Second life

Computers are faster than ever before, yet we are constantly forced into the upgrade cycle due to planned obsolescence. The hardware may not give up, but the software will push it to the limit and make it unusable.

I have two MacBook Pro 2013 computers that I saved after I upgraded both mine and wife's laptops to M4s. These are 10+ year old laptops that we purchased new. I booted them up the other day and they were pretty much unusable, because apps and OS made them feel extremely sluggish. Unusable, that is, until I gave them a second life by installing Linux.

I installed Debian on one macbook and it runs great! 4 core i7 and 8GB of memory is plenty for a simple Linux install. I don't use many applications, so my setup and needs are minimal: chromium, vim, alacritty and i3, and maybe couple other command line apps. For example, this post is currently being written on that computer that I just brought back to life. I'm not even logged into a graphical interface! This computer will become a dedicated typing instrument for my distraction free writing experience.

The other one I am probably going to convert to a Debian machine, but most likely will use for small embedded development tasks, like building firmware and flashing to esp32. Linux environment is just better for things like that.

After this "upgrade" it feels like I can get another 10 years from this laptop, especially if I constrain it to a single purpose, like distraction free writing.

I wanted to share this experience because I hate wasting things and throwing them out. Even though, 10+ years is not a bad run for a computer, however their lifetime can be extended a bit more if you're willing to sacrifice some things.