{"id":260357,"date":"2026-04-03T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/i-saved-a-doomed-windows-laptop-by-embracing-linux\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T11:50:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:50:55","slug":"i-saved-a-doomed-windows-laptop-by-embracing-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/i-saved-a-doomed-windows-laptop-by-embracing-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/905946\/windows-11-forced-obsolescence-linux-thinkpad<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-03 03:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theverge.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Two weeks ago I set aside my M4 MacBook Air and picked up a nine-year-old ThinkPad. It\u2019s one of an estimated 200 to 400 million Windows 10 PCs that don\u2019t meet Microsoft\u2019s requirements for Windows 11. When Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 in October, it became \u201cobsolete.\u201d The solution, according to Microsoft, is to get rid of it and buy a computer that can run Windows 11.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not good enough. This ThinkPad \u2014 like millions of other PCs in the same boat \u2014 is still perfectly functional. Its hardware is more than capable of everyday tasks. I\u2019ve been using it for web browsing, writing in Google Docs, talking to my Verge colleagues on Slack, and even some gaming on Steam. Not bad for a laptop that\u2019s supposed to be retired.<\/p>\n

All you have to do is reject Microsoft\u2019s framing. It\u2019s not safe to leave it on Windows 10, since Microsoft chose to stop offering security updates, and Windows 11 isn\u2019t supported. But who says this laptop needs to run Windows at all? There\u2019s another operating system that runs great on older hardware, is still actively maintained, and can prevent millions of computers from being scrapped before their time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right: The secret to saving this laptop, and maybe yours too, is Linux.<\/p>\n

The spec that blocked my laptop from running Windows 11<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

This story was written on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 5 with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 7th-gen Intel Core i7-7600U processor. It\u2019s a more powerful version of a laptop The Verge reviewed when it came out in 2017. At the time, it was considered a high-end, ultra-portable workhorse of a laptop, offering upwards of eight hours of battery life in a surprisingly lightweight package. It started at $1,100 when it was released, but my configuration would have cost $2,100. I found this one used on eBay for just $250.<\/p>\n

The ThinkPad could still run Windows 10 perfectly fine. Photo by Stevie Bonifield \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

When it arrived, the ThinkPad was in almost new…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/905946\/windows-11-forced-obsolescence-linux-thinkpad Publish Date: 2026-04-03 03:00:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":260358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/268414_Linux_on_2017_ThinkPad_AKrales_0050.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C10.732984293194%2C100%2C78.534031413613&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71,57,61],"class_list":["post-260357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux","tag-security","tag-security-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260359,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260357\/revisions\/260359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}