I can add that in my experience, switching to Linux tends to have a positive impact on performance and keep the laptop usable for longer, I highly recommend you try it with your current laptop.
I’ve got an old desktop with a Core I7 with a 3 digit model number and 12GB of DDR3 RAM, it’s running Mint Cinnamon. I’ve got a Lenovo x86 tablet thing with 8GB of RAM and a Pentium processor, it’s currently running Fedora GNOME. I’ve run Ubuntu MATE on a Pi 4 as a desktop PC for about a year.
Most distros of Linux will run very well on a machine that ever ran Windows 7 acceptably. Prior to that, you start running into the “we’re discontinuing 32-bit support” problem.
I can add that in my experience, switching to Linux tends to have a positive impact on performance and keep the laptop usable for longer, I highly recommend you try it with your current laptop.
I’ve got machines that are obsolete for even Windows 10 that run Linux just fine. The best time to start is now.
what desktop environment do you run there? I guess that machine does not have much ram, so it must be something memory efficient
I’ve got an old desktop with a Core I7 with a 3 digit model number and 12GB of DDR3 RAM, it’s running Mint Cinnamon. I’ve got a Lenovo x86 tablet thing with 8GB of RAM and a Pentium processor, it’s currently running Fedora GNOME. I’ve run Ubuntu MATE on a Pi 4 as a desktop PC for about a year.
Most distros of Linux will run very well on a machine that ever ran Windows 7 acceptably. Prior to that, you start running into the “we’re discontinuing 32-bit support” problem.