Move to GNU/Linux and Save the Planet, CCC Talk Explains
THIS year Chaos Computer Club e.V (CCC) has many interesting talks. Summaries of these were shared here (Daily Links) and in the sister site, for one of us watched many of these talks.
One of the talks concerned moving from Windows (e.g. Vista 10) to GNU/Linux and it was delivered by people associated with KDE. It focused on aspects such as energy use, hence environmental impact and "footprint".
The talk "includes a lot of reasons to use old hardware," we got told, "like you do [but] also Canonical and IBM drop the ball and pass up on marketing opportunities on purpose" (we covered the reasons many times before).
Here is a study related to this (English translation of "Entwicklung und Anwendung von Bewertungsgrundlagen für ressourceneffiziente Software unter Berücksichtigung bestehender Methodik") and the corresponding PDF.
This "mentions CMS wasting energy," we're told (we covered this many times before, especially when explaining why we had converted all pages to static).
"Windows 10 security updates end on 14 October 2025," they say, "KDE's 29th birthday".
Here's their CCC outline:
Windows 10 security updates end on 14 October 2025, KDE's 29th birthday and also, ironically, International E-Waste Day [1] (you cannot make these things up!). Hundreds of millions of functioning devices [2] will become e-waste. This means manufacturing and transporting new ones, which is perhaps the biggest waste of all: hardware production alone can account for over 75% of a device's CO2 emissions over its lifespan.
Free Software is a solution, today, and if we work together Windows 10 could truly be the last version of Windows users ever use! In this talk I will present the issue of e-waste and the importance of right-to-repair software, and invite the audience to participate in coordinating a global, unified Free Software campaign over the next year to raise awareness about the environmental harm of software-driven hardware obsolescence, while promoting upgrading users from Windows 10 to GNU/Linux directly. Extending hardware's operating life with Free Software is good for users, and better for the environment. Let's think big and act boldly as a unified community!
Below is a video of the talk. █