What I learnt reinstalling laptops for an orphanage
For the anniversary of my mom’s passing, some friends and me contributed to an orphanage. A couple of friends generously donated laptops. Here’s what I learnt setting them up for the orphanage:
‣ One of the laptops had a swollen battery. Immediately remove the battery and throw it away; otherwise it can catch fire.
‣ Those of us who are well to do buy (or our company gives us) a new laptop every few years. We don’t have to deal with unresponsive laptops, but there are a lot of people in the world who can’t afford anything better. A device you no longer want may have a long life ahead of it, serving others.
‣ You don’t need to upgrade every three years if you’re okay with having a good but not great laptop. But a decade is too long to keep even a high-end laptop — it becomes unresponsive, and reinstalling the OS doesn’t fix it. Give it away to people who can’t afford anything better. On the other hand, if you bought a budget laptop, say with a Pentium, Celeron or Atom processor, it has a much shorter lifespan.
‣ It’s best to erase the laptop completely, for three reasons: first, to erase the donor’s data. Second, to ensure that the laptop runs responsively for years. OSs slow down over years, whether Windows, Mac or iOS, and it’s best to reinstall. When you do, it can become as responsive as a new device. Third, OSs can accumulate bugs over the years, so starting with a clean slate eliminates them. For these three reasons, it’s best to erase the laptop completely. I’m not talking about using Windows’s reset feature. I’m also talking about reformatting the filesystem. And erasing the partition table: in the Windows or Linux installer, erase all the partitions and press Next. It will repartition the hard disk, taking care of all the above, ensuring that the device runs responsively and reliably for years to come. This matters all the more when giving it to people who don’t have tech skills to troubleshoot it themselves.
‣ A laptop may work best with a given version of the OS. For example, one laptop came with Windows 8, and neither Windows 7 nor 10 detected all the hardware. For example, Bluetooth wouldn’t work. Trying to download the drivers from the manufacturer’s site didn’t work, either because the manufacturer is no longer bothering to maintain the site, or because the drivers were never made for that version of the OS. It also becomes a catch-22: to download the driver, you need to know which Bluetooth controller you have, but because the driver isn’t installed, Windows can’t identify the controller. Similarly, I once upgraded Ubuntu and my GPU stopped working. Having said that, Windows 8 is no longer supported by Microsoft, which means you won’t get security updates and bug fixes. Apps like Chrome no longer support Windows 8, either. As another example, if the laptop will be used by someone to learn Python programming, Python no longer supports Windows 7. That’s why I’d install the latest supported version of the OS, even if the DVD drive, Bluetooth and microphone don’t work.
‣ If you’re trying both Ubuntu and Windows, or different versions of Windows, to install, it helps to buy a bunch of pen drives: Create an Ubuntu installer, a Windows 11 installer, a Windows 10 installer, etc. That’s better than erasing your Ubuntu installer and converting it to a Windows installer, installing Windows, and only then realising that you need an Ubuntu installer, because Windows doesn’t work well on that laptop, or because you have a second laptop to install Ubuntu on but you no longer have an Ubuntu bootable pen drive.
‣ To create a bootable Windows installers, use Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool. It’s intuitive and fast, better than manually downloading an ISO, better than the crappy open-source tool Rufus. If you have a personal Windows laptop, install the Media Creation Tool on it, not the laptop being donated, since your personal laptop is likely faster.
‣ Use your main laptop for research, given how slow the laptops you’ve donating are.
‣ An old laptop may not connect to your Wifi, if you’ve configured your Wifi to be fast and secure, as you should. In that case, tether.
‣ Sometimes, it can be hard to find out the model number of a laptop, surprising as it may seem. It’s not always printed on the laptop, or available anywhere in Windows. Sometimes it’s in the BIOS. The model number could be reused. For instance, there have been more than one laptop over the years branded “HP Pavilion g6”. It turns out there’s a suffix like HP Pavilion g6-1100tu. Or is it HP Pavilion g6-2301su? I don’t know. And not knowing becomes a challenge because you have to download drivers based on the model number. You can try asking the donor, but he may not be able to locate the invoice or other documents that would have the model number.
‣ I eventually installed Ubuntu on the laptops, in the hope that some of the orphans will learn using the terminal, package management and ssh, and eventually make a career in tech, such as DevOps or a sysadmin. Despite my reservations, installing Ubuntu was no more an effort than installing Windows.
‣ I haven’t used Linux in a decade (on the desktop), so I was hoping it will be closer to Windows in polish. But it’s not. It’s still rough around the edges1. But for this purpose, which is to help the orphans rise in life, it’s not the preeminent consideration.
‣ A few cheap accessories like a budget mouse and wired earbuds can make the laptop much more comfortable to use. We also invested in two fiber Internet connections, one each for the boys’ and girls’ hostels. When donating, assemble a complete package.
‣ All this takes a lot of time, trial and error, and frustration.
Because of the fundamental problems of open-source, which time doesn’t fix.