WIN 10 End of Life 10/14/2025 - anyone moving to Linux?

slmjim+Z1BEBE wrote:

My oldest PC is one I built circa 2007 & is creaking along on WIN 10 painfully slowly when running that HDD. 

 

I discovered not long ago that old machines running new Windows can be completely hobbled by a slow spinning hard drive alone.
In 2021 my mom's computer from 2013 was unusable.  It took minutes to boot, and what seemed like minutes just to load the browser.  I bought her a brand new Dell and was shocked when setting it up that the new computer was also nearly useless.  It also had a spinning disk hard drive.  I ended up replacing the drives in both computers with solid state drives, and now the one from 2013 runs great.  It boots super fast, the browsers runs great.  There was no need to upgrade at all (but it still doesn't support Win11).
As for the 2021 model, I couldn't believe that Dell would sell a computer that preformed so poorly right out of the box.  I guess they figured maybe no one would actually order the spinning drive option?  Like it was just there so they could add an upcharge for the SSD?
 

DOHC wrote:

Why the focus on lightweight distros?  How old is the hardware? 

   Between 10 ~ 17 yrs.  I tend toward Linux Mint w / Xfce desktop for the newer, more powerful machines.

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.

   Try AntiX 32 bit.  Based on Debian Stable.  Fast & easy GUI installer,  very fast OS.  Might be surprised...
 

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

I'll be switching to Linux (probably Debian) with a virtual machine for running CAD software (the only thing that keeps me on windows).

You guys don't want to upgrade to windows 11! I use it on a work computer and it's so slow when it shouldn't be... This is a trend I've seen in recent years; compensating for terrible code with more powerful hardware. Windows XP or 7 was the peak of M$

I have 11 and it's unstable.

Older PCs, particularly laptops that can barely run windows any more, can be made perfectly usable again by installing a Linux distro, in particular Linux Mint if you want a very 'windows like' experience out of the box (but most distros can be massaged to look and act like windows if you really need that - but you'll find, after using Linux for a while, there's really no reason to make it look/work like windows. 

I'm running the latest windows 11 home edition on a Azuzs desktop that I had built in 2023. It runs great and is lightning fast with a hard wired Ethernet connection. I don't use it much except for my 5.1 surround system that it easily supports. I didn't want a new system but my older Win 10 was not compatable with a 11 upgrade ?.   I've had better luck with my phone OS, ( the one I'm typing on now), bought in 2018 and it's still working fine. Still gets app updates but no OS update. If it ain't broke ... 
  My not so smart phone specs.
   

 

   I'm focusing on Linux Lite for very the near future.  Designed to be very friendly to Window$ refugees.   Based on Debian Stable / Ubuntu LTS.  The OS installer, system  updater and optional application installers have all been solid for me. I'll likely use it on Z1BEBE's PC when the time comes.  Perhaps I'll use it on most all the other PC's in the house when the time comes, with the exception for my dedicated banking PC that's been running AntiX (Debian) perfectly for a few years.

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

Hi all - former community college Linux instructor here though it's been a few years

Ubuntu seems to be updated frequently, as is Fedora, and IIRC both distros (i.e. distributions) make updates fairly easy.

To DOHC's point, a Solid State Drive (SSD) is probably the best single upgrade available for older machines. Those systems tended to have less RAM, and (oversimplified) when the operating system runs out of RAM to store apps, etc. that are currently being used, it copies things to and from the hard drive; this is a big part of why rotating-media hard drives are so painful to use: mechanical = slow. SSDs have no moving parts and are wicked fast, and even if the machine does run out of available RAM, the swapping to/from the SSD will be so much faster that the lag likely won't be noticeable.

I took a Lenovo core-i3 laptop, upgraded it to 16GB of RAM, installed an SSD, and set it up with Fedora Linux. It runs really well, though it was kind of a PITA to get past the UEFI (formerly called the BIOS) to be able to boot from something other than the hard drive.

   Been a fun & educational winter project, focusing hard on distro hopping the past few months.  Have a stack of 14 Linux distro DVD's & a bunch of chair time to show for it.

   Gonna be Linux Lite for Z1BEBE's PC.  Fairly light resource demands & very Window$-refugee-friendly GUI.  The built-in AI assistant is mostly very helpful for a Linux noob.  Ubuntu-based with a nod to Debian 12 Stable.

   Linux Mint Debian Edition Ver.6 (aka LMDE6) without question (IMHO), for any PC that has the grunt to run it - anything built in the past 10 yrs. or so would likely run it just fine.  4GB RAM is the absolute, bare minimum, even with a dedicated video card; I'd recommend 8GB, which is the max my daily driver target PC supports.  Some embedded graphics hardware will choke on LMDE6 if shared system RAM is insufficient.  LMDE6 is Mint running the Cinnamon desktop environment with Debian Stable 12 under the hood.  Very polished & user friendly.  My favorite of all the distros tested.

   For the truly resource-challenged PC's, antiX 23.2 Full is well worth a look.  Another Debian Stable 12 based distro with some Debian Testing included.  By far the lightest resource footprint of any distro I've tested.  Runs great on a ~15+ yr.-old system w/ 3GB RAM & old dual-core AMD Athlon X2 CPU with a period video card.  There's a learning curve, though not very steep.  Includes a very generous selection of applications, and a 'Control Panel' GUI that's unique, (mostly) intuitive & useful.  Very noob-friendly & quite helpful dedicated online forum, sorta like here on KZR.

   I tested straight Debian Stable 12.  Nothing technically wrong with it, just not noob-friendly enough for this impatient old fart.  It's extraordinarily flexible & configurable if one takes the time to learn the many ropes.  My experiences with the Debian forums support the widespread notion that they aren't very new-user friendly.

   The distros I tested were all on the same 3GB RAM / AMD Athlon 6400 X2 / AMD Radeon video card / IDE ATA/133 HDD box I built circa 2007 or so.  It has a removable HDD bay to allow me to swap HDD's & therefore OS's at will.  I mostly used a few old 20GB & 40GB IDE HDD's I've had on the shelf for a long time.

Tested were:
Linux Lite 7.2  (Ubuntu)
LMDE6 (Debian 12 Stable)
antiX 23.2 Full (Debian 12 Stable plus some Debian Testing)
Spiral xfce (Debian 12 Stable)
Spiral Plasma (Debian 12 Stable)
Spiral Mate (Debian 12 Stable)
Lubuntu 24.04.2 LTS (Ubuntu)
Mint xfce (Ubuntu)
Zorin 17.2 Core 17.2 (Ubuntu)
Xubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Ubuntu)
MX xfce (Debian / antiX blend)  (crashed hard; black screen / spontaneous reboot three times).
Debian Stable 12.9.0
openSUSE (Tumbleweed and Leap 15.6)  The installer crashed every time over six install attempts (3 ea.) on two different HDD's.  I only got one operational OS out of the six tries & it wasn't stable.  Might be some sort of hardware incompatibility.

   All our boxes except Z1BEBE's much-newer one run the tried & true DDR2/800 RAM.  Four 2GB sticks can be had on fleaBay from trusted sellers for $20.00 +tax shipped to max out RAM at 8GB.  Worthwhile upgrade that, along with some light-ish version of Linux, will give old PC's a new lease on life.  Micro$qui$h can stick their "can't run Win11"  cr@p somewhere uncomfortable.

  I'm in the final stages of purging far too many (8,900+ ! ) old emails from my Windoze Thunderbird email client prior to moving the database to Thunderbird on Linux.  Only have a couple hundred to go.  Turns out I really don't need to keep ~960 (also ! ) bank & credit card statements going back to 2007.  Or the many hundreds of Experian credit score notifications. Or the few thou political forwards from friends & their cc. acquaintances re: Bush / Obama / Trump / Covid / Biden / Trump.  Or, the few thou 'Golden Oldies'  pics / tunes / reminisces / remember-whens / purported wisdoms / etc.  And let's not forget the
ForwardThisToEveryoneYouKnowIfYouDon'tYouMustNotBeATrue _______ (whatever)AndYou'reATerrible&HeartlessPerson!!!!!!! 's.

   Time to get back to the important & fun stuff that really matters.  Such as snuggling the dogs & getting to bed before 01:00.  Also, counting 'pips'; those little raised nubbins on Z1 seats that mimic stitching - OEM 'pip' count vs repop 'pip' count.  True story.  Same as rivet counting, just softer.

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

 

Would like to install it on my mother's Dell XP machine. It was top of the line back in the day. I've looked into installing Linux but couldn't figure out which one to use. A little how to article would be helpful if you wouldn't mind. My Win 11 machine has crashed 3 times and I saved it by using a Dell Inspiron laptop I got from a client getting the BitLocker key through MS. Both are clunky and slow. I also have  95, 98 and XP pro laptops I'd like to revive. 
Not impressed with the Win 11 format. I think the 98 was the best for utility and ease of use. I miss it. 
Steve 

slmjim+Z1BEBE wrote:

My experiences with the Debian forums support the widespread notion that they aren't very new-user friendly.

I started using Linux (on a friend's server) in '96 and had a Linux desktop at home by '97, and the forums (Usenet at the time) were not super n00b-friendly then, either.

In fact, a lot of potential new Linux people were likely put off by receiving the answer "RTFM" - meaning "read the f****** manual" - in response to basic questions. There was a certain amount of "well, if you can't be arsed to do a little reading, we're not going to spoon-feed you". I don't recall if I actually replied to anyone like that (it's entirely possible) but I definitely understood the frustration of being asked the same question for the bajillionth time.

"How do I change my password?" "RTFM"

There's some oddities in certain distros that would likely discourage new users from adopting Linux.  These are things that are normal & expected process for any Windows user::
# At least one .com site that has features that don't work in the default Firefox browser, that do work correctly in the default Firefox in other distros.
# PnP actions that don't work, such as recognizing a USB flash drive when inserted.
# Desktop environments that lack some features.  Nerdy will understand this - my initial testing of Debian was using the xfce desktop environment (DE), that I discovered lacks the 'Users and Groups' menu altogether.  After much frustration, I discovered it's present in the Cinnamon DE of Debian.  WTF?
# Another one for Nerdy. This was a big one for me - I have an old MFP I only use for scanning documents across the network to shared folders.  It only supports the (now depreciated) SAMBA protocol SMB1 / NT1.  Current SAMBA protocol is up to SMB2 & SMB3.  Sharing folders & installing SMB1 to support old peripherals like my MFP on Windows PC's is simple compare to most Linux distros.  The distro antiX has an automated GUI function in it's Control Centre that will install & configure SAMBA SMB1 shared folders for scanning.  It's really sweet.  Every other distro I've tested requires manual editing of system text files, either in Terminal (think DOS prompt), or using a text editor.  There are tutorials & forums that present directions & commands to do so, but finding them has been frustrating, they're often incomplete and / or inaccurate.
# I'm revisiting Debian now, running the Cinnamon DE, to compare it with Linux Mint Debian Edition ver. 6 (LMDE6) that uses Connamon as it's default desktop.
#Still gonna be Linux Lite for Z1BEBE.

Good Ridin'
slmjim