I'm planning to switch mine's to Linux Mint, probably dual-booting just in case.
I got a Macbook Pro 15" 2012 (i7 Ivy quad-core) with an excellent battery for $20. retrofitted it with 16 GB for $15 and a "damaged" 500 GB SSD for $10. runs Fedora with Plasma like a dream - that kinda deal?
this morning scored a 15" hires 2011 for less than $5 that I'm gonna take the screen off and transplant it ova here. plan to rock this beast for many, many moons.
Those are great laptops and were well built. I think the 2011 might have the Radeon GPU issue though but if it's lasted this long, you are probably safe.
My grail was a 17" MacBook Pro from that era. I saw one the other day at a tech market but the vendor wasn't at the booth for me to make an offer =/. I'll swing by again an see if I can get it for around $50. They really do live a second life as Linux machines and OWC keeps me supplied on replacement parts.
I have 2010s (nVidia GT330M) and 2011s (Radeon 6xxx) in various states of decay in the double digits, I get them in the sub$10 range. all of them can easily be repurposed as linux workstations, their finnicky broadcom wifi notwithstanding. all of them can have the discrete graphics turned off, whether they work or not - less heat, longer battery life, no driver complications.
this is the first 2012 I've gotten, as they were always unreasonably expensive for their advanced age - coulda gotten ten 2011s for the price of one 2012! so now I got one and it's... meh; yeah it's better (Ivy vs Sandy, HD4000 vs HD3000, USB3.0, etc.) but nothing spectacular. still, for $20 I could do worse.
Did you follow a certain guide by chance? I have a macbook but I'm slowly finding out that Apple silicone is trickier to setup Linux with.
"a macbook" is kinda broad, what model you got? no, I'm running linux on discarded macbooks for years and know my way around them.
I regret throwing the box away. I think it's a 2019 Macbook Pro with an Intel i7 CPU. The device has been wiped but macOS Utilities is still on it. Last when I was working on it, I think I needed to reinstall a OS in order for the hardware to have a link to the Apple for firmware updates?
Today is a good day to set this device up. It's been on my todo list.
get the serial off the bottom case, go to everymac and look it up. if it's a 15" model, that one has the T2 chip and needs a special variant, look up t2linux
My roommate with his ancient laptop actually wants to pay for extended support of windows 10. He won’t get another computer and he won’t switch to a different os.
There are people this dumb out there.
I get not wanting to get a new computer, but linux is great and probably won't require a new computer for many moons.
I don't believe most people would know about the change, and if they will, I doubt they'll care.
As long stuff don't break, people don't care about OSs. It's just as nerds.
There's no Linux, MacOS, and Windows. There's only 'computer'. The computer works or does not.
Sometimes they'll know Apple has computers too, and they're different. That's usually basically it.
Computer works or computer does not. There's no computer try.
This is the correct answer. The number of people who skip updates is way way higher than most here think. The only ones who stick to it, are nerds and commercial entities...and a lot of those swapped to 11 already.
I'm a nerd and not swapping to any version of Microsoft
perhaps higher amongst fediverse users, but not with the general public.. default settings all around--including auto updates, no intentionally installed browser addons, maybe a wallpaper change. but that's it... is the most common windows configuration we see, by far.
Most people straight up will ignore them for months. Eventually forced to install and reboot. No one is jumping ship to 11 if their system doesn't handle it. They won't even know the shit no longer updates.
Talk about easy targets for ransomware gangs and info-stealers. I wonder what'll be listing all over the .onion sites within a month.
A lot of people will probably just continue using Windows 10, but yeah now I'm wondering what the best models are that don't quiiiite support 11. I'd love to snag an decent tablet-PC
Depending on what your definition of "decent" is, I think you may be disappointed. The cutoff for support is around 8th gen intel and AMD 3000-series from circa 2017-2018. Even my old 2017 laptop with a quad-core i5-8250U is supported.
Unless there are specific recent CPU models which are not supported, I think the majority of the unsupported laptops are going to be decade-old 6th and 7th gen or 1000/2000-series machines. These machines already go for fairly low prices on the used market.
Oh god damnit, i forgot about the discounted laptops. I mean, i still snagged a nice little thing on the cheap, but i probably could've gotten a nicer thing in like two weeks
I bought a second-hand laptop to in an attempt to capitalize on this, but it came with Windows 11 installed anyway.
It was cheap ($300 AUD) and it meets my needs (except for STUPID LENOVO SWAPPING THE CTRL AND FN KEYS LIKE WTF LENOVO SERIOUSLY EVEN IF I SWAP THEM BACK IN THE BIOS THE LINUX TERMINAL STILL HAS THEM SWAPPED) so I'm satisfied.
You can convert existing Windows 10 installs to LTSC or IoT, Without losing files. I've been helping a few people I know switch over the last few days.
I would obviously like it if more people moved to Linux, but most people I know ain't gonna more because of certain software....okay it's mainly Fortnite and Call of Duty. >.>
I'll help anyone with it who actually wants to try Linux, I got at least one person to try dual booting.
I can be a backup for that. Using Linux for fevafrd now.
Could you share your technique om how to turn a an already installed Windows 10 into the LTSC/ IoT versions? My work laptop needs Windows (the software doesnt work with Wine on Linux) and I'd love to stay on Windows 10 for a few more years.
You can use regedit to make the LTSC IoT installer think you're already on an LTSC IoT build so it just installs without doing a clean install.
I first learnt about it from this Youtube video but they only show how to get the base LTSC version and not IoT which will get updates until 2032.
Here's the values I used.
"CurrentBuild"="19044"
"CurrentBuildNumber"="19044"
"EditionID"="IoTEnterpriseS"
"ProductName"="Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021"
"ReleaseId"="2009"
"DisplayVersion"="21H2"
I have them in a registry script along with txt guide I've been sending to my friends. Not sure if I can directly post them here however.
without losing files? could you please share your method? thought this was impossible since ltsc is 21h2 and consumer variant's 22h2.
I replied to another comment explaining it.
for shits and giggles i took a win7 and a win81 straight to iot 24 with no problems on either. run the upgrade from a rufus'd (these were 2009-10 era desktops) usb made from a modded (upgradematrix) iso. going to 10 ltsc or iot should be the same process.
Never tried any of this before, I've barely touched Windows (outside of work) since 2023.
But a few of the more tech savvy people I know had done clean installs of Windows 10 LTSC IoT and recommended it.
So I just launched a VM and started looking stuff up to see if there was a way of doing it without needing a clean install. Because seems most people I know are more willing to risk running an EOL OS than actually backup their shit...
(no consumer is going to pay for extended) begins to really push people to Windows 11
Consumers aren't exactly ecstatic about throwing away perfectly serviceable computers just so Microsoft can push their spyware-cum-advertising platform down their throats either.
I'd say this is a great push towards Linux for anybody who knows anything about computers and isn't a corporation with a dumbass MCSE jockey as an "IT" guy.
I-it advertises cum?
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/28/microsoft-copilot-ais-official-avatar-looks-like-a-blob-of-semen/
They recently announced they are changing it to AI generated avatars
eBay would be the most obvious place (often where computers sold from government auctions or business liquidations end up), but also e-waste recycling centers, actual auctions held by the companies themselves (this is where having a guy on the inside willing to give you a date of liquidation would be perfect), or just simple donations and giveaways that are "as-is".
Do note you can't take all machines that are being removed - in the US at least, computers bought with public money (most often schools), must be sent to e-waste or scrap reclamation due to compliance with government accounting mandates. There are exceptions to this (auctions), but those are usually never at schools or libraries.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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