 Welcome everybody. This has changed the world one piece at a time with trashware. My name is Andrea Perotti. I've been born and raised in Milan. In here you can see some of the things that I like, some of the things that I do. Just to answer the kind lady, I also work for that but today I'm here with a different hat. No, it was not planned as a joke. I'm also a volunteer for an association named PCOficina and I'm, to be completely honest, I'm also the president of PCOficina since 2021. It's their fault they voted me. I was not. But that's it. I want to have a quick chat with you about our experience and what we do. This is our agenda for today so we'll deep dive a little on the association. We'll see what the hell is this trashware things. We talk about open source about people and a small wrap up because maybe what we are doing in Italy can be done also in your home. So the association, why that name? Well it's very easy. It's a compound word. You take a PC, you take a workshop and of a China in Italian and you have PCOficina. Check friends told me never say in the way we pronounce because it means something different. So I'm already saying sorry if by mistake I can say the C in a more strong way. Just bear with me. So our idea is to create a similar experience to what a passionate about bicycle have with cycle, official cycle workshop. Basically places where you can go if you need to just fix a little something on your bike or maybe where you just want to hang out with other passionate about this. We want to replicate the same experience but in the IT world and we not only still from them the name but also the idea, the experience because it was really great and probably it's not the case that fact that many of our associates are also heavy cyclers. They love the bike. Hello, welcome. So the formal part what we are. We are an association for for real. It's not just a bunch of people. We have official tax ID and we have a statue. And what are our goals as an association? Well we want to of course promote the aggregation and the sharing of knowledge like maybe you already do in the open source communities that you are part of. We sustain and support free and open source of course and we also want to promote the protection of the environment, the reduction of the waste and especially of the electronical waste. We want to increase the awareness about the usage of the technology. We want to try to help fight the digital divide and last but not least we also want to support low budget computing because it's costly and we may want to have everybody to have the opportunity to use our computer. Where are we based? We are based in Milan, Italy, northern part of Italy and the association has been created in December 2011. So we have a good experience and a good a lot of time behind us. So but what we do for for real? First and foremost we have our workshop and we maintain it free and open to everybody. We open our doors one evening per week almost every week unless we have something maybe to do around the like other activities that I'm gonna show. In there you can find the tools some very lovely I fix it tools that the lady is showing and then you can find everything you may need to fix your computer from very easy things like change some run to maybe start adjusting something more more complicated. We offer technical support with a very peculiar point of view not just for the user but with the user. We are not a shop we are not competing with regular shop but we'd like to offer the experience of learn from peers. So you came with a problem maybe you have already documented yourself on how to but you are not confident and the problem can be I want to install Linux for the first time to I have a power outage and now the system doesn't not boot anymore. Let's see together the point is together there is no this is the problem see you next week no way that you stay where you're a hardest day if you go away we are not responsible and not only that we collect computers and devices we restore them and find them a new a new home but we'll discuss about this a little bit later and last but not least we do also seminars workshop we try to share what we have learned you may imagine that there are a lot of geeks in here but it's not only a geek association we have space for any kind of experience any kind of level there are people that on their daily job are our director there are people that work in totally different fields than it of course we have also people like me and others that are programmers and etc etc etc and the great things that we are not only technically the fact that when the device is really unfixable we just we don't just throw it away but we use it also for other for other ideas or the project and so we tried to give them a third life maybe after the first and the second so the trash for the core of our talk today let's start from a definition this is taken from Wikipedia trash war is a compound word derived from the contraction of trash and hardware trash were referred to the activity of replacing faulty components in electronic devices or the activity of making obsolete computer operational again great so why doing trash work well first thing we want to preserve the environment if you fix something it will not became a waste and it will not became a problem for for us or for our for our children oops sorry second to save money because sometimes very often fixing something in way cheaper than buying something new every of course we have to deep into case-by-case situation but usually if you know what to do you may save a lot of money and have your system back back on track the second the third point is that maybe we forget but computer has become so famous because they were adjustable they can be expanded they can became what we need them to do maybe nowadays with laptop it's slightly harder but you know probably you may know about the framework corporation the framework laptop there are people that still believe that computer have to be that way and doing trash work keep your hands busy and keep your mind that what is not maybe does not fit you now it can become can be fixed also because by doing trash work you learn you learn that things can be fixed that you learn that things sometimes get obsolete in a forceful way and maybe by thinks-in-thing and by doing trash work you also start thinking that maybe you are doing a political act you are screaming I want my right to repair yeah and also because great as much when you do trash work so the real and the complete definition is that we with trash where we have the main purpose of encouraging ecosystem ability so as to extend the life of devices and to produce less waste so the great things about doing trash work is that you can do for whatever of the reasons that we have just told before and the order apply as well you can do just because you are in a need or you can do that because you you love that computer that all the Lenovo that has been with you for so many years at the end by using daily you you like it you don't want to throw it away because it has been with you for so many years and if you find a way to make it usable again on to continue to be with you you are happier so it's trash where the solution for every problem unfortunately not we have to take into account that the purpose of a device it's what lead and define what will be his fate so here in the association we have started thinking about when all this toward and we have identified this scenario so when a computer is just a computer works fine and with small adjustment can continue to be a generalistic device cool you are still ready to to work but when you we start seeing that maybe the device has some problem like a laptop with a broken monitor and maybe the monitor is not the chip to to be obtained not to be changed or maybe we have some on board the motherboard we have all device all components in a single motherboard and the the monitor the video card does not work anymore so all those situation start becoming limits and when we face a limit we have a challenge so maybe that device it's not fit does not fit the general purpose anymore but we can find a new use case a new usage for that like for example you may remind the net book era very small the screen not so powerful device nowadays they are not the great but have you ever thought about who is find himself perfectly fine with dealing with small keyboards and small screen kids why not use those small computer for educational purpose we have plenty of educational software that can run on normal or even not so powerful computer and they can become educational tool for school and etc so it's not important if it's not working as a generalistic computer anymore but it's important to find a purpose for that device and this has something that we have thought a lot about when old is really old and we in the association has decided the year after year about some changes in term of what computer we cannot collect anymore so the first pool points are way self-explanatory but in 2020 we realized that we were not facing an hardware problem but a software problem the 32 bits distribution were not available anymore at least that not the most common one and especially not the one that we choose to use so we decided that it was not not not good to have them anymore with us but that doesn't mean that we were not having them anymore we stopped to collect them we still have all the other contra 32 bits that we have collected in the various years and in 2022 the story repeated we realized the fact that four gigs were not enough for for the generalistic use case and so we realized that it was not good for us to collect the idea to anymore this because we don't have so much space to collect all the hardware that we receive so we also need to be careful about what device we accept so right now our target is that if a computer is dual core 64 bits and has an i3 family CPU or something similar and has a consequence it has the idea of free run yeah that's good we we know we can make good use of that why this specification the point is that we are it's not that we are peeky we don't like old stuff the point is that our goal is to give them away and in order to give the computer away we need to be sure that the day can be a generalistic computer so while we are pretty confident that probably Linux can run everywhere our goal is not to demonstrate that Linux can run everywhere that's probably the retro computing goal our goal with trash for is to make sure that devices can go anywhere so what the user the average user do with a computer when he's not doing that with his smartphone probably most all some of those but it's not only that sometimes we are all grown-up guys and so we have to deal with traffic tickets with the garbage taxes we have maybe to to book some medical visits and so on so all those needs have one point in common they all need a browser they all can be addressed with a browser and what is the most important component that you need when you want to have a smooth browser experience a lot and a lot of RAM so we have decided to have standard in order to help us providing and setting up computer in such a way that they will last at least a couple of years as association we are aware that those are maybe 10-year-old computer so our goal is very realistic we say if one of our computer can still work for two years our goal is a is obtained we are having success in order to make that happen we know we need to make sure that those computer will not last two weeks two months but two years we need to beef them a little and if we have the possibility we pump up the CPU as well but it's not so common the most the components that tend to be available more easily are of course the memories so we decided that if the computer will be a Linux computer it will have six gigs of RAM and optionally an SSD on Windows machine it's mandatory eight gigs of RAM and the SSD as well and the license because we don't do shady things if the computer has been donated us with the sticker with the license it's okay if it's a corporate computer we've licensing manage centrally that's a nice and lovely Linux computer full stop no question the point is SD SSD is definitely great for any use case so also when we offer Linux Linux computer we suggest the receiver do you have maybe some spare money because that will definitely change your experience but it's not always the case we have learned to be very humble and pay attention to who is coming as asking for help because it's not so easy sometimes if you are in need to ask for help so also on our side we always need to be careful in proposing but also listening so if the person is for example has the possibility we say okay just we can take care of buying that disk you're just gonna pay if it's not possible it's okay but then the exaggerated amount of RAM will also help us with the spinning disk but sometimes it's really too old or sometimes it breaks because we test them carefully before giving them so we have the possibility to of course have a creative use of something that is some hardware but also we have created a very good friendship with another association that use broken computer for creating educational laboratories their name is smunting and it's a name game and it's the meaning is disassemble and play together so what they do is just use our broken computer for their labs and that's some cool circular economy that's for us it's simply great because what we can't use anymore it's it's good for them so in all these how open source fit well this is our regular regeneration process we remove the dust we change the thermal paste because one of the reason why sometimes also computer all computer start getting older is because they don't dissipate appropriately the heat and so the CPU start going it's running slower because you don't want to self burn we check the RAM because sometimes the computer act crazy is just a poor two gigs of RAM that is faulty we check the hard the hard drive and then proceed with installation and everything that is not just mechanical it's possible thanks to open source because we test the RAM with mem test the 86 plus that we are very happy that has introduced the support for a ufi systems as well we use bad blocks on spinning disk and then our operating system of choice is Linux which Linux well it's a funny story basically before even before I was part of the association everybody was installing his preferred distribution everybody has its own but there was also the opportunity you know to use computer that is not your own without data so you test the most stripped down the the newest whatever a complete mess the point the problem was that people were maybe need looking for some help from us and if there was no volunteer that has installed a puppy Linux maybe nobody was no has no knowledge about puppy so we decided to do something in a more structured way so what do we need we need a visually pleasant distribution because end user that accept to use Linux maybe he's not a techie guy more often it's if he's gonna receive a second hand computer he may be one grumble that need just to check some emails for the health situation etc etc second point all via graphical user interface forget the console they and user of PC of it's you know is not a techie guy more often than not we need to have proper hardware support and proprietary driver support because unfortunately the word is rich of various kind of hardware and also we need to be able to help our user so if they need a proprietary software that luckily for them work on Linux let's make their life easier not install the super nerd distribution that is not supported by by any any third-party software vendor of course need to be lightweight because because we are talking about ten years old computers the most important things and what scare us most is the fact that more often than not we our computer are just fire and forget we give them the computer and we never see again so we have a huge responsibility in making sure that the user do what they they need to do with the computer they user do the updates that is not so common and that those updates will not break the computer so we prefer to have a long-term distribution something that will give us assurance that the changes are not that disruptive plus documentation and we also accept opinionated choices but respecting the freedom so the winner is the Linux mint because because it's based on Ubuntu because don't force us with snaps and because at the end of the day it has a visual visually lovely experience and it's coherent and does not just look like a dump from the upstream so it's not my favorite and definitely not my district of choice but for our users works fine and that's enough so I took a lot about computers but the core of the association are people so our goal is to enable people to do what they want to do and we are lucky that very often people that have great ideas need our help so we like to think that our computer are enabler for changing the world I'm gonna tell you three stories the first one is from come from Verona from the city of Romeo and Julietta and it was January 2022 where a psychiatric day center care asked us for help because they had this idea there was some recent studies that demonstrated that through some cognitive games patients or users of those kind of services maintain their mind active and that has on the long term positive effects on them but they were lacking hardware we they reached us out asking for help we were absolutely happy we provide them some desktop and some laptops the great things that they came into Milan so 170 kilometers with the entire community so it was a great day for them because while the the guys responsible for the for the daycare were dealing with computer the rest of the of the group was visiting Milan and they get back home not only happy with good memories about the dome but also with the computers that work at work at fine we recently have a feedback and they were still working using them and where they were happy second story it's always from the east part of Italy this time it's Venice that needs to introduce the city and it this time was a group of lawyers they were looking for create a right spot they were looking for a way to offer legal help orientation desk especially for immigrants but not only limited to that great idea zero budget need for help they asked for some laptops in order to be able to remove them because it was a shared space and in a few months ago they received the hardware through a very funny story because a friend of a friend of a friend so was going from Milan to not not Venice but from till Padua and then from Padua to Venice but at the end the laptop reached out the the final destination this is the third one story it's also the closer one in the neighborhood the next to our headquarter we have some schools that unfortunately suffered the loss of some laptops because they were stolen so we we don't we we heard about that and we offered our help to substitute the laptop with desktops because they are heavier maybe less less interested for this and then from that started a very lovely collaboration that end up with change of display monitor on a primary and the secondary school because they were part of the same pool of schools and the great things that after seeing us as some of our computer working with linux and having one of the teacher that is was a very she was very geeky she had the idea to just rather than a change in the computer that they were using that were slow old and etc. and they were all using web stuff they said what what do you suggest us to do and we tell them just buy the SSD so we have a fraction of the cost they change the disk they install linux mint and the funny thing is that now the linux lab is more loved by the teachers respect to the more powerful but Windows one and it was a great success for for us and also for the teacher that believe in this in this story so wrap up in those 11 12 years of of our association what we have definitely learned is that start to small is definitely absolutely right so a good idea don't need to start immediately big if you deal with hardware make sure to have an inventory because we took as sometimes to in order to to make that the choice make sure to have a procedure if you want to replicate our experience that is really nothing nothing special but everybody can start doing that make sure to have procedure because because when people start learning that there are there is the possibility to some volunteering with computers may find that interesting and so you want to tell them not just by word but hey we do things this way and they have a reference and make sure to be legal because you don't want to be stopped by by the law because you are taking short path and also make sure to be a legal entity because if you want to receive a hardware from companies it's realistic that probably they can just throw away their hardware to mr. nobody they need to have something that can track down the fact that one item that was part of the corporation now it has been given to another entity another legal entity be pragmatic we absolutely love Linux but it's not for everybody and sometimes people need the need the windows and keep in mind that if you start and you decide to do something like this you are doing volunteering so it's not the technology per technology sake but it's the people that are your focus so be ready to listen be ready to focus on on on the person technology is just a way to to help them and the fun so this is some of us and now I'm open for your question yes that's good that's good so the question is choosing a distribution is not that interest but the real topic is what desktop environment that we have chosen a XFC because it's a sound and it works in a very classic way so also Windows users may find themselves comfortable with but it's lightweight and it's it works fine also the way Linux Mint package them it's it's it's good for our end users yes can you repeat because I haven't heard okay so the question is if you have a demographic trend about who come to the association it depends usually are yeah people from 50s and and older that may have problem with windows but and we also support that but we also have some very curious Linux users and not only among the younger and they start using that for various reason because they're curious because of political behavior it's I'm against the system I use Linux and various various and and yeah that it's it's funny it's always funny to be open to the people because you find the interior an entire kind of people there was another question yeah okay so the question is if the the activity of the association can be sustainable on the long term given the fact that the industry is constantly putting all things in one in one single devices so the possibility to change pieces is is reducing that's that's absolutely a good question we hope to be able to continue to do so what we can try to do and what we are doing is to advertise and to make people aware that when they buy a computer is not just the cost or the performance the only point but also paying attention to how repairable it is so I've already mentioned the in the past I I fix it to the the company that do and they offer various services so we have been given one of their tools we have a full of screws etc they have created a manifesto that you can find online and that really fit in that we we hope to continue to be able to do so for sure even if the industry should move in as such a negative way we see changes with ten years of distance so we have always ten year of old computer that will be received by us before having to to stop okay last question then we have to go it was not our choice we have just been informed that the use case for by by the day care center was also to use those cognitive games so we really have no we haven't not even seen those we just deliver them computer with an operating system thank you very much guys