I’m with you in spirit and practice; most of my tech stuff I pick up second hand. It’s pretty easy to get good stuff for cheap-ish once it’s a year or two old.

I’ve done exactly what you’ve said; I had a couple old laptops in the garage, so I installed Linux and gave them to friends who didn’t have desktops or laptops.

However, not everyone thinks like us tech scavengers, and people who want new stuff all the time outnumber us by a huge margin. So, while these programs aren’t the best, it beats the landfill.