Such flowery words for "please chuck your perfectly functional computer in the trash and buy a new one, you rube."

My Windows 10 (formerly Windows 7) laptop has just started getting this popup when I boot it up. I'm definitely making plans, but those don't include Windows. I'm thinking I'll get a new SSD to replace the 10-year-old HDD currently in this thing and install some flavor of Linux, which will probably breathe tons of new life into it. Seriously, this laptop runs like ass currently, most likely because it's got a decade-old Windows install that I upgraded to 10 when 7 ended support, and it was already slow as molasses back then.

As for which Linux distribution, I'm open to suggestions. I've been messing with Anti-X for a few years now after I installed it on a positively ancient WinXP laptop from 2003 just to get some Linux experience. The thing is though, I mainly picked Anti-X since my main requirement was to just have something that would run on a 32-bit system from the early 2000s. 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.

Since I actually regularly use this laptop I want something that can fully replace Windows and also do some light gaming. I'd like to try out the Linux Steam experience and run the Linux versions of the emulators I currently use. This laptop is from 2011, so it's not exactly a spring chicken either but it was my daily driver and main gaming machine from 2013 to about 2019. Specs-wise, it's got 8 gigs of RAM, a GeForce GT 540M GPU and an i5-450M CPU.

I assume I could also do the stuff I want with Anti-X, but since I'm not presumably as limited by hardware with this laptop I'm open to trying out different distributions. "Gaming/emulation friendly" + "Windows-like UI" would be at the top of my wishlist.

Edit: Thanks everyone, I already made a live Mint USB and tried it out. It seems pretty nice, will install it on a new SSD later stalin-approval

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]
    ·
    13 days ago

    GeForce GT 540M GPU and an i5-450M CPU.

    desolate nvidia optimus laptop with a "legacy" card torvalds-nvidia (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.

    • TheronGuard [he/him]
      ·
      13 days ago

      But the battery life is going to suck shit

      Don't worry, the battery is already so busted I have the laptop always plugged in. It will seriously last about 5 minutes agony-soviet I'd get a new one but they're kind of expensive and I don't really need to use it on the train, etc anyway.