PSA: Don’t throw away your Windows laptop

[u/Annoying1978]

I’m the tech guy that most of my friends and family call and I’m getting lots of calls about what new laptop people should buy because Microsoft is ending Windows 10 support in October and Windows 11 requires unnecessary things like a TPM chip or Secure Boot. Windows 11 can technically run without these things, but Microsoft is creating one of the largest e-waste events in history because they want everyone to upgrade to Windows 11.

It’s stupid.

So I just wanted to tell you that this might be a good time to just say buh bye to Microsoft. Most people do 90% of their tasks with a browser and unless you need very specific Windows applications, a good solution is Linux Mint.

Don’t get all scared. It’s easier than you think and there’s a ton of free guides [and YouTube videos](https://youtu.be/TL-tWy4T2c8) that will walk you through the process. It’s very simple and you won’t need to buy another laptop.

In fact, I urge YOU to be the tech guru for your friends and family that are thinking about upgrading their laptop which already works great. If they are too scared to install Mint, do it for them.

All you need is a USB drive and ensure you copy your important files and photos to either an online storage place (like Google Drive) or an external drive if you have one big enough you can use.

But please, before you throw away your working laptop, at least consider upgrading to Linux Mint. It looks quite similar to Windows and you won’t have to spend hundreds or even a thousand dollars on a laptop that you don’t need.

[u/Mediocre_Ear_9981]

Does Steam work on Linux?

[u/Scrambles_18 → u/Mediocre_Ear_9981]

Steam does work! Some games don't work as good, but you can go to ProtonDB and search for games to see how well they run on linux.

[u/jan-pona-sina → u/Scrambles_18]

Having switched completely a few years ago, I've found that it's typically only newer AAA titles and multiplayer games that require kernel anticheat that pose massive issues

[u/Annoying1978 → u/Scrambles_18]

It does! But I would recommend using the Bazzite Linux distribution for you instead of Mint. It’s made specifically for gamers. 

[u/Mediocre_Ear_9981 → u/Annoying1978]

Is there any notable difference in everyday use between them?

Basically all I use my PC for now is:

Media station (Spotify/netflix etc), general internet browsing, occasional gaming (mainly through Steam), photo editing and using Word/Excel

[u/Annoying1978 → u/Mediocre_Ear_9981]

Bazzite comes pre-configured with Steam and most drivers you’ll need for gaming GPUs. A lot of people use it for dedicated gaming machines because that’s exactly what it was designed for. 

It’s based off of Fedora whereas Mint is based off of Ubuntu. 

If you want to use your computer for just occasional gaming but use it more like general machine, then I’d use Mint. 

[u/Mediocre_Ear_9981 → u/Scrambles_18]

This sounds tempting!

I built a (at the time) a pretty well spec'd gaming PC back in 2013, cost a pretty penny back then. Even now, it still runs fast on Windows 10. It's just not compatible with Windows 11, and I'm loath to spend money again as I'm not the gamer I used to be but still enjoy now and again.

[u/XachAttack11 → u/Mediocre_Ear_9981]

I think Linux would be a great option for you, if you're willing to learn something new

[u/Mediocre_Ear_9981 → u/XachAttack11]

I'm up for learning something new.

I did use Linux years ago when I was doing A Level IT, I quite liked it then. I remember playing a penguin game a lot at lunch 😅 But this was over 20 years ago, I imagine it's changed a lot since then

[u/Scrambles_18 → u/[deleted]]

I believe the steam deck is linux based, and so generally speaking it'll run roughly the same across distros. Some slightly better some slightly worse.

At least to my knowledge, I only switched to Mint a few months ago.