Our little ASUS Travelmate laptop is among the machines that I update whenever Solus upgrades are released, but the last time I did that, it was apparently past its expiration date, as it's installed Plasma DE (I think) would not boot at all.
That Travelmate is an incredible device. It's old enough that it has a cast aluminum case, not plastic. It's no longer available from ASUS. It originally came with Windows 10 installed on a 32 GB SSD that is soldered to the motherboard, but with a cavity for a 2.5" disk as well. So I installed a 500 GB SSD I had on hand, and loaded it with Solus Budgie, and we packed it in our luggage whenever we took off on the motorcycle for a weekend or more.
I could be wrong, but I believe I probably installed Plasma on it when I migrated most of our other computers a while ago. Anyway, whatever was on there, it was DOA after that the update a few weeks ago. So I broke down and installed Windows 10 Pro on it, without any problems. But using Windows on a computer where it's not absolutely required for one reason or another leaves me very unhappy.
Recently I was reminded that Solus MATE is the recommended DE for machines that are running with obsolete components, or are otherwise resource-challenged. So I've replaced the SSD in that computer with another empty one, and am waiting for its battery to become charged enough to last through an OS installation and configuration session.
As I wait for that to happen, I wanted to ask the forum if anyone else has had success loading Solus MATE onto an older laptop without a lot of resources available. Does this sound like something that might actually work? Or am I probably expecting too much from this little machine, and I'll just be wasting my time. (I'm convinced that Windows 10 will run on nearly anything, so just because that works doesn't necessarily fill me with confidence.)
Any comments base on personal experience?