Most people I know have zero Windows skills that wouldn’t transfer to Linux. They can start a browser and click on a bookmark, but that’s as far as it goes.

But that goes for Windows as well.

Installing Linux is definitely not something, the average computer user ever wants to do. The same goes for Windows. Unfortunately you can’t just buy a Linux computer at your local electronics store. Until that changes, Linux will remain in a niche.

I did that once and it wasn’t a nice experience. Windows will always find ways to screw things up and you’ll constantly be dealing with their shitfuckery. Outside of gaming there aren’t really many reasons to stick with Windows and even gaming works great except on titles where it is explicitly sabotaged by the publishers. If you’re dealing with an older laptop, this likely isn’t a consideration anyway. If you’re unsure whether Linux is for you, my advice would be to install it in a VM first and see if it works for you. Chances are, you won’t miss Windows at all.

Every accusation is a confession, as per standard procedure.

On a Z80?

My router can limit access time but I’m not sure if it’s on a device by device basis. Might be worth checking.

Here’s a video with some good builds at different price points. That should be a decent starting point.

https://youtu.be/8tUM-miOzBA?si=BNjOJeY3Qi_HbdyV

But does it run Doom?

Chances are she won’t even notice if you put Linux on her machine. My wife certainly didn’t. I tried to explain the concept of different OSs to her but she didn’t care. The Firefox icon looks a bit different, but that was the only thing she noticed.

I’m a big fan of Mint. It’s great for beginners but also for anyone who just wants to run their PC with minimal hassle. Considering those are pretty low power machines, I’d go for the Xfce editions too. Personally, I think Xfce is a bit sparse but it runs well on older hardware.

There are also a few distros specifically for older hardware, but I don’t have experience with those. I’d suggest starting with Mint and seeing how that goes.

Cool. Thanks for the info.

How much did you end up paying? Did you have to pay tax, customs fees etc? $200 sounds almost too good to be true. Do you run Linux on it? Any driver issues? I’m looking for a replacement for my NAS right now. On paper this one looks pretty good.

I’d go with a corporate hand me down just for sustainability. Those tend to be in decent shape and can be had for reasonable prices. Buying second hand is always a bit of a lottery but so is buying chinesium.

People generally recommend 8th gen or higher Intel chips for transcoding so I’d look at alternatives. I have a Dell with an 8th gen i5 and that works very well.

I got it to run before but then the 22 upgrade borked my system. I don’t know if it was because of ROCM or Pipewire. Then i reinstalled Mint and tried to install ROCM again, but that borked it again. So let’s see if it works this time.

Thanks, I’ll look into that.

I tried to install ROCM on my machine to run Stable Diffusion. So far I’ve managed to bork my system to the point of having to reinstall.

I just hope they don’t bite off more than they can chew.

After he found that formula for accurately and fairly assessing the impact an engineer makes, he should do anti-gravity next. Should be easy by comparison.