In October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10, forcing all Windows users to upgrade to Windows 11. Usually that just means installing the new software, which although a pain, is a necessary evil to remain secure. However, this time, Microsoft has made certain requirements on the hardware compulsory, including a list of supported CPUs and a Trusted Platform Module v2.0 (TPM) be present on the machine. Unfortunately, a lot of older machines don’t have a TPM device. Specifically, my old HP and Dell laptops, which were built around 2014.

According to Canalys, approximately 240 million PCs could become e-waste due to this incompatibility issue with Windows 11, including my trusty HP EliteBook and Dell Precision. Both of my machines are perfectly usable (with i5 CPU and 8GB RAM), upgradable with SSDs and extra RAM, however, in October 2025, I face a difficult decision. I either need to scrap them and buy a new laptop, which although sounds fun, seems very wasteful as there is nothing wrong with the existing hardware. Or I continue using Windows 10, without security updates, which is a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t recommend anyone runs any software without regular security patches. The internet is rife with nefarious people and bored hackers, desperate to get their hands on your personal data, and bank details.

So this Christmas, I embarked on a third option, to switch from Microsoft Windows to Linux on my laptops. Linux is a free, open source, operating system, which although somewhat uncommon on desktops, is completely dominant the server and mobile market. The majority of servers in the cloud run a flavour of Linux. Over 96 percent of the top 1 million web servers on the internet run Linux. There are billions of mobile phones that run Android, which is based on a version of Linux, and MacOS is also based on a version of Linux. In fact, Windows is the odd one out really.

I use Ubuntu at work for servers running Linux, so I decided to use Ubuntu Desktop for my laptops. 95% of everything I do on my laptop, is captures in three activities: Email, Web Browsing and Office documents. All these activities have mature, well support Linux equivalents. I decided to use ThunderBird for an email client, Libre Office is a free office suite for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and I use Chrome on all my other devices, so Chrome for Linux seems the obvious choice.

Even for the other activities I use my laptop for, there are Linux equivalents for all the software. Visual Studio Code and Arduino IDE run natively in Linux, as does Ansible, Python, Dropbox, FileZilla, SecureCRT and PasswordSafe. In fact, I haven’t found an application I desperately need, that doesn’t have a Linux version yet, except for BackBlaze, but I can live without that as long as I’m careful to keep everything important on DropBox.

The install was simple. I bought a new, bigger, SSD for the install, which means I could roll back to Windows 10 by putting the old hard disk back in, if anything went wrong. A 1TB SSD was £60 which is much cheaper than a new laptop!

Those wishing to follow along at home and do the same, download the Ubuntu Desktop ISO from here: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be supported for free until 2029 and has extended paid support until 2034, but even before then, you can just run an in-situ upgrade to v25, or v26 when they are released. Ubuntu is a stable, well supported, mature OS, dating back to 2004. The Debian kernel, it is based on, dates back to the early 1990’s which is also the base for other popular Linux distributions, including the Raspberry Pi.

I burnt the Ubuntu ISO image onto a USB drive, switched hard disks and booted my laptop. The install took about an hour and includes the Libre Office software and Thunderbird email client as standard. I installed Chrome, and within an hour or so, I had a new laptop running, that would support most of my needs. It ran quickly, all the peripherals worked out of the box, like network drivers, graphics drivers, sounds, touchpad, etc. Even the function buttons on my keyboard for mute and aeroplane mode, all worked out of the box. I couldn’t get the fingerprint reader working, but I’ll fix that eventually. More googling required. I installed Dropbox and let it sync overnight and by the morning I had all my documents, music and photos.

However, the fun doesn’t have to stop there. Seeing as I have a spare Windows license now, why don’t I see if I can get a Windows 11 virtual machine running on Ubuntu, for those rare occasions where I need windows, and there isn’t a Linux equivalent. I can’t think of many examples, but there is an old windows app I use about twice a year, that controls an LED badge I bought in Maplins 10 years ago. Without the app, the badge is e-waste too, so let’s see if I can get an emergency Windows 11 install working.

With a large helping of irony, the thing stopping me running Windows 11 natively on my laptop, e.g. the lack of a TPM device, is emulated in Ubuntu as part of the hypervisor. So, I can run a virtual Windows 11 machine on my laptop, with a virtual TPM device, even though I can’t run Windows 11 natively. How frustratingly ironic.

There are lots of options for virtual machines and hypervisors in Linux. I went for QEMU & KVM, as there are both open source and free. Once I found the right instructions online (Thanks Richard!) the install was also easy. Those following along at home can find the instructions here: https://www.liquidweb.com/blog/how-to-set-up-virtualization-host-using-kvm-ubuntu/.

I downloaded the Windows 11 24H2 ISO from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11. The windows install also took about an hour, and using the network hack to allow you to create a local account rather than insist on a Microsoft account, I had a Windows 11 virtual machine running the same afternoon. I shared the Dropbox directory on my Linux OS to Windows, through KVM, so it only needs to sync once, and I was up and running with all my documents in Windows 11.

So far, it’s been a very pleasant experience. I am writing this article on Libre Office, and I have already written some Arduino software and deployed it to a Raspberry Pi Pico all from Ubuntu. Everything seems to work fine, and the interface feel familiar and easy to use.

So, instead of keeping an unpatched version of Windows 10 on your old machine after October 2025, and becoming a target for hackers, why don’t you give Linux a try and play a part in reducing e-waste and giving your old laptop a new lease of life, and for free! 🙂