News Linux or Landfill? End of Windows 10 Leaves PC Charities with Tough Choice

[bit_user]

I used to HATE chasing down rpm dependencies in the early 2000s when using Red Hat,

I only made that mistake a couple of times. Also, back in the early 2000's.

Ubuntu and other Debian based have apt, like you said, but I've actually managed to hose more ubuntu installs with apt than I have with dnf and Fedora. Actually, I don't think I've killed a single Fedora install.

The trick is basically don't install anything not specifically compiled for your distro. If it is, then you'll basically be guaranteed that its dependencies will be in the repos and everything in the official repos is pretty much mutually compatible.

It's when you can't get something precompiled for your repo (and snap/flatpak/appimage also aren't provided), that you might need to resort to building it. However, if/when you do, either:

1. Don't install it in /usr/, but instead make a subdir for it, in /opt/.
2. Make a package and install that, via your package manager. This will keep the dependencies straight and make it easy to uninstall. However, if it doesn't already have a spec file for your flavor of distro, then just go with option #1.

 

[USAFRet]

So great, right? Just need a sponsor then, who's willing to pay for the licenses others then put on these devices they refurbish with so much labor effort, which is a real cost as well, even if they sponsor it as free time.

If everything you give away for free may cost absolutely nothing, there is nothing to give away.

Non-profit typically just means that any money accidentally left over winds up as taxes. It doesn't mean you can't have a single € passing through the house.

Of course I'm from Europe and have no idea about any special regulation around US charities. Charities here sometimes have enormous budgets and you hear from them mostly when somebody's fingers got caught in the cookie jar.

These are systems that were donated.
The charity takes some time and refurbs.
Installing Win 10, with whatever license the thing came with originally. $0.
They then give them away, to people who would otherwise not have a system.

Moving through 2025, Win 10 is no longer a viable option.

 

[BwwwJ1st]

Bare with me as I am not Linux literate.

Would a Linux install that boots to the desktop, then loads virtual box, then Windows 11 in a virtual PC work.

 

[USAFRet]

Bare with me as I am not Linux literate.

Would a Linux install that boots to the desktop, then loads virtual box, then Windows 11 in a virtual PC work.

Assuming the VM is set up properly, Probably, yes.p

Buy why?

 

[BwwwJ1st]

Probably, yes.

Buy why?

Possibly a way to avoid the restrictions Microsoft is placing on the older hardware and still recycle donated computers to people with a familiar OS, at least from their perspective. ***edited***

 

[USAFRet]

Possibly a way to avoid the restrictions Microsoft is placing on the older hardware?

For people who know how, there are ways to circumvent that.

For the people this article refers to, you may as well be speaking Sanskrit, translated from the original Klingon.

 

[BwwwJ1st]

I should have made my response clearer. I edited my original response.

 

[USAFRet]

I should have made my response clearer. I edited my original response.

I get that, and thats what I figured you meant.

But if the base hardware is not Win11 compatible...whatever VM voodoo you do is still - Win 11 on unsupported hardware.

 

[sigma1950]

Yeah, it used to be that the one editor you could be certain was installed absolutely everywhere was vi. More recently, I have run into a handful of systems that do not include it in the base install, which I wonder if someone maybe didn't do out of spite.

vi is often replaced by nano or pico. As a non-vi user whats wrong with these 2 text editors. I'm a DOS CLI warrior so am not that green re CLI.

 

[sigma1950]

Bare with me as I am not Linux literate.

Would a Linux install that boots to the desktop, then loads virtual box, then Windows 11 in a virtual PC work.

Any OS running in a virtual machine will be slower than running it natively. Your setup would be quite (unbearably!) slow especially on an old computer!!!!!

 

[abufrejoval]

I get that, and thats what I figured you meant.

But if the base hardware is not Win11 compatible...whatever VM voodoo you do is still - Win 11 on unsupported hardware.

Yes, but Windows 11 will no longer complain about it and just happily install itself.

That's one of the reasons I argue Microsoft's restrictions are obviously artificial.

It's also one of the first things I did, just install Windows 11 inside a virtual machine on my Broadwell Xeon 22-core host, which was officially no longer supported.

Works just fine and with GPU pass-trough, even gaming isn't an issue.

And of course running Windows 11 IoT LTSC works just fine bare metal on that machine, too. Because that edition doesn't have the stupid restrictions of the normal Windows 11 releases... which proves again, that it's not an OS thing, but politics.

It was the opposite direction with Windows 7 on Kaby Lake: Windows 7 refused to install on Kaby Lake, because Microsoft didn't their old OS on new hardware, but inside a VM that wasn't issue.

Somebody needs to tell M$, they aren't boss on your PC, just a hireling.

And no, it's not voodoo, just useful abstractions. Supporting live migration of VMs is very much a standard feature and hypervisor CPU abstractions were negotiated across x86 vendors to enable that even across Intel and AMD hosts. If you passed the physical details of all CPUs directly to a VM, you'd have a hard time migrating any VMs at all, because operating systems don't like you swapping CPU type in-flight.

 

[abufrejoval]

Bare with me as I am not Linux literate.

Would a Linux install that boots to the desktop, then loads virtual box, then Windows 11 in a virtual PC work.

If you go that route, it's actually better not to boot to the desktop, because that tends to grab the GPU.

Of course you can still get an emulated GPU via SPICE or some other virtual GPU device, and that may be ok for some use cases.

But if you want full GPU access in Windows e.g. for Games you can have it boot basically headless and then give the GPU via pass-through to the Windows VM, so you can use it with full acceleration.

That used to be a bit more practical on server base boards with remote access adapters, because you still want console access to the Linux base in case something when wrong there.

But these days lots of workstations allow you to keep your iGPU active, while the dGPU gets heavy lifting and then you can split them between the Linux base and a Windows (but also Linux or any other OS) VM.

Since I use KVMs [keyboard/video/mouse switch] anyway, I can use those to split between the host and the guest GPUs e.g. on Proxmox, which typically installs in text-mode. For the KVM[the hypervisor] split it helps to use USB ports from different controllers for the keyboard and mouse, because that makes them easier to split between host and VM as they are in different IO-groups for the IOMMU.

The other option is a serial console for Linux, a bit more of a mess these days, but it gives you some really old school vibes.

I use this setup a lot for functional testing, because it allows for super easy rollback to snapshots, which can be quite a bit harder on bare metal.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

I’m curious, are there any virtual machines that boot from bios, bypassing a host OS, into which win 11 could be installed?

I’ve not used a vm ..

 

[abufrejoval]

I’m curious, are there any virtual machines that boot from bios, bypassing a host OS, into which win 11 could be installed?

I’ve not used a vm ..

All known flavors of VMs come with their own BIOS, actually two, one traditional one to support ancient OS (one of the main uses of VMs), another that's then UEFI.

Replicating your typical PC they then allow you to either run or install pretty near any OS known to PCs, including Windows 11 on machines as old as a Nehalem.

For Windows 11 the only condition (and new with Windows 11 24H2) is support for the POPCNT instruction.

I've got images with DOS, QNX, NT4, Win95, 95 and ME, as well as XP/7 and all kinds of Linux. Many of them preserve old applications which simply won't run any other way.

VMs are fun, you should really try them and these days even VMware workstation is free of charge (not free of bugs, though).

 

[USAFRet]

All this talk of VM's is completely off topic for what the article is talking about.

Yes, a Win 11 instance can be stood up in otherwise unsupported hardware. Geeks such as you and I can do this easily.
The target audience for these PC's...not so much.


Likewise, LTSC or IoT installs. That entails a direct cost that the charity did not have before.


Lets try to explore some options that don't outgeek the users, or cost a bunch of non-existent money.

 

[t3t4]

Windows 11, such a garbage operating system..... What a waste! Microsoft going green and proves it by filling land fills everywhere!

But the question remains, which is more stubborn, a bull, Microsoft, or a Windows 10 user? When 98% of the world hates this garbage OS and 58%+ cannot run it or refuse to run it, what does that say about Microsoft when they refuse to fix the mess they've created? Tank their stock price, I bet they'll list then!

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Umm .... Windows 10 is not going to suddenly explode , shutdown or be insecure just because MS says so. You are perfectly safe to continue doing whatever it is you are currently doing.

If someone wants to protect their PC the #1 thing they can do is not click links sent on email. Seriously, that's it, do not click email links and you just stopped virtually every hacking attempt on the planet.


Resource limited non profits should be using Ubuntu or Mint anyway, those distro's are designed for this exact scenario.

You'd shocked at how many fall for that. A good friend called me because his girlfriends laptop was locked when she clicked on scareware. So she clcked on it to remove the bogus virus.

I later found out this wasn't the first time it happened to her. She previously paid with a credit card to unfreeze her laptop for the very same reason.

 

[peterf28]

Linux is fine when you only use browser and Libreoffice, and maybe printing if you have a supported printer.

But the moment you need Samba, network browsing, some uncommon configuration beyound what UI configuration tool supports, etc ... Then you realise why Linux is still not desktop-ready in 2025.

Creating a desktop OS is not a trivial task.

 

[nrdwka]

LTSC iot version does not need TPM and don't ask more then regular windows 11 to be activated 🤔

 

[Grobe]

Linux is fine when you only use browser and Libreoffice, and maybe printing if you have a supported printer.

That list is insincere and way too short. I use it for 3D tasks, various video editing projects, photo album storage, photo editing and much more for several years now.

But the moment you need Samba, network browsing, some uncommon configuration beyound what UI configuration tool supports, etc ... Then you realise why Linux is still not desktop-ready in 2025.

Disagree. After I learned the basic of ssh/rsynk I've managed to use my home network as link between the major multimedia storage and backup computer. I'd say the tools that are included with Linux are much more powerful than the tools that comes with windows.
In addition, the Linux Mint team have come up with this tool called Warpinator that makes a very easy way of transferring files between computers on the local network. No need to set up a shared folder to use this.

 

[RaiderB0t]

..."The solution is obvious: Run the new OS even if you don’t like it."

Ummm NO. Like seriously full stop NO. The solution for most charities which are already grossly underfunded is to continue happily running Windows 10. As I will be. Its only April, and I bet by October MS will be back-peddling on the whole "not releasing any new patches" for the majority distro of the world. I love Linux too but but cannot envision "JoAnn" who has a heart the size of Texas but an interest in IT or working knowledge of Linux installs to just repave their IT infrastructure. Win10 will simply live on.

 

[LordVile]

Recycling is also an option

 

[palladin9479]

You'd shocked at how many fall for that. A good friend called me because his girlfriends laptop was locked when she clicked on scareware. So she clcked on it to remove the bogus virus.

I later found out this wasn't the first time it happened to her. She previously paid with a credit card to unfreeze her laptop for the very same reason.

It's a combination of people running with administrative (root) privilege's and clicking links sent to them over email or other social media. Those links reach out to badguyville and pull some sort of javascript or html5 code, then it's a showdown between badguy and if your local defender / whatever can stop it.

It all stops if people would just practice basic cybersecurity advice, do not click on links in email.

 

[USAFRet]

It all stops if people would just practice basic cybersecurity advice, do not click on links in email.

"But its from my nephew!! You know...Kevin. And he's really good with computers, so I trust it!!"

 

[palladin9479]

Disagree. After I learned the basic of ssh/rsynk I've managed to use my home network as link between the major multimedia storage and backup computer. I'd say the tools that are included with Linux are much more powerful than the tools that comes with windows.
In addition, the Linux Mint team have come up with this tool called Warpinator that makes a very easy way of transferring files between computers on the local network. No need to set up a shared folder to use this.

I highly advice against using rsync, it's a tool from an older era and has some serious security flaws. There are other ways, usually more complicated, that let you sync folder contents across multiple systems.