Permanently Deleted
Remember when w10 was "the last windows version"
Now they just make a w10 reskin to sell it again.
I have a feeling they will be forced to keep supporting 10 past 2025. This has happened with other editions of windows in the past.
They'll probably do so for a bit but it'll still be an exodus of hardware to the trash heap when it finally goes defunct.
they already have a thing where you can buy a single extra year of support for like 30 bucks lol
Speaking as someone who recently made the jump, Linux Mint is good. Not perfect but an easy enough on-ramp, aside from a couple of hiccups. You can run lots of (most?) Windows programs in Wine which is
notan emulator.If you have the opportunity I'd recommend dual-booting with windows to ease out the transition. Make Linux your default, have windows as a backup which you can resort to in moments of absolute frustration (and also to get a taste of how bad it really is on the Microsoft side of the fence), and gradually over time you'll find yourself probably relying more and more on Linux.
Dual boot works better on two separate drives for unnecessarily complicated reasons (thanks, Microsoft), so if that's at all an option then do that.
Linux gaming has come a long way in a short time, especially thanks to the Steam Deck and now Bazzite really driving Linux gaming to get up to speed. I'm not really much of a gamer so I can't tell you what it's like on Linux and I haven't had the capacity to sort out emulation as of yet but at a guess I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised for the most part.
Pro-tip: if you are trying out a Linux distro, consider buying a reasonably sized SD card, presuming that you've got a SD slot in your laptop. Just get a microsd card and use an adapter for the broader applicability, if possible. Load up your distro on the card and run it off of that for a little bit to get a feel for Linux in your own time. Then, as long as your SD slot is low profile that it doesn't protrude, once you switch to a more permanent dual-boot set up you can use the SD card as a makeshift shared drive (because Microsoft makes a shared Window/Linux drive kinda painful, naturally).
There are other good distros out there but Mint has been my daily for months now and I'm quite happy with it. It's not perfect but I have a strong preference for it over Windows, which is the destination I wanted to arrive at.
Sounds like you don't have much to lose. In your case, unless there is some specific programs you need to use on your laptop for work/study then you should be fine diving headlong into a Linux install tbh. Windows can be a pain to have running on a dual-boot on the same drive though. You will need to disable secure boot and the way that the different OSes manage the internal time on the device differs so you need to direct one of the two to follow the other OS' default format, I believe. Aside from that you should be alright - I've heard that some people encounter other difficulties but these either emerge when you have a shared partition on your drive and you have that open in on OS, then you suspend that OS rather than shutting down before starting the other OS as I think this will cause the partition to be locked out from the other OS until you shut the first one down. I figure nothing big will likely come of that but I've never encountered it personally so just something to be aware of.
As for the other issues that may occur from a dual-boot set up on the same drive, I'm not sure whether that's an older issue that doesn't occur anymore because the cause of it has been resolved or if it's specific to certain OSes or what. I've never encountered it personally, although after the initial week the number of times that I've booted back into windows has been less than half a dozen times.
Pro-tip: if you are pretty set on making Linux your daily driver then I'd go through the pain of allocating the majority of your drive space to Linux because you will probably want almost all of it there. If you divide it up 50/50 you're probably going to wish you had a larger partition for Linux once Windows becomes your backup "if I really have to" OS, especially if you plan to have an extensive library of games on Linux.
Does WINE work with things like Solidworks, AutoCAD etc. that I use professionally (but also for hobby 3d printing)? That and the occasional game that doesn't work on both (I mostly play indie games) are my main hesitancies
I haven't seen anyone actually succeed at getting proprietary enterprise graphics software to work (besides Davinci Resolve and that's a very, very painful experience and probably a form of torture). You'd most likely need to dual boot or use a virtual machine setup. The software will likely never be ported until Linux is like 10% market share because capitalism is efficient or they somehow receive web ports like Microsoft office web and such.
For gaming you can use Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher (GOG,Epic), or Bottles to set everything up. I've had more games work ootb then not and even got a fully modded Fallout New Vegas with MO2 to work so never say never (until you can't debug the WINE stack trace). The only games that will probably never work are those that require anticheat rootkits.
I've never used Solidworks or AutoCAD so I can't speak to whether they work in WINE or if it would be suitable for 3D printing - honestly I'd be concerned about stability in WINE for 3D printing because of the risk of prints failing but this is so far outside of my wheelhouse that I really have no idea.
But it sounds like dual-booting would probably be the best solution for you, especially with the odd game that isn't compatible.
I haven't really done much with that laptop since it's so underpowered- even browsing many modern websites is asking way too much from it and you can just forget about Youtube.
To watch videos you can use the terminal, write "mpv [URL of the video]" and configure the player to a lower resolution if 1080 or 720p is too much for your hardware. That's what I do in my old laptop with antix, along with a lightweight browser like w3m or falkon. Sometimes I don't even use web browsers, I just check the channels I am subscribed to via the terminal with the application Newsboat to get the video links.
It may "just work" or you may need to run some command line bluetooth commands to get it to connect
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamepad#PlayStation_4/5_controller
I not framiliar with antiX but I looked at https://antixlinux.com/download/ and this is clearly a distro aimed at people who are already experienced Linux users. It is probably a bit too graphically minimal to get started:
antiX-full (c1.8GB) – 4 windows managers – IceWM (default), fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm plus full libreoffice suite. Suitable for most users. Lots of applications pre-installed and has the best hardware support
This would not be considered entry level IMHO. You should at least try something more mainstream. If you want to get into iceWM etc the option is always avilalble to you to install...
Also had a look at their forums https://www.antixforum.com/forums/forum/new-users/new-users-and-general-questions. Online support is arguably the MOST important aspect of choosing a distro for the novice user. There is some traffic but not much, and people in the "new users" section are getting answers without all the required details.
According to Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions AntiX is debian-based so information found on forums for ubuntu, mint and Debian itself will probably be useful most of the time.
here is the equivilant forum for Mint https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=90 there's a larger volume of Qs and As which you can search through as first line. The people answering are giving through responses more of the time. There are also other forums people are talking about Mint.
At the end of the day, try out whatever you feel like, it isn't a lifetime commitment. I just beg you that if anti x doesnt work out to at least try something mainstream before giving up.
GeForce GT 540M GPU and an i5-450M CPU.
nvidia optimus laptop with a "legacy" card 
(directed at nvidia not you). Use Linux Mint since I know Ubuntu/Mint packages the legacy proprietary drivers (390 series etc). But the battery life is going to suck shit if the optimus stuff doesn't work and your graphics card is on all the time so be prepared to do some troubleshooting.Linux versions of the emulators I currently use.
You can install the flatpak versions of most emulators from Flathub from the graphical software manager in Mint, it's really easy, you can even install Steam as a flatpak.
I think the easiest option is Mint, as it has all of the advantages of Ubuntu (lots of first party packages, tons of support documentation, automated driver and codec installation if needed, etc) but without the major disadvantages Ubuntu has developed over the years (mainly snaps). The Cinnamon desktop environment will probably remind you of Windows 7 but modernized and customizable; I personally think it’s excellent.
If that’s not up your alley then I’d say try a distro with KDE for a more windows like experience. Kubuntu, Fedora KDE (remember to install codecs from rpmfusion if you go this route), or even Debian with KDE would probably all be excellent for you.
Whatever you go with, if you can’t find a program you need in your distro’s repositories, try looking for it on flathub. I think Mint installs Flatpak with flathub by default, but if you choose another distro without it just go here and follow the instructions for your system. Flathub offers tons of applications in a universally compatible sandbox so it’s a lovely complement to your standard software repo. All the apps from your repo and flathub will show up in the software center of your desktop environment so once installed you never really need to think about it again. Just a helpful tip in case you can’t find the software you’re looking for
You can install KDE on any distro tho.
I don't understand choosing a distro based on desktop environment it happens to have as default. The distro is such a more important decision because it determines what package manager and software sources you'll have available, the availability of community support, and all kinds of technical stuff that's over my head.
I mean yeah u can, but if it’s not the default on whatever distro or spin you’re using then that’s not a good recommendation for somebody new to Linux. That’s why I recommended three separate distros all from solid families for KDE options. Ubuntu has the benefits of being the ‘default’ distro so it has lots of support, Fedora has an expansive repo and is more up to date, and Debian is just generally rock solid with no frills. Just as somebody using windows doesn’t think about installing a DE, somebody migrating from windows to Linux likely isn’t prepared to do that themselves. Just giving them solid recs that have what they want by default
Yes, Mint supports a set of accent colors you can choose from the settings menu. You can't choose your own custom color though because it's connected to the icon theme and those are hard-coded.
Can I make a live USB with Mint like you can with Anti-X?
You can make a live environment USB with pretty much any free operating system, it's only MacOS and Windows that are inferior and don't think this basic feature is important.
Here is a website for downloading themes in linux https://www.pling.com/browse?cat=148&page=7&ord=latest. each one is only compatible with certain desktop environments but you get the picture that there is a lot available and ultimately everything can be customized.
You can make a USB of any Linux distribution. You can even make a USB with multiple distros using software called Ventoy but its 1 or 2 extra steps which not everyone wants to do. My USB has 2 dozen linuxes and I even threw Windows in just for good measure because once I needed it.
Windows has been the biggest driver of E waste if it isn't iOS or android. I know Linux is a bit of a meme but it's currently the only commercial and mainstream hope we have to avoid dumping endless tonnes of hardware into landfill indefinitely.
BSD gets a shout-out but Ur on thin fucking ice.
BSD gets a shout-out but Ur on thin fucking ice.
What's wrong with BSD? Wouldn't exactly recommend it to someone who is new to Unix-likes, but I haven't heard any bad things about it...
Would definitely recommend Zorin if you want a drop in Windows replacement. It's a highly modified Ubuntu distro with a skin that emulates Windows XP, 7, 10, 11, and OSx.
It also has KDE connect running in their own little wrapper.
You can also just use KDE Plasma for bleeding edge KDE stuff, then spend a year tweaking your settings to get your computer looking exactly how you want.
Just don't use snaps, ever
I tried to use snap Steam, ended up with a game breaking bug on a game that was solved the moment I used another package manager
Tried to use snap Inkscape, wouldn't even start lmao
And then I tried to uninstall the snap version it wouldn't, it always gets stuck midway or something, took 3 hours of fiddling with the snap config to finally remove the programs from my system
If you're willing to spend an extra couple hours fiddling around, you can try both of them out on live USB and see which you like better.
They are very easy to use and install while being similar enough to windows
If you want super light and basic you can go Debian and XFCE. It looks alright in Dark mode but feels like using an old Mac.
Uses less than a gig of ram when you have nothing open though
I've had decent experiences with Linux Mint over the last few years, a couple of laptops that were getting the same "upgrade your computer to use the latest version of Windows... OR ELSE!!!" messages. Finally let myself get bullied into moving my PC from Windowns 7 to Linux a few months ago.
Biggest "issues" so far are that some of the old programs I had running on an ancient Windows 7 PC behave differently on Linux. Notably, my VPN service used to work fine with seeding/leeching torrents in Windows but I haven't figured out if there's a way to seed with the same service running its Linux version. I think the VPN itself is blocking the ports for incoming connections and accidently finding a P2P server on the connections list doesn't seem to fix the issue.
Linux Steam seems to be okay for me. Though i've only installed two games and one of them... I think... doesn't like my graphics card or something. Also, for the one online Steam game I've been playing recently, I've had to turn off the VPN or else the game will just freeze/crash every 15~30 minutes.
Lutrix seems okay as a general Windows installation emulator. Only got two games installed since I switched from Windows to Mint, Transformers: Devastation (installed from downloaded files) and the original Space Rangers (installed from a physical CD I've got). Took a bit of fiddling with the many, MANY, settings to get things working like I wanted but it seems fine.
