Tux Machines

Lengthen the life of your hardware with Linux

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 04, 2022

Games: Steam Deck, Humble Bundle, and More

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Sustainability is an increasingly important problem when it comes to computing. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a popular motto for environmentally responsible consumption, but applying that to your computer hardware can be challenging.

Many proprietary operating systems essentially force a hardware upgrade upon you long before your old hardware is used up. If you own a computer with Windows, you've probably needed to purchase a new one to upgrade because your old one didn't meet the hardware requirements of the latest OS. Apple doesn't do any better, either. A MacBook Air I owned was essentially rendered obsolete by an upgrade to macOS Mojave in 2019.

By contrast, I run Linux on my three-and-a-half-year-old laptop, and it still runs like new. Because the Linux kernel is more efficient with resources than either Windows or macOS, it can run successfully on older hardware. I've never been forced to purchase new hardware in order to upgrade Linux.

The advantage of Linux is that it is free and open source. With a few notable exceptions, most Linux distributions are available free of charge, and they are not the product of a large technology company with profit in mind. Even businesses that offer Linux products know that profitability doesn't lie in selling software and forcing updates but in stellar support of what their customers are trying to do with that software.

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