My first real daily computer experience was with Unix workstations in college (Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, AIX), when the internet just started to be a useful tool, but before PC hardware running Windows really took over the world (and those dot com workstation companies all disappeared).
I'm as comfortable using Linux as Windows, but I've always primarily used Windows both at home and work. Mostly because the work software I use is only available on Windows.
I've been using Win11 at work, and it's not really noticeably different than Win10 once you turn off all the crap and remove some stuff. Of course, MS does often put the crap back during updates, but so far I haven't found any deal breakers.
My main home computer motherboard is from 2014, but I've regularly upgraded bits and pieces so it's still plenty fast for what I need. It's run WinXP to Win7 to Win10. It has a connector to add a TPM, but I've never been able to find one that actually talks to the BIOS, so it will never run Win11.
The sad thing is that there are a lot of computers that are ~10 years old that are perfectly usable for web browsing and day to day tasks, but without a TPM they will all be e-waste in a year.
I think Linux would be a great option for anyone who primarily uses a computer for browsing the web. The UI has become very windows like, and a web browser is a web browser. If most of the data you store and create is in the cloud (google docs, web email, google photos, etc) it doesn't matter what OS you run locally. Ubuntu runs fine on older machines, and the installation process is actually much easier and faster than Windows. And honestly, most of the software I run on windows is also available on Linux. LibreOffice, VLC player, Kdenlive video editing and other open source tools. And I actually often use Linux tools in Window (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to do all kinds of things.
But with all that, I've still never made the switch. I run Linux on random project computers all the time, but I've never considered running it on my main computer. I've been assuming I would buy a new motherboard when Win10 is EOL. I just have a number of Windows applications that I find really useful and I don't want to give them up. I have a ancient version of Photoshop that I love (5.5 from 1999). I really like the (also somewhat ancient) Google Picasa app for browsing photos. I have some CAD software. A few other things. And will my printer and scanner work? It's hard to give up what you're familiar with. Of course, my antique software may not even run on Win11. I should try it...
Anyway, once Win10 is EOL I think anyone with a computer that can't run Win11 and was made after say 2010 should give Ubuntu Linux a shot. It can boot and run from a USB drive. It doesn't even need to be installed to test it out. If all you want is a web browser, it will give you what you need for free. With regular security updates.
>> I think the issue at hand is security? Is it possible to put some firewall in place, to screen all incoming information, this protecting everything downstream?
If the computer is accessing the internet, there is no way to make it safe. Even if it can communicate with other computers on a local network, and those other computers have internet access, it's volnerable. The only way to make an out of date OS safe is to not connect it to any network. Even sneaker-net (thumb drive, CD rom, etc.) can potentially infect a computer. That's how the Stuxnet worm got onto the Iranian centrifuges (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
)
>> Because of the age of our hardware, I'm concentrating on the lightweight Linux distros; AntiX, Zorin, Linux Lite, Xubuntu, Sparky, So far, none stand out as a definitive winner.
Why the focus on lightweight distros? How old is the hardware? I have run a recent Ubuntu on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU released in 2006. I think it has 4G of ram. It runs fine. What I've found with old hardware is that no matter how lightweight you make the OS, it makes no difference at all once you open the web browser. The browser is going to determine whether your hardware is fast enough or not. It turns out one of the most computationally expensive things a computer does these days (outside of games) is to browse the web. I have old computers that run well with lightweight Linux, for example an Intel Atom netbook from 2010, but it will not run a web browser at a speed that is tolerable. I favor Ubuntu just because it's so widely used that it's easy to find google results that solve whatever problem I have. There are a ton of other Linxu distros, but none of them really have that critical mass that Ubuntu has.
On the other hand, I also discovered recently that modern distros don't run well on a 32-bit machine, even the lightweight ones that claim to have 32-bit support. It just didn't work. I have a dual Pentium III machine, 1G of ram, really very fancy for 2002, but none of the 3 or 4 versions that I tried would even run the desktop UI.
Chromebooks could be another option, but if you can live with a Chromebook you've already shown that you really don't need anything that isn't inside a web browser. And at that point it doesn't matter if your running ChromeOS or Linux. The issue I have with Chromebooks is that they often have a much shorter life than Windows computer. Just like Android phones, the OS updates are hardware specific and after a few years the hardware manufacturer stops providing updates. The useful life of a Chromebook is typically much less than a similar Windows laptop.
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