Linux

[Jagosaurus]

That's a good point... this is aging hardware & a laptop. I'd rather not be installing new HDDs of possible. Is it possible to boot from an external HDD? Assuming partition is my best bet?

Thanks.

[Ziggy]

You can make a bootable USB stick with Linux and boot into the OS from it. It wont run as good as if it was installed on a HDD, but it's enough to give you an idea of the OS. It's also a good thing to have for fixing Windows PCs that can't boot.

[opa]

You can make a bootable USB stick with Linux and boot into the OS from it. It wont run as good as if it was installed on a HDD, but it's enough to give you an idea of the OS. It's also a good thing to have for fixing Windows PCs that can't boot.

Pretty much my suggestion. Just play around with different OS's to see what you like.

It's actually not a bad idea to have some Linux sticks just laying around. I have an old 512mb USB stick with puppy linux on it that I've used several times to access data on Windows pc's that were screwed up.

[Jagosaurus]

Good suggestions. I honestly hadn't thought a out testing out different OS builds.

So I'll get Mint running on a fresh USB and report back. Haven't had a good nerdy project in a bit so looking forward to it.

[o.pwuaioc]

There are a bunch of lightweight distros if you're interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-wei ... stribution

I came to recommend DSL, and didn't realize it's been gone since 08. Tempus fugit.

[opa]

So I do have a little more to add on the lightweight OS discussion.

I bought a cheap Gateway laptop from Walmart around a year ago. I just needed something that I could throw around and not worry about breaking an expensive pc on the go. It came with Windows 11 but it barely ran with the crappy specs. Today I (finally) installed Xubuntu and everything is running really snappy. I've always liked the Xfce environment. No frills and easy to use.

A really great distro for lower specs.