My wife has asked me not to turn the house into a tech junkyard.
Madness? Buying a new computer every 2 years because the OS vendor is in cahoots with hardware manufacturers is madness. This is rational usage of resources for your benefit.
Buy e-waste? I have people give it to me for free. Offer to recycle it for them.
The classic
offers to recycle
actually installs esoteric Linux distros
Classic!
I run a Windows 7 laptop and bought a PC at Value Village and maxed out the RAM thanks to Aliexpress. Junk FTW!!
OP after trying Linux:
The dump I go to every week to drop off my household garbage has an e waste shed. The guys that work there told me I can pick through it. My basement is a pc graveyard now.
This is the life I want for myself.
I came here to discover why this tactics gets the full clown… yes… we must renew machines and THEN GIVE THEM AWAY.
Yeah I tend to archive hardware till I meet someone who needs a system then I try to put something together that meets their needs. Otherwise I mothball it till I have a hardware failure in one of my servers etc. Thankfully the systems I am taking are heading for a grinder somewhere and not being repurposed.
Exactly.
In the late zeroes, the local recycle place got a bunch of full monitors as a local business transitioned to flat screens. I grabbed about twelve of them, thinking I would be able to build machines for kids without computers. I placed three full systems before we moved and I sadly had to dump a slew of them because we didn’t have space in the moving truck. Learned my lesson.
I’ve started keeping a handful of cases and I test all the hardware, catalog it and then put it in totes layered with anti static bubble wrap. Works great for jamming a large density of hardware in a small space!
What’s the oldest?
So far 2008-2009. Waiting to find some quality beige cases lol
Windows: creates e-waste
Linux: undoes e-waste
Windows: creates e-waste
Linux: collects e-waste under the stairs “just in case it’s useful”
All the computers living under the stairs are running some server function. 🤷♂️
They’re heating the room too so technically it’s a radiator with network attached storage!
SmArt RAdiAToR!!
Unless you have an Asus m32cd_a_f_k20cd_k31cd motherboard. I’ve tried EVERY bloody configuration in the bios possible and several different distros, and they all crash / freeze during installation. Fuck you Asus 🤬
Just because you have OS install media and hardware does not mean the hardware functions. In fact, old hardware often fails MEMTST.
I’m sure that is often the case. But with this series, Its this specific model. A friend of mine has the Asus M32 from the previous year and he was able to get mint installed without any issues. Just bad luck with the model I bought. It’s always given me headaches so not being able to switch to linux tracks
Have you tried LibreBoot? Is that still a project?
That is a cursed name for a motherboard.
Gramps went musk off with giving weird names.
Does anyone have a few optiplexes lying around?
My favorite dependable cheap Linux host. Just sucks about the power draw.
I have an Optiplex SFF woth an i5-6500TE. It has a maximum TDP of 35 watts.
The little ones are great
The desktop ones are great for storage arrays, especially with an LSI controller thrown in.
Getting visibly annoyed whe you find out you can’t easily run mainline linux on some proprietary piece of hardware like a phone or smart TV.
But hey at least my robot vacuum runs on Ubuntu by default lol.
And Taco Bell drive thru, apparently
My vacuum proudly runs Valetudo!
Haha same! FIrst thing I did was make a soundpack and install oucher so it makes funny voicelines when it bumps into objects lol.
Wait really?
Yeah on Roborock at least, dunno if they changed distros for newer robots though.
Oh wow and it comes with Matter support for local server use!!!
I started at the bottom with ewaste, it is truly amazing what companies will just throw away because they don’t want to deal with it.
I am really looking forward to picking up some cheap used mini PCs here in a few months after the market gets flooded from corporates disposing of their old hardware because of the Windows 10 end of life. Consumers have already started ditching them now, but it takes a minute for enterprise to get it to a disposal company who then gets to pawn it off on the used market and that’s the good stuff.
Your average company is woefully prepared to deal with ewaste. If you sell it, there are legal and financial ramifications. Assuming you could make at most a couple hundred on a box, the labor to take it someplace, deal with finance, deal with legal, deal with returns for anything that goes doa in the move. The best you can do is sell or give it to a wholesaler who will give you near nothing for it to shoulder the risk.
Whenever possible, I release old hardware to end users. Refresh it, let them give it to their kids/family/whatever.
If you can believe it, there are some people who will straight up give you their e-waste, as if it’s trash or something!
I have 3 old cellphones that for the life of me, no matter how hard I tried - couldn’t install an alt android OS on it
One device was compatible - but I couldn’t unlock the boot loader
One device was never tested against any alt OSes
One device was carrier locked.
I also have one old Galaxy Tab that I spent weeks trying to flash another ROM to it - and it fails every time.
I’m 0/4 on trying to reanimate old android hardware - it’s just too difficult and too much hoops to go through.
At least I’m fairly capable with installing Linux on old laptops - and given that a new wave of Win11 compatible laptops is coming - I’ll get to do it more frequently soon.
I haven’t tried to do LUKS yet, and I’m dying to get my hands on a Yubikey and learn what I can make it do.
Mobile device flashing is a fucking alien world. Samsung products are not good for it, especially in the US.
The alt OS’s are mainly built against ancient hardware, and the SKUs that work are so limited that they’re not particularly cheap on the used market.
The best thing you can do is go fairphone or pixel and specifically get one of the models that is directly claimed as supported.
If you can’t get it to work, find the OS forums and hop in, someone will bend over backward to help you out if you’re nice about it.
Yeah. I have like 5 collecting dust. Should give them away (not us) but I’m pretending that I’ll set up a fake cloud service to try terraform (open stack maybe?)
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I’m pretty certain at this point that I’m about to be forced to buy some programming socks.
Linux being a sexuality is a myth!
I beg to disagree. I am only attracted to Linux users.
Ehh, big bucks and job security can be quite an afridesiac. Just have to make sure to stay clean and presentable, and share some leisure activities that your potential mates will enjoy.
“What do you mean, ‘Why do I need that stack of old ThinkPads?’. They were free!”
Who needs virtual machines when I can just use a separate device for every distro I want to try?
Very true. Also, redundancy
Why would I need an enterprise router if I can have a superfast, very extendable, very flexible and redundant router with two old desktop machines?
Power efficiency.
that’s like stage 7-8, after an extremely high electric bill. Also about that time you consider moving to a colder climate so the electronics can just heat your house.
I kinda love it in winter mornings when I’m a bit chilly and then I kick off a big compile or play something and there is this lovely warmth flowing from my main desktop and then I make a big cup of chai.
and space savings and convenience.
Also: Openwrt is a kind of Linux. That can be useful sometimes, when I need 10 custom wifi routers…
Where are you all getting free thinkpads from?
We are trash pandas at your next companys trash bin. They follow like minions M$ directly into Win11 hell.
Make friends with your local IT guys. Thinkpads are less common these days, because they’re “Chinese”, so it is more common to find dells (which usually are worse in my experience).
Unrelated, but I just took apart my old IBM thinkpad from 2003/2004 to clean it up and get all nice and pretty for it’s last few years of updates. I also did my newer-ish HP laptop from 2016 at the same time.
The thinkpad was just beautifully laid out, with thought put into the placement of vents, heat sinks, heat generating components, alternative air pathways if the entire bottom was blocked, easy maintenance of components, etc.
The HP was …not. The weakest ass heat sink I’ve ever seen, miles away from the processor (no wonder it sounded like a wind tunnel when playing a youtube video). One intake vent where your thigh would be if in your lap and the exhaust right where your knee would be. Extra bonus was the placement of the CPU (running usually 80c+) is right above your junk, the vent being offset from the processor a smidge.
Granted I’m comparing enterprise vs consumer laptop in the days when there was a massive difference in quality between the two, but damn, this experience has me decided (again) that internal layout and design is just as important as specs, even more so if you need more powerful components.
I have a literal suitcase full if 4TB SAS drives. Because they were free and pretty much unused.
Fun fact: A pelicase of 37 3.5" drives is the max weight you’re allowed in a single checked piece with common airlines. I had to give three drives to the check in clerk.
And just think how quickly you can get them all up and running with NixOS! All those endless hours of learning finally put to good use!
Beats contributing to the documentation/wiki. /s
Who needs documentation? The code is self-documenting! The entire thing’s on GitHub, just check the issues to figure out what’s going on! Didn’t work? Sorry, the thing got broke a few months ago. Just go through the commit history and I’m sure you’ll be up and running in no time!
I’ve also made a module that fixes your specific issue and uploaded it to my self hosted gitlab instance. The server is down right now? Well, isn’t that better? Now you can make the thing yourself! Remember to upload your thing to your GitHub, name it something like “nixos” and never mention it anywhere.
Just put my custom flake into your inputs! No, I won’t give ydu an example on how to integrate it into your config. The Flakes schema is an incredibly easy concept to grasp, after all. /s
Well, if you can’t figure out how to integrate the flake in 30 seconds by month 6, you clearly have a skill issue. Or a “sleeping at night instead of writing nix” issue. Better use a noob-friendly distro like arch.
Seriously though, despite all the flaws, there is no other packaging system where I can as painlessly use random forks of packages. I absolutely love how I’m able to run gnome-mobile on my x64 tablet. True to the NixOS way, I found the overlay on someone’s GitHub, there were only the files, no further instructions.
I also have a USB with live debian at all times, because you never know when you stumble upon a thing that just can’t work with NixOS
You’d be a fool to leave them!
I mean if they’re free you can always sell them for cheap and feel good about making some money while reducing e-waste
Usually it’s more a give away after installing mint on them, but it’s better than genuinely just tossing them for stuff newer than 7-8th gen intel.
There’s about to be a lot more surplus hardware since Microsoft arbitrarily decided they can’t update to Windows 11.
And real good specs on most those machines, most will be at least DDR4 some even DDR5
My mom’s laptop self “upgraded” to win 11 a while back and she hates it and has been having issues nonstop. And since she refuses to pay a monthly subscription for office I set her up with Libre office. She’s been resistant to Linux but as I slowly add more FOSS apps she’s coming around. She’s now willing to try a Linux Mint live USB.
I’m going to be on the lookout for one of these perfectly good laptops and throw Mint on it for her so she can keep her windows laptop until she’s ready to fully make the switch.
if you want a LOT of them, govdeals.com is a way to go. You might hate me for showing you that place. Its how I ended up with a great generator for my house as well as too many servers.
I remember that site, looked into it a few years ago when I was buying in bulk to resale stuff on eBay. Thanks for the tip, but I’m really just looking for one laptop.
According to a lot of Lemmy users, this is impossible. Linux never works and windows is solid as fuck. Never fails to work perfectly. Lol
Someone told me on my previous instance, before it shut down, that no one actually used Linux, that everyone even me was just lying about using Linux.
Linux cannot even make the fans work most of the time. You would think it could at least do that. On windows they go all the time!
There’s a utility called ‘furmark’ that’ll fix that for you…
Everything I have with DDR5 is running Win11. I have some DDR3 machines on Win10 tho. And of course DDR4. Just in my house I have three pretty decent DDR4 gaming rigs with compatible CPUs, SSDs, and nice video cards 3070ti and 4070ti, but the motherboard isn’t up to spec. I don’t like Win11 anyway though. I’ll have to figure those out soon I guess.
just start spinning up liveUSBs and trying distros out. I have my partner on Nobara and they seem to like it and it rolls in fast game fixes, and from what I was told if you sail the 7 seas you can still install them just fine with lutris and latest gloriouseggroll proton.
This is what gave me the idea. I started watching videos of people doing this with recycled hardware, and it looks so fun.
Those images are in the wrong direction.
What if I like being the clown?
