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243 points aquova | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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singhrac ◴[] No.41899082[source]
Once long ago our family Windows computer had a motherboard failure and I convinced my parents to buy just a replacement motherboard in the right shape (maybe processor as well, now that I think about it), and we tried to fix it. While the data on the disk was recovered, we couldn’t get Windows to recognize this as the “same device” so we had to buy a new license. Instead I installed Ubuntu and casually taught my mom how to use it - I figured it was worth a try before buying a license.

She had no problems whatsoever using it for all of her work and barely noticed the change, and it brought new life to a computer that would have almost certainly ended up in a landfill 7 years early.

Given the hard work of the Wine/Proton developers (and many, many others) I can only imagine the situation is even better now.

replies(2): >>41900187 #>>41901837 #
1. triyambakam ◴[] No.41900187[source]
As a teen I installed dd-wrt on our router. Visiting home about ten years later after college I opened up the gateway address to a nice reminder seeing it was still there. My parents had no need or understanding to change it.