I recently picked up a Toshiba Satellite A665-S6086 at a thrift shop. It's in great condition, and even though it's an older model with an Intel i3 2.4GHz processor, I want to get it up and running. I've upgraded the hard drive to a Samsung 870EVO SSD and bumped the RAM to 16GB. However, I'm having trouble getting it to recognize my thumb drive with Windows 10 on it. If I end up needing to return the laptop, that's fine, but I'd love to see it operational. What Linux distribution would work best for this setup? Also, does anyone know if I need to change the BIOS settings to boot from USB? If so, is there a guide I can follow?
2 Answers
Most Linux distros should work well on older hardware. For better performance, you might want to try something like Linux Mint with the Xfce desktop. Regarding your BIOS question, you'll likely need to change some settings to boot from USB first. You can find instructions on accessing the BIOS by pressing F2 or Esc at startup. Here's a link with some basic guidance: [Support Page](https://support.dynabook.com/support/viewContentDetail?soid=627009).
To get your laptop running smoothly, I recommend using a USB 3.0 thumb drive with at least 16GB of space, though 32GB or 64GB might be better. You can install Ventoy on it, then download your favorite Linux distro ISO files and copy them over. Distrowatch.com is a great source to find different distros. Your laptop should be able to run various distributions, and Linux will definitely help give it a new lease on life!
Thanks for the suggestion! I was wondering if this distro would be suitable for my setup!