I love stories like this because a little common sense tells you that the connection is tenuous at best and yet the story comes out that way.

First the title of the story:

Linux Prevents Obsolescence: Could Reduce E-Waste by Millions of Tons of per Year

Now the actual story:

So it looks like Vista is almost certainly going to result in a mass dumping of perfectly good computers. For an operating system that, basically, offers two new features, this is certainly unfortunate. But what can be done? Well, A report from the government of the United Kingdom discussing the benefits of open source software indicates that Linux could certainly alleviate this problem.

“A typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows is 3-4 years. A major UK manufacturing organisation quotes its hardware refresh period for Linux systems as 6-8 years.” A significant difference…a doubling even, of the lifetime of a computer.

Thus, a world using Linux would be a world with half the computer waste (and, admittedly, halved sales for Dell and the rest.)

HUH?

This article mistakes obsolescence for disposal when the two really aren’t connected at all.

Most of the geekier people I know don’t upgrade out of obsolescence; they upgrade out of a desire to have the latest and greatest. Despite the fact that some variation of Linux may run wonderfully on their decades-old PC, it doesn’t mean that even if they were running Linux, they’d keep it.

The puzzling logic of this story is followed by even more puzzling logic in the comments section:

Who says you need to re-use old PCs for the desktop role?

Why not firewalls? Home servers? NAS? etc.

That’s not even logical, especially for someone reading Treehugger. Now in reality, it’s a cool thought. I mean, you aren’t disposing of the computer and recycling its purpose. That’s all well and good. Now think about that. Think very carefully.

If you were to buy a router / firewall, how many watts of power would it consume? Let’s go way overboard and suggest 10. What’s the smallest power supply you’ve seen on a computer? I’d say approximately 150 watts. That’s a 1500 percent increase in power to do the same task, and that’s if the computer is relatively energy efficient.

It strikes me that the Treehugger folks probably shouldn’t be puffing out their chests about wasting enormous amounts of energy, right?

Two commenters in the entire thread seemed to get it:

This one.

So we save landfill space (of which there is absolutly no shortage of), and we keep a bunch of old energy hungry machines pumping out extra CO2 and causing global warming (which IS a real problem!).

And this one.

Fact: People who run linux on their computers keep them longer.
Assumption: Running linux on a computer causes people to keep them longer - “A widespread switch to Linux could prevent millions of tons of waste from going into landfills.”

Wouldn’t it be equally as valid that the type of people who buy Linux are also the type of people who keep computers for longer periods of time? In that case, how would putting Linux on every person’s computer help us keep computers out of landfills? The same people who are throwing them away now would be throwing them away even if every person on earth had Linux.

And, as exemplified in an earlier comment, how many Linux guys keep more than one computer running at a time? The life of each computer could be longer, but aren’t you still throwing away MORE computers than the average user in the long run? A geek may be able to run Linux on a 386, but that doesn’t mean he’s not running it on three newer computers, and ALL of them are going to hit the landfill eventually.

And I don’t care what any of them say. Linux is not ready for the home desktop, and Linux is about as “out of the box functional” as an Edsel. Yes you can shoehorn it into working, and yes if you beat it down it’ll do what you want, but if you want a machine that just works, Linux is not your answer. Macs and Windows PCs are far superior in that regard. Granted, I still love Linux and would recommend it over Linux for my geekier friends, but I would never recommend my dad buy an empty PC and tackle Linux.

Just sayin’.

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