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Before installing Linux, I had originally planned to dual-boot on my main PC, but somehow a gaming rig from 5 years ago isn't good enough to run windows 11, which is ridiculous.
If they stopped showing so many ads, maybe theyβd leave enough memory to run an operating system.
That'd be like asking a a kid to stop selling lemonade so he can focus on making a sign out of something other than cardboard
Nah man, Microsoft doesnβt give their OS away for free. The ads are just greed on top of an already expensive product.
Just save yourself the hassle and ditch the malware.
I did and am much happier. When I went to install Linux, it was a last minute decision to try to dual boot, and that was the day that the Win11 pop-up showed up saying that I couldn't, so I thought "that makes my decision easy" and wiped the whole thing.
I made the switch to Linux about ten years ago ... mainly because I didn't want to upgrade to the latest Windows 7/8 and I just didn't have the need to use any Windows software ... all I do is write documents, store photos, some light video editing and go online - why do I need any other OS? The only problem I had at the start was video editing ... it just meant I didn't do any. Now there are several options to get that done too.
The fun part was that my old hardware suddenly ran twice as fast with the latest Ubuntu at the time ... and I haven't look back since.
Linux gang rise up!!!
I switch to Linux in college (20ish years ago) and have been exclusively using it since. Windows XP was my last windows machine. I've never regretted it.
If it wasn't for work/school and Microsoft fucking around with document standards I'd happily never see a windows machine again. My last true windows machine was 7 for gaming and correcting document formatting in college.
I went 15 years without needing a windows machine and now I'm taking online courses where a full windows install is required for some test taking, so I have tiny10 on a dirty gross separate drive, dual booted, fuck off with windows 11. I have a VM with it as well for fixing formatting in docs and spreadsheets I make in libreoffice, because Microsoft STILL has to just fuck with open standards.
I'll be damned if I have to use it more than I have to.
Extra fun: My current gaming laptop has a TPM, but it's so new that Windows 10 doesn't recognize it. So when I try to upgrade it says 'lol nope'.
The TPM requirement is artificial and can be bypassed in the installer.
God, I love Linux nerds.
That is a glorious pizza box computer.
:) I have an old 2010 network drive, running Debian and OpenMediaVault for music and video shares. It has 256MB of memory and doesn't need it all to act as a folder share and streaming box. Windows 11 needing such a high end chip to run is just really poor optimization
that a ryzen 2200g with 16gb ram, nvme, and usb-c is 'unsupported' is total bullshit. i just pulled one from service. meanwhile, i just 'upgraded' a 10th gen celeron desktop, and some even-worse gemini lake laptops, all with hdd (except one with a massive 64gb emmc chip) to 11.
(that ryzen is now rocking silverblue and looking for a new forever home)
I recently picked up a couple of e-waste laptops, Thinkpad x130e's with an AMD E-300, 4GB RAM and a 320GB spinner. For the pair I paid $60 shipped. These were low-end semi-ruggedized laptops meant for students released around the time that HBO started showing Game of Thrones.
I've put Debian on one and it runs great. All the hardware just works, everything is pretty quick after boot, and I love how rugged and portable it is. Email, writing, basic productivity, hobby development and 2D gaming all work great. Web browsing takes a hit if I open too many tabs, the video card is too underpowered for most 3D games that came out after 2010, and large compiles are slow. I'm a bit worried about the aging HDD so I'm going to replace it with a cheap SSD which should help with boot and compile times.
The other one I'm not sure about. I've tried HaikuOS and the video and wifi work well and the whole system feels very snappy, but there's no audio or webcam support. Redox seems interesting but needs a whole lot more hardware support. I'll probably just end up cloning the first one unless I can get a better suggestion.
All that is to say, Linux is great on old cheap hardware.
My laptop is also an old e-waste Thinkpad. I run Xubuntu on it and it flies.
E-waste Thinkpads are quickly becoming my favorite laptops.
Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025.
Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer.
But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again?
Win11 is 4,5 years old and still feels like 10 builds away from going gold. It feels thrown together.
Hey, that looks like the same PC I recently got ... I immediately installed Linux on it, though.
You might want to invest in some spacers to prevent your monitor from breaking when you close the box.
Little PCeaser's.
That box is suspiciously similar to the laptop I leave at my parents for when I visit. The mouse and keyboard even look identical!
I had the same on my 5 year old gaming rig. Turns out only thing blocking it was TPM being disabled. I reluctantly upgraded, as I have too many files on my PC needed for my wife's visa process, as well as a 2 year old toddler, so I really don't currently have the time to sort through, and backup all the files, and then install Linux.
Ok so important advice: regardless of Win/Linux, back up your data! Hard drive failures happen, and it can happen randomly at any time. So if you have important documents or any data you want to keep, back it up onto another drive, and ideally a second back up off site. And then get in the habit of refreshing those backups regularly,
I have had multiple hard drives failures over the years and learnt the hard way that you need multiple backups.
This is also important as a 5 year old gaming PC means 5 year old hard drives, and shit really does happen.
EDIT: And if you really have 0 time, get a second drive the same size as your hard drive and clone it. It's better than nothing and can be set up in minutes. It's not efficient as you will clone data you don't need but at least you'll be safe as soon as it's done.
Totally understandable. I took literal years to finally get a backup set up so that I could do this.
These memes about required specs make Linux look like its primary userbase are bums.
I have Linux running on a machine with 256 MB of RAM and a single core 700 MHz ARM11 CPU.
I also have it running on a machine with 128 multi-gigahertz cores and a terabyte of RAM. That flexibility is part of why I use Linux.
I had one of the Macintosh iBook G4s with the notoriously shitty graphics card soldering. Early days of lead-free soldering. Mine started to fail just outside of warranty. The 'fix' was to put a lot of pressure on the chip so that all the connections were held in place, but that was quite difficult to do while it was still a laptop.
Dismantled the damn thing, yeeted the plastic shell, and screwed the remains onto a sheet of plywood. Looked a lot like pizza-box PC in the corner there. Got another couple of years out of it. Made it a lot more convenient for watching videos, since you could just prop the whole thing against a wall or whatever. Couple of USB extension leads meant that you could still use a mouse and keyboard in comfort.