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From: Paul <nospam@needed.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-11
Subject: Re: My week with Linux: I'm dumping Windows for Ubuntu to see how it
 goes
Date: Sat, 17 May 2025 08:39:14 -0400
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On Sat, 5/17/2025 6:40 AM, Michael Logies wrote:
> On Sat, 17 May 2025 12:33:47 +0200, Michael Logies
> <logies@t-online.de> wrote:
> 
>> I work remotely on
>> the Windows VM. Most of the time with Remmina-RDP on ChromeOS,
> 
> Of course via VPN for security (Wireguard on a German router
> (Fritzbox)). A client for Wireguard is integrated in ChromeOS, which
> makes setup easy.
> 

What's a Windows power user again ?

People will be writing articles like the example,
this year, but to what purpose ?

A "blind leading the blind" approach is never going to work.

Some kinds of users, know how to translate articles
like that into "action", but most do not.

The closest so far, to a tool specifically written to
rescue the few hundred million "old machines", is
Google ChromeOS Flex. Their claim is, they released the
thing in the hope it would be useful to Windows Users.
As it turns out, it's written for laptops, because the
drivers seem to be intended for iGPU. I tried to boot
that stick on a machine with an NVidia PCIe video card
and the installer icons would not appear in the installer
GUI. Rather than print "error" and some sort of message,
the thing fails silently, behaving like it "cannot initialize".

But unless the delivery mechanism is "easy", like
the "200 free hours AOL CDs" released years ago as
a marketing campaign, nobody is going to do anything
except throw out their desktops, and hug their smartphones instead.

Nobody is lifting a finger to make a substantial difference.
The average user does not know a thing about preparing USB sticks.
I have enough trouble myself, remembering which tools make
hybrid media from hybrid ISOs, and which tools make installers
that only boot one way. If it takes one hour of labor per user,
we wouldn't have enough people to make a dent in the number
of machines.

There is a really good chance, the machines will not get
recycled properly, and they'll be sitting on the side
of country roads, next to the old sofas and refrigerators
that are already out there. There is one USENETter, who in
the past has found multiple, fully working PCs, on the curb
where he lives.

We used to have one recycler, who took in a few machines,
but their business closed down and a condo skyscraper now
occupies the site they had. I don't know of any big-name
recycler to take their place. All of this stuff...
is going to end up somewhere. The waste collection system
here, will just ignore electronics left on the side of
the curb. I don't think they would even put a sticker on
it with instructions.

At one time, the city government had web pages devoted to
recycling, lists of recyclers who handled specific things.
They've mostly removed all that.

How I got rid of my refrigerator, is an example. I put it
in the driveway. It sat there for two years. I was having
a new central heating furnace put in, and the installer
had a big vehicle with room for it, and he asked if he
could take it. Presumably for the metal content. But
you can't recycle refrigerators without "removing the F gas",
and there is only one recycler I know of, who will put the
labor into doing that properly (zeolite cylinder, vacuum pump).
You're not supposed to vent it to atmosphere. HVAC people
do not volunteer to do that work.

   Paul