I've recently seen a trend in tech communities on lemmy where people have developed this mentality that computer hardware is as disposable as a compostable cup, and that after 10-15 years you should just chuck it in the bin and get something new. If someone asks for tech support, they'll just be told to buy new hardware. If someone is saddened their hardware is no longer supported by software they are just entitled, need to pull up their bootstraps, and "only" spend $100 to get something used that will also not be supported in 5 years. It doesn't matter if there is actual information out there that'll help them either. If the hardware is old, people will unanimously decide that nothing can be done.
I've seen this even in linux communities, what happened to people giving a damn about e-waste? Why is the solution always to just throw money at the problem? It's infuriating. I've half a mind to just block every tech/software community other than the ones on hexbear at this point.
At the end of the day, it takes a lot of effort to keep hardware device drivers up-to-date to work with newer software. Of course hardware should be designed for long term support, and at least have enough documentation to make that possible. But it's also hard when there aren't many people in the "community" who even have certain hardware to test out. And it takes work to even support any given hardware device in the first place, especially without documentation. And if you're talking about graphics cards specifically, they're really complex compared to most hardware devices, and have changed a lot over the last 10-20 years. But with Linux, there just isn't the necessary labor to support so much stuff.
I understand at some point, certain hardware just has to be abandoned because next to nobody is using it.
My issue is more that on a cultural level people are just a tad too quick to tell somebody they are SOL and that they should buy new hardware.
In many cases it’s just the truth though. It’s the reality that Silicon Valley created for us. Yes it fucking sucks, but it’s capitalism of course it does.