Operating Systems for Obsolete Laptops
I recently donated a laptop or two to an orphanage. In the process, I reinstalled the OS, and found that many were obsolete.
When you buy a device, it’s compatible with a specific version of the operating system, like Windows XP. It may support upgrades till a certain version, like 7, after which it becomes unsupported.
How do we deal with this?
Solution 1: Buy a New Device (Paid)
This is the best solution. It eliminates the problem, and gives us years more with a new device. In addition to taking care of software support, it also gives us better hardware.
But someone uses our old devices, so the problem isn’t solved, but transferred. They’ll have to use one of the following solutions:
Solution 2: Pay to Extend Support (Paid)
For example, a company could pay for an Ubuntu Pro subscription, which extends support for five more years, till 2034 rather than 2029. This is obviously not feasible in the context of the orphanage, or for many companies, who would not want to pay $30001. This makes sense for embedded systems, like an MRI machine, which does only one thing, not for general-purpose computers. For the latter, it amounts to paying money to kick the can down the road and to create a bigger problem for yourself. Instead, the best practice is to keep modernising your IT as you go along2.
Solution 3: Use a Supported OS with Partial Support (Free)
The best free option to deal with a laptop running an unsupported OS is to upgrade to a supported OS, say from Windows 7 to Ubuntu LTS or Windows 10. This typically means that some devices will stop working, like Bluetooth, because of driver compatibility. Full hardware support is assured only for the specific OS and version that came with the laptop. Live with such limitations3.
Linux has an advantage over Windows in this regard, since the latest Ubuntu LTS version installed on these old laptops, unlike the latest Windows version (11), which refused to.
Solution 4: Continue Using the Unsupported OS (Free)
Bugs remain unfixed, and security problems are likely. Hackers may get access to your data.
Apps typically stop supporting unsupported OSs. For example, Chrome no longer supports Windows 8 or earlier. This means that some websites no longer work perfectly. If an orphan is going to use the laptop to learn Python programming, and it runs Windows 7, the latest version of Python that supports Windows 7 is five years old, so he’ll be learning an obsolete version of Python, which is not good.
for 10 years, or $4500 for 12 years support.
This is because when you upgrade your OS, you may find IE not to work any more, and if your internal apps don’t work well in Chrome, upgrading them can take time, which may not be known ahead of time. That’s why you should start early.
I wouldn’t recommend spending money to work around the limitations, like buying a wired headphone if Bluetooth doesn’t work. Money spent on an old device is money down the drain.