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

Unless Microsoft changes its mind at the last minute, Windows 10 will stop receiving free security updates this coming October. For those who can upgrade to Windows 11, the solution is obvious: Run the new OS even if you don’t like it. But there are hundreds of millions – by one estimate 240 million – PCs that don’t meet Microsoft’s stringent Windows 11 hardware requirements.

If you’re a consumer or a business, Microsoft and the PC industry would very much like you to toss these systems in the trash and buy new computers to take their place. But forgotten in this capitalist crush are all the charities that refurbish older computers and give them to people who can’t afford to purchase one.

These non-profits are sitting on a plethora of still-working computers that can’t run Microsoft’s latest OS. Do they give clients a soon-to-be-insecure Windows 10 computer, send older computers to an ewaste recycler, toss them in the trash or try to install some form of Linux?

And Windows 11-ineligible PCs can be pretty recent and powerful. Microsoft’s list of system requirements for Windows 11 seem basic at first glance. You need a 1-GHz or faster CPU with at least two cores, you need 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, Secure Boot capability and TPM 2.0 compatibility.

However, Microsoft’s supported Intel CPU list for Windows 11 only goes back as far as 8th Gen chips (Coffee Lake), which first came out in 2017, and its AMD CPU list only incorporates Ryzen 2000 series (from 2018) and above. That means computers which came out in 2017, 2018 or maybe even 2019 (with a last-gen chip for the time) are ineligible. They could have 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD and still not make the cut.

Some of these ineligible computers will continue to run old Windows, others will be loaded with a different OS entirely. Some will end up in ewaste recycling where most of the parts can be reclaimed. However, a good chunk will end up in landfills. According to one estimate, only 14 to 40 percent of U.S. ewaste gets recycled at all.

My 12 year old son and I recently joined a local computer refurbishment charity where we live on Long Island. The folks who run our organization are still installing Windows 10 on non-Windows 11-eligible computers because they don’t want to give our clients an unfamiliar user experience.

Many of the clients are seniors, and they may not have the patience or tenacity to work with a different OS that can’t run all the same software they are used to. School children are used to running Windows in school and would want a computer that more closely mirrors the experience they have in class. Installing a new OS might also mean more support calls from folks who can’t figure out the subtle differences between the Linux desktop and Windows.

However, by sticking with Windows 10, we are also leaving our clients with insecure computers that could put them in some danger when the updates stop in October.

“Deploying Windows 10 at this time is a bad idea,” Chester Wisniewski, who serves as Director and Global Field CISO for Sophos, a major security services company, told us. “The writing is on the wall. Microsoft has made the internal decision to obsolete this equipment, so I guess they just don't want more people to use Windows.”

It almost goes without saying that charity clients won’t be the only ones running Windows 10 later this year. According to Statcounter, Windows 10 still makes up 58.7 percent of all Windows installs versus just 38.1 percent for Windows 11. It seems unlikely that all of those computers will have been upgraded to Windows 11 or replaced with newer, Windows 11 PCs by October.

It seems even more unlikely that those 58.7 percent will be paying $61 per year for Microsoft’s Extended Security Update program, which will bring continued patches to Windows 10 PCs after October 2025. And charities and their clients are extremely unlikely to have the funds or the desire to pay ongoing service fees to keep the OS up-to-date. We asked Microsoft for its take on the situation, but the company would not comment on the record.

So how bad will it really be to run an end-of-lifed Windows 10? Should people worry? Wisniewski and other experts I talked to are unequivocal. You’re at risk.

“To put this in perspective, today [the day we talked] was Patch Tuesday,” he said. “There were 57 vulnerabilities, 6 of which have already been abused by criminals before the fixes were available. There were also 57 in February and 159 in January. Windows 10 and Windows 11 largely have a shared codebase, meaning most, if not all, vulnerabilities each month are exploitable on both OSs. These will be actively turned into digital weapons by criminals and nation-states alike and Windows 10 users will be somewhat defenseless against them.”

So, in short, even though Windows 10 has been around since 2015, there are still massive security holes being patched. Even within the past few weeks, dozens of vulnerabilities were fixed by Microsoft. So what’s a charity to do when these updates are running out and clients will be left vulnerable?

“What we decided to do is one year ahead of the cutoff, we discontinued Windows 10,” said Casey Sorensen, CEO of PCs for People, one of the U.S.’s largest non-profit computer refurbishers. “We will distribute Linux laptops that are 6th or 7th gen. If we distribute a Windows laptop, it will be 8th gen or newer.”

Sorensen said that any PC that’s fifth gen or older will be sent to an ewaste recycler.

PCs for People has refurbishing centers in 11 states and distributes computers throughout the United States. The company sells refurbished computers at very affordable prices, both through its websites and some brick and mortar locations. As of this writing, the website has a ThinkPad T490 with Windows 11 and 8GB of RAM for just $125. Sorensen also said that low-income individuals can qualify for a completely free laptop and others can buy low-cost Internet connectivity so they can get online.

Every year, the company refurbishes 140,000 PCs, most of which are donated by corporations. PCs for people then wipes the drives, puts on a fresh OS and even replaces laptop batteries if they don’t hold a significant amount of their original charge. However, the company also has to send 7 million pounds of ewaste from outdated or unfixable gear to recyclers.

Sorensen, who founded the company in 1998, told us that he’s comfortable giving clients computers that run Linux Mint, a free OS that’s based on Ubuntu. The latest version of Mint, version 22.1, will be supported until 2029.

“Ten years ago if we distributed Linux, they would be like what is it,” he said. But today, he notes that many view their computers as windows to the Internet and, for that, a user-friendly version of Linux is acceptable.

To see what some of Sorensen’s clients experience, I installed Linux Mint 22.1 into a virtual machine on my desktop. The process took more than 30 minutes and while the user interface was very Windows-like, complete with a Start menu button in the lower left corner, it wasn’t Windows. Instead of the Microsoft Store, there’s Software Manager, which lacked a lot of key titles.

Google Chrome browser isn’t in the store, but open-source Chromium is. Instead Firefox was the default browser. You can install Google Chrome if you go to Google’s site and know that you need to download the installer for Ubuntu Linux (I was using Mint, but Mint is based on Ubuntu).

Some of the apps I use most commonly aren’t available for Linux at all, including Microsoft Office, Slack (there’s a beta but no final version) and Notepad++. Instead of the easy-to-use Photoshop Elements, there’s GIMP. Sure, there are alternatives out there, but sometimes you just want the software you’re comfortable with.

While it was easy for me to feel at home on Mint’s “Cinnamon” UI, I wouldn’t hand a computer with this interface to my mother. I’d be getting tons of calls asking me why her fifteen-year-old copy of Print Shop doesn’t work or wondering about how to change settings.

So which choice is right for recyclers with PCs that can’t support Windows 11? Give users a soon-to-be-insecure Windows 10, make them learn Linux or just throw the computer out? Whatever charities choose, there’s sure to be a lot of people running Windows 10 after October and a lot of laptops turning into unnecessary ewaste.