Opt Green Has Ended. Long Live Opt Green!
Part I: Repair Cafés
As May came to an end, so did KDE Eco's "Opt Green: Sustainable Software For Sustainable Hardware" (German: Nachhaltige Software Für Nachhaltige Hardware) project. Read the announcement from 2024 at the project's start. It has been a full and exciting two years. Together with a wonderful team at KDE, dozens of supportive communities, and thousands of volunteers, we really achieved a whole lot. Highlights include: The project organized stands at environmental festivals, markets and the Long Night of the Sciences. We did outreach at international conferences. We hosted install parties for adults and children, as well as taught upcycling courses in high school. We published ads, advertorials, and articles in Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) and eco-consumer magazines, and even co-authored an academic paper. We built new networks between FOSS and repair communities. And we mobilized volunteers worldwide to offer in-person Linux support in a global campaign against e-waste driven by Microsoft's software policies.
I only wish we had another two years!
I will not attempt to write a retrospective of everything the project did. Instead, I would like to focus on two aspects of the project which I believe will result in the main goals of the project not only continuing, but thriving well beyond the project's end. This post will be published in two parts. Here, in Part I, I will present Opt Green's activities in networking and collaborating with Repair Cafés. In Part II, to be published soon, I will take a closer look at the End Of 10 campaign and what comes next after the unexpected two-year extension of Windows 10 support.
Networking With Repair Cafés
Repair collectives provide community spaces to fix stuff. There exist many groups offering workshops to make and repair things, such as Hackerspaces, Makerspaces, FabLabs, and Linux User Groups. Repair Cafés will be the focus here, though. Free & Open Source Software, and the role it plays in keeping computers in use after vendor support ends, is for the most part a new topic for these communities. Moreover, Repair Cafés generally serve a different demographic than Hackerspaces, Fablabs, LUGs, etc. Working with Repair Cafés provides a great opportunity to reach people well outside the FOSS bubble.
Repair Cafés are a place to repair objects used in everyday life, such as clothing, electronics, bicycles, and so on. The first Repair Café was launched in Holland in 2009 by Dutch journalist Martine Postma. Since then thousands have popped up around the world with support from organizations such as Repair Cafe International (started by Martine Postma), the Restart Project (creators of Right To Repair and Open Repair Alliance), iFixit, anstiftung, among others.
From Skepticism, To Support
The project's outreach to Repair Cafés in Germany started at the end of 2024 and early 2025. We were initially met with some skepticism. Software was simply not seen as being of interest to repair communities. Hardware, yes; anything related to real physical objects, sure. But software, not so much.
One of Opt Green's goals was to raise awareness about how software is as important to hardware longevity as physical components like batteries, cables, and screens. The repair motto "Repair Instead Of Throw Away" (in German: "Reparieren statt Wegwerfen") was perfectly in line with Opt Green's goals. The project had even adopted mottos with similar messages: "The most environmentally-friendly device is the one you already own!" and "You don't need a new computer—you just need the right software!" So we kept at it.
The project's first major platform to reach the German repair community was at an online presentation in March 2025 organized by Opt Green with the repair organization anstiftung. In the talk, we underscored how software drives e-waste along with other forms of energy and resource consumption. We showed how software repair—which FOSS licenses make possible—could extend the operating life of devices to reduce the environmental harm of hardware production, transportation, and disposal.
Around 180 Repair Café volunteers participated … and we were pleasantly suprised to learn that a handful of volunteers were already offering FOSS support in their Repair Cafés!
The first meetup was such a success that together with anstiftung we organized a follow-up webinar in May with End Of 10 contributors Varut & Herbert. A heartfelt thank you to both for presenting! What a joy to see at the second event again over 100 Repair Café volunteers interested to learn how to install and use FOSS on their own devices.
It seems that software is indeed of interest to repair communities!
As of July 2026, a little over one year after that second webinar, on the End Of 10 website there are 85+ places and 170+ events listed from Repair Cafés, Linux Cafés (i.e., repair cafés focused specifically on Linux), and similar organizations like IT-Cafés, Technik-Cafés, etc. (Once you include the Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, Fablabs, LUGs, and other initiatives that stepped up to help out, there are over 1180 places and events in total on the End Of 10 website—more on that in Part II.) Moreover, Repair Café International, an End Of 10 supporting organization, now lists 40 Linux Repair Cafés on their website. And the Restart Project published their own "End Of Windows 10 toolkit" to promote FOSS among repair groups as a way to keep unsupported Windows devices in use.
One End Of 10 contributor came up with a slogan which I feel captures this connection between repair and Free & Open Source Software beautifully, namely:
Let's Bring FOSS and Repair Communities Together
In order to further strengthen the ties between FOSS and repair communities, the Opt Green project organized three in-person workshops from December 2025 to March 2026 with support from the funders UBA and BMUKN. The idea was to bring together local Repair Cafés, Fablabs, Linux User Groups, and related communities for a skills and information exchange. Each event took place in a different part of Germany: Hannover (middle), Nürnberg (south), and Dessau (east). Half of participants at each event were repair community members, half FOSS enthusiasts, and some belonged to both communities.
In the workshops a wide range of topics were covered, such as:
- How can the FOSS community support Repair Cafés, and vice versa?
- What are the barriers to adoption of Linux? What do new users need to succeed?
- After installation, how much support can Repair Cafés realistically offer? Would user support fit into regular opening times? Could more technical problems be directed to collaborators in local FOSS groups?
- How can Linux be promoted in local communities? What are the target groups? How does one reach them?
- What platforms are there for Repair Café volunteers to exchange tips and support each other?
And more.
Before the workshops, we also held an install event for Repair Café volunteers new to Linux. That way they could roll their sleeves up and get some hands-on experience.
Clearly there is not one right answer to any of the above questions, while just having two days for an exchange between locally-networked groups was as important as any one comment or reply. Even though there is, as always, room for improvement, the feedback from these workshops from all involved was overall very positive. If you live in an area with active Repair Cafés and Linux User Groups I strongly recommend organizing similar cross-community workshops in your town. Don't hesitate to be in touch if you want some guidance!
You can read the minutes from all three workshops here (Hannover), here (Nürnberg), and here (Dessau). Discussions from the Repair Café workshops also informed the new KDE Eco handbook "Opting Green: Sustainable Software For Sustainable Hardware—And How Repair Collectives Can Bring Free & Open Source Software To Communities". The handbook provides an overview of environmental harm driven by software and how FOSS provides a solution, including many tips for organizing install and support events. Check it out!
After The Workshops
Since March, several exciting updates have made it into our inbox.
We learned that four repair cafe volunteers from Repair-Café Wendelstein who attended the workshop have now started offering Linux support. Also, attendees from Reparatur Café Helmstedt have organized two install events and one Linux User Training in their café since the workshops. The Repair Café at the neighborhood cultural center Haus Drei in Hamburg now holds regular Linux installation workshops as well.
What is more, Repair Café Hilpoltstein, one of the groups that was already offering Linux support (their website is full of helpful information), has launched a Discourse forum (in German) to provide community support for Repair Café volunteers. If you help out at a Repair Café and want some guidance with Linux, this will be an excellent resource!
We also brought KDE Eco materials to the workshops in order to distribute them to interested groups around Germany and Austria. So it was great to see that Repair Café Hilpoltstein had an info stand at a local market in May, featuring among other things the "Environmentally-Friendly Software" leaflet (German version) from the Opt Green project.
The Repair Café workshops also led to other outreach opportunities. The Hilpoltstein group organized an info-meetup for FOSS in Volunteer Work in the Nürnberg region in June, with KDE Eco as a presentation partner. They are planning more local outreach in the near future as well, especially since Bavaria announced in June that no new deals will be made with Microsoft, at least for now.
FOSS and repair go together—and it is exciting to see FOSS and repair communities connect and grow. I am proud of the work Opt Green did in contributing to this. If there are Repair Cafés in your town or city, reach out to see how you can support their work!
Keep your eyes on this blog for the second installment about End Of 10, the global campaign started by Opt Green to promote FOSS as a way to prevent e-waste. As some of us in the community are saying: "FOSS instead of toss!"
Starting A Linux Repair Cafe
If you would like to start a Repair Café in your town or city, Repair Cafe International has some helpful information at the "Start Your Own" and "Linux Repair Café" webpages. Restart Project has prepared a "End of Windows 10: A Toolkit for Community Repair Groups". You may also enjoy reading up on some strategies to getting started in the Opt Green handbook.
When Repair Is Not Possible
When you need to buy new hardware, look into one of many Linux-supported devices on the market. That way you can use the computer for as long as the hardware keeps working. With devices made for Linux you will have a better out-of-the-box experience too, with less tinkering and fewer workarounds needed to get pesky proprietary-software components working.
KDE supporting members like Slimbook, Kubuntu Focus, Tuxedo Computers, framework all sell hardware with native Linux support. Many offer hardware replacement parts and repair guides too, so you can easily swap out broken pieces when needed.
If you instead decide to buy a new computer with Microsoft pre-installed but plan to install Linux instead, check out the Refund 4 Freedom initiative. Here you can learn how to get a refund for that Windows license you paid for even when you did not want it.
If you buy used hardware, you may also want to head over to the h-node project to learn how well that hardware will work with Free & Open Source Software.
Contact
We would love to hear from you! Sign up, say hello, and let us know what you are interested in.
- Repair Café support at "Forum Werkstätten RC-Hip": https://forum.makes-hacks-hip.de/
- KDE Eco Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#endof10-en:kde.org
- KDE Eco on Mastodon: https://floss.social/@be4foss
- End Of 10 working room: https://matrix.to/#/#endof10:kde.org
- End Of 10 on Mastodon: https://floss.social/@endof10
The Code of Conduct for KDE communication channels can be found here.
Funding Notice
The Opt Green project was funded by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN1). The funds are made available by resolution of the German Bundestag.
The publisher is responsible for the content of this publication.