My wife has gone through a number of consumer-grade laptops over the years, with keyboard problems, wi-fi no longer connecting, etc. When her current one expired just recently, I decided to buy her a refurbished Dell Lattitude, in order to see if a more professional laptop would last longer for her. Of course, it came with Windows, and she prefers the games that are available on Solus, so I swapped out its disk without even turning it on first.
I happened to have a 250GB SSD wtih Solus Plasma 4.1 on it, taken from an earlier laptop of mine when I replaced it with a 500GB version, so I figured I'd re-use that, and set aside her Windows disk in case she ever wanted to return her machine to Windows (although I couldn't imagine why she would ever want to do that.) The lattitude makes it super easy to swap disks; just remove four little screws in the bottom of the case, and the disk holder slides out without even taking the case apart.
So I swapped the disks, intending to install a new version of Solus Budgie for her. When I turned the computer on, though, it booted right away, and asked for my password. Indeed, Plasma 4.1 ran just as it had, on a different brand of laptop, a long time ago.
I knew that, as long as her games ran okay, she probably wouldn't notice much difference between Budgie and Plasma, or even care, so I took a chance and ran an eopkge update. 765 package upgrades later, her laptop was happily running Plasma 4.3. I created a user account for her, and spent some time configuring it, and she's now delighted with her "new" laptop. I'll be delighted if it lasts a while.
That was the easiest and fastest Windows-to-Solus conversion I've ever done on a laptop. And it confirms that Solus' claim to be a "rolling release" is not just hyperbole. I have proof!
