines up to 15 years old on the shelves at C2fd, Oxfam, and Les Petits Riens with linux installed, and a “gratis” price tag (or nearly so). I don’t know what C2fd’s mission is, but Oxfam and LPR is they sell things to bring in money for charity. Is there no chance that the old (hard to sell) PCs could directly be put to use for their charitable causes, whatever that is?
In any case, with no business incentive for them to deal with old machines, the machines are needlessly going to waste. I have several PCs I don’t need, rescued from street curbs and too old for Oxfam.
Every public library with PCs has only Windows PCs. In principle, these 6+ y/o machines could go to libraries at no cost, which would give the public a way to experience linux. And what about schools? Are any schools in Brussels forward-thinking enough to have linux labs for student use?
The tech contractors working for libraries have user support phobia. They have made themselves unavailable and resist deploying any technology that triggers questions. So e.g, if wi-fi does not work with your equipment, there is no support channel (and they were not smart enough to support 802.11b and avoid captive portals). So they simultaneously fail in their mission to avoid creating a need for support.
It’s difficult for institutions to justify, because support people (here) are relatively more expensive than new hardware from China, this is partly because we tax income rather than resource use.
Some parts are more worth re-using than others. For example, I keep old macs which calculate relatively slowly, but still have high-quality, high-res screens, which are still useful for some tasks (didn’t convert to linux, as most dev software works similarly on either). However I’m not convinced older chipsets are valuable - most use more energy and contain more rare-metals than newer equivalents. So we should also get better at recycling.However I’m not convinced older chipsets are valuable - most use more energy and contain more rare-metals than newer equivalents. So we should also get better at recycling.
Recycling also has a carbon footprint. The old machines use the same amount of power as the new ones. More power per units of computation, but that makes no difference if you are not doing anything computationally intensive. Laptops slow down the clock rate when idling and when the workload is low.
I think there is no difference in power consumption for most users because most people are just browsing the web. But indeed if someone is a heavy gamer, mining cryptocurrency, or rendering 3d graphics, they would see a reduced energy consumption with a fast modern CPU.
I will not buy anything newer than 2013 because all chips after that point are spy chips (intel management engine, trustzone, secure enclave, etc).
In Finland the city of Helsinki is selling its workers’ old laptops so that they completely clean the hard disk, then install Ubuntu Linux on it and bring it to the city administration’s Uusix-shop at Kyläsaarenkatu 8J to be sold to anyone for a price of 30 € to 120 €, depending on the specs. My last five computers have come there.
Someone should sell a worker from Brussel city to see how it works!
For any institution administration and maintenance cost a lot. Using older, more labor intensive, less reliable and inconsistent hardware is often not worth it.
For the majority of users, being able to run a current version of Windows is a prerequisite.
Running older hardware and Linux is something for computer savvy folks, not the average person.
Running older hardware and Linux is something for computer savvy folks, not the average person.
That’s 1990s talk. Ubuntu and similar distros have become common for tech illiterates. Munich switched to linux for a while, until MS bribed their way back, in which case it was the bribery that made the difference not incompetence.
I know someone who worked in Munich‘s administration during the Linux time. They never managed to complete the switch to Linux and there were ongoing practical limitations.
It was nothing that could not be overcome. A lot of it was fussy people complaining that they didn’t have MS Word and tools they were accustomed to… standard resistance to change. The difference was made when MS agreed to put their HQ in Munich.
Microsoft has had their German headquarters there before.
The transition was tried for a decade and these were not overcome.
