Something I’ve been working on recently is collecting old and unused laptops from various people I know. Sometimes they’re shitty Chromebooks that can barely be used but sometimes they’re still perfectly good and recent laptops and people just got bored of them and decided to upgrade for whatever reason. I then put Linux on these laptops (even the shitty chromebooks) and distribute them to people at my college who need one.

With the date that Microsoft is stopping support for windows 10 approaching quickly, now’s a great time to prevent e-waste by upgrading to Linux or collecting people’s previous laptops as they upgrade. You can also get distributions that run better than windows on low-end hardware. Even if you don’t know someone who needs a laptop, you can always do something like host a Minecraft server to make use of it.

Also, you can do this to phones too. There are plenty of custom ROMs you can load on Android phones to squeeze more life out of them. Let me know if you want recommendations.

Anyway, I hope that this can inspire more people to try and repurpose electronics to prevent them from becoming e-waste.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    10 days ago

    I have a couple of old Androids I’ve been wondering what to do with, what’s the simplest ROM flash, like what’s the equivalent of installing Linux mint for a phone?

    I’d like to start there