A definition of planned obsolescence, per a summary from Wikipedia:
“In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) is the concept of policies planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain predetermined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable. The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as ‘shortening the replacement cycle’). It is the deliberate shortening of the lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements.”
This has been a frustration of mine for some time now — so wait, your business model hinges in large part on sunsetting your own products entirely in order to force people to buy more of them? Super uncool. — and has recently come to a bit of a head.
I have an old Mac that a friend gave me ages ago, and even at that time it had already reached its peak operating system (OS) release, meaning it wouldn’t update its OS any more. I didn’t care much, since wanting the Mac was mainly to take advantage of Apple’s excellent hardware architecture for the low-end graphic design work I needed done for projects at home. I’d worked with Macs for years at my first long-time job and fell in love with their simplicity and excellence for graphic design work. Having an older Mac, with an older OS, didn’t matter for my really basic needs.
It did, however, become a bit irksome when I discovered a while later that I couldn’t get more current programs that would’ve been nice to have, entirely because the OS wasn’t current enough to operate them.
Fast way forward to last week, when I was trying to do something quick on the Mac but when I fired it up, was told that I couldn’t get online with my go-to browser because it was an older version that needed updating. The kicker, though, was that I couldn’t update the browser because even the browser needed a newer OS than the Mac could run. So now not only can I not run remotely current programs on the Mac, but I can’t use my browser on it, either. Suddenly not being able to update the Mac’s OS was becoming a genuine hindrance to even light, casual use.
That same week I finally decided to check on the update-ability of my new laptop to see if it can run the upcoming version of Windows, version 11. This has been a notable complaint that’s been making the rounds online lately because the change from Windows 10 to Windows 11 seems (though there’s debate on this bit) to require a lot of people to upgrade their computer, even if it’s relatively recent. To put that in some perspective, I was running Windows 10 on my previous laptop that’s now approaching 9 years old. And Windows 10 is what I’m currently running on my new (second-hand) laptop, which is something like a scant 3-4 years old, far newer than my wife’s laptop and the kiddo’s. Yet last week I confirmed that even this newer laptop isn’t compatible with Windows 11. Ugh.
Without the means to just pop over to Best Buy and pick up three even newer laptops, but yet not wanting to keep running Windows 10 knowing that Microsoft will stop supporting it, I knew I had to start thinking of what else we could do.
Enter Linux.
For those not in the know, Linux (“LYNN-ex”) is a free, open source computer operating system that’s been around for a few decades and has increasingly become a practical, user-friendly option for people not wanting to use either MacOS or Windows.
On the one hand, you have Microsoft and Apple, two tech giants with their name and reputation on the line, who produce newer and newer versions of stable, generally reliable operating systems to be installed on computers. There’s a lot to be said for that. But on the other hand, in hitching your wagon to either of the two big OS brands, you’re also beholden to whatever those companies choose to do with/to them and, of course, to just have to accept whenever they decide that *sad trombone* your hardware is too old to run their most current OS.
Linux isn’t owned by any company, so has no self-serving marketing interests. It’s open source, meaning that while three decades ago, Linus Torvalds created the first Linux kernel — the core of OS software that controls basic computer functionality and access — he released the coding to the public and told everyone to go ahead and do what they will with it. Since then, coders around the globe have been making their own versions of Linux for personal or for free, widespread use.
The idea of an open source project of this scale may seem a bit daunting for newcomers to this kind of concept — “If anyone can put any coding they want in there, can’t there be malicious operations going on?” — but the fact is that open sourced coding can be safer than proprietary coding, which is usually closed to public scrutiny. Microsoft and Apple have been around for decades and have an established track record of their coding doing what they says it will do, so they have earned trust (though that’s waning somewhat in these days of rampant data mining and every company everywhere training their AI systems based on peoples’ behvaiour and use).
But open source coding is actually quite safe, because if you have thousands of independent developers working on the same content that they all have an interest in helping succeed, any of them can vet it for any malware that anyone else tries to slip into the code. Some of most highly respected password managers, security-minded messaging apps and VPNs, for instance, are open source, allowing anyone and everyone to examine the coding to confirm that the program does what it says it does, with no nasty surprises snuck in.
Further still, measures are taken to ensure that the version of Linux you’ve downloaded is verifiably the official, intact, and malware-free version of the OS you want.
And the versions are another interesting aspect to all of this. Linux offers numerous different, supported, distributed versions (“distros”) that are geared toward different user experiences. Are you looking to use your computer for heaving gaming? There’s a Linux distro leaning toward that. Are you a newbie like me and not wanting a huge change from, say, a Windows look and feel? There’s a Linux distro for that.
Non-techy distros for people who just want a computer that runs smoothly, heavy tech-oriented distros for users who want to roll up their sleeves and get into the coding to make their own tweaks to their preferences, and all points in between… Linux has options for everyone.
If so many options seem a bit overwhelming to navigate through on your own when you may not even know what you want from an operating system — not something many of us have ever considered, let along had any say in — worry not. There are websites dedicated entirely to narrowing down what distros would be best suited for your needs based on a quick survey.
And in happy news for those of us hoping to dust off our aged Apple computers, there are distros for Macs, as well.
Some other perks of Linux:
- Each distro has its own online communities, so if you run into problems or have any questions about something not working, etc., there’s a ton of free support readily available to help you out.
- Each big distro has its own updates that are always being worked on by developers and released as they’re deemed stable enough for public use.
- Broadly speaking, Linux has lower system requirements to be installed and operate, which is not only a benefit to people running it on current hardware as it’s less hoggish with your computer’s resources, but also good for those who don’t want to have to throw away their “old” computers just because they won’t run more recent version of MacOS or Windows. That old Mac of mine can almost certainly run a version of Linux that will breathe new life into it and make it much more practical and useful. Same with my previous laptop. So hey, want a fully operational, robust computer but can’t afford a new one? Buy an “outdated” one on the cheap and install Linux on it, and you’re off to the races. With older machines thus being usable for a longer period, Linux is helping people save money and helping reduce e-waste.
Using Linux isn’t without its challenges, of course. One of the main ones can be having to buy any purchased programs all over again, because if you bought something to use on your Mac or Windows computer, that same downloaded program won’t work on your Linux computer, so you’ll have to pay for it again. And a related issue: That’s if the program is even available on Linux. With Microsoft and Apple way dominating the global computer operating system market, that’s of course where developers are going to want to release their own products. Linux operates on something around 4% of computers around the world, so not every company will want to invest the time, effort and money into releasing another version of their product catering to that tiny margin.
And probably the most challenging issue can be installing Linux in the first place.
You can get a download of Linux as easily as any other publicly available file. That’s no problem.
Verifying it, though, to ensure you have the whole, legit, untampered-with distro is a learning curve in and of itself (though I’m finding out that longtime Linux users generally don’t bother with verifying the download, provided they get it from a reputable source).
But then actually installing it? Well, that’s a big ask for someone like me who hasn’t done that before, and let’s face it, that’s like most computer users on the planet, who buy computers with an OS already installed and have at the most only installed updates as they’re prompted to.
Part of the reason I haven’t tried Linux out yet, just to muck around and see how it performs, is due to a good amount of leeriness I’ve long had about making fundamental changes to my harddrive on my only practical computer. When I’ve had the rare chance to install it on an old computer, once I’ve just upgraded hardware, I care less about screwing anything up, but then trying to install Linux hasn’t gone well. I’m reminded of one time in particular where a friend who’d long-since gotten his entire family switched over to Linux sent me a Linux installation CD he’d made, saying it was fool-proof.
Just click on it and follow the prompts, he said.
Easy, he said.
Well, it didn’t work.
And when I asked him about it, citing the issue where things went sideways, he was unclear on why it didn’t work. (Whereas I have my suspicions.)
… that was a handful of years pre-Covid, and I haven’t tried it since.
All of this installation hassle could of course be resolved by taking your computer to someone you trust and who is savvy enough to install Linux for you. But for me, a big part of the appeal of Linux is being able to do it on your own. Manifest destiny, and all that. And I’d just really like to learn how to do it, for myself as well as for my family (who, as mentioned, are also facing an issue with their own computers come this October when Windows 10 won’t be supported any more). One option could be to take my old laptop to such a friend and be there with him as he installs it, so while it’s an experienced techy type doing the work, I’m watching and learning how it’s done, probably while taking copious notes.
I’ll keep you posted on how all that shakes out when I finally tackle it. That’ll hopefully be very soon, because time’s ticking.