I just installed Linux Mint on a 15-year-old desktop that has never been upgraded and was middle-of-the-road when I got it. It shipped with Windows 7, and I tried a couple of times to upgrade to 10 (it failed every time, either losing core hardware functionality, running so slowly as to be unusable, or just refusing to boot altogether). But it runs Linux like a dream. Seriously—it’s easily running the latest version of Mint better than it ran an 11-year-old service pack of Windows 7.
What’s even crazier is that I installed VirtualBox on it, and put Windows 10 on that, to use some work programs. And that runs Windows 10 a bit slowly, but otherwise more or less flawlessly!
That’s right: I’m having a better Windows experience in Linux than I’ve ever had on baremetal Windows on this box.
I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.
I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.
For what it’s worth, your experience 15 years ago likely would have been very different. It’s only in the past few years that things like drivers for basic hardware have become widely available on Linux without a bunch of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And even today, there are still certain drivers that often don’t like to play nice.
Ask anyone who had an nvidia GPU 15 years ago if they’d suggest switching to Linux. The answer would have been a resounding “fuck no, it won’t work with your GPU.”
I just installed Linux Mint on a 15-year-old desktop that has never been upgraded and was middle-of-the-road when I got it. It shipped with Windows 7, and I tried a couple of times to upgrade to 10 (it failed every time, either losing core hardware functionality, running so slowly as to be unusable, or just refusing to boot altogether). But it runs Linux like a dream. Seriously—it’s easily running the latest version of Mint better than it ran an 11-year-old service pack of Windows 7.
What’s even crazier is that I installed VirtualBox on it, and put Windows 10 on that, to use some work programs. And that runs Windows 10 a bit slowly, but otherwise more or less flawlessly!
That’s right: I’m having a better Windows experience in Linux than I’ve ever had on baremetal Windows on this box.
I can’t believe I didn’t do this…well, 15 years ago.
For what it’s worth, your experience 15 years ago likely would have been very different. It’s only in the past few years that things like drivers for basic hardware have become widely available on Linux without a bunch of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And even today, there are still certain drivers that often don’t like to play nice.
Ask anyone who had an nvidia GPU 15 years ago if they’d suggest switching to Linux. The answer would have been a resounding “fuck no, it won’t work with your GPU.”