By what you just told I can’t tell if you have ever tried a live distro with it. I hope you did, or if not, that you pick a distro of your liking and try it with your laptop.
(My PC is about 7 years old and it’s still going as new, so I was shocked reading your comment - I completely forgot Windows/Mac really tax you for “old” hardware)
Think about a linux installation on a removable usb drive or a CD or DVD.
You won’t install Linux directly in your hard drive or whatever but in a removable device.
With it you can boot your laptop in it and use it almost as if it was actually installed on your laptop. It will let you check for hardware compatibility and that sort of thing. Also it won’t be as smooth as if it was actually installed on your laptop but for the looks of it even that way you would notice a huge difference with whatever you have installed on your laptop right now.
There are many linux flavors to test, and maybe people around here can give you better examples, but at the tip of my tongue right now there’s ubuntu or fedora, which have great hardware support by default.
I appreciate the advice! All my looking around so far has me thinking Mint or Bazzite, but I think Mint will end up being what I go with so I actually learn how to troubleshoot in case I need to move to something else in the future.
I’ll look for a free drive and try and test this afternoon!
By what you just told I can’t tell if you have ever tried a live distro with it. I hope you did, or if not, that you pick a distro of your liking and try it with your laptop.
(My PC is about 7 years old and it’s still going as new, so I was shocked reading your comment - I completely forgot Windows/Mac really tax you for “old” hardware)
I’ve got a laptop from 2012 that still works like new lmao. Not a chance that would be the case under Windows
A live distro? I’m not actually sure what that is. I’ll do a bit of looking around about it, though!
Think about a linux installation on a removable usb drive or a CD or DVD.
You won’t install Linux directly in your hard drive or whatever but in a removable device.
With it you can boot your laptop in it and use it almost as if it was actually installed on your laptop. It will let you check for hardware compatibility and that sort of thing. Also it won’t be as smooth as if it was actually installed on your laptop but for the looks of it even that way you would notice a huge difference with whatever you have installed on your laptop right now.
There are many linux flavors to test, and maybe people around here can give you better examples, but at the tip of my tongue right now there’s ubuntu or fedora, which have great hardware support by default.
I appreciate the advice! All my looking around so far has me thinking Mint or Bazzite, but I think Mint will end up being what I go with so I actually learn how to troubleshoot in case I need to move to something else in the future.
I’ll look for a free drive and try and test this afternoon!