I'm surprised by how well solus performs on an old laptop!

Basilcat

I installed solus on an old 2013 Compaq that was straight up unusable with windows 10. I initially installed opensuse leap, but the windows bootloader's ghost was still there. I deleted all the partitions with a fedora live USB. I was considering reinstalling opensuse leap, but one more option crossed my mind; Solus budgie. It installed in less than 10 minutes and responds extremely fast. Hats off to the developers for creating such a good distro!🙂

joluveba

Basilcat but one more option crossed my mind; Solus budgie. It installed in less than 10 minutes and responds extremely fast.

Good to hear! 😃 Whenever I hear a story of an old computer brought back to life thanks to Linux, I get a pleasant feeling in my heart.

I thought you were going to say Solus Mate, which is even lighter than Budgie. Anyways, good choice.

qsl

I had put Mate on a very underpowered (by today's standards) dual core laptop and short of some very specific hardware doodads, it operated as well as the original OS (XP), but now with secure web browsing and probably better access to games to while away the hours as I travel.

Still investigating things like imaging the whole drive (configuring software just so is a pain), but overall linux (and Solus in particular) has come a long way from when I first took a look at it decades ago.

WetGeek

qsl Still investigating things like imaging the whole drive

Is it on an HDD or an SSD. If it's on the machine's original HDD, using a $20 SSD instead will make a lot of difference on an old laptop.

qsl

WetGeek I am from the use it until it dies school.

I was running a P3 setup as a music box until it just decided the indignity was too great (it will power on, but no POST) and still have a 4GB! hard drive (way before even S.M.A.R.T.) still in use as a scratch drive as even slim OS won't fit on it anymore.

I'll probably retire the HDD to storing an image eventually, but for right now I'm just happy everything works.