I'm looking to breathe new life into my old laptop, which has a 6th gen i5 processor and currently runs on an HDD. It's running painfully slow on Windows, and I was considering making the switch to Linux for better performance, especially since I want to run a Minecraft server on it. Any recommendations?
1 Answer
If you're familiar with Linux, pick a distro that you like! The desktop environment is key; lighter ones like LXDE or XFCE are great options compared to heavier ones like Gnome or KDE. If you're up for it, try out a tiling window manager like i3! Also, if you can, upgrading the RAM and switching to an SSD would significantly improve performance. I have a 2nd gen i5 that runs smoothly after I upgraded the RAM to 10GB and swapped out the HDD for an SSD. Just a heads up, check if it’s actually an HDD; back then, an SSD was rare but still worth investigating!
I checked the task manager and saw it listed as an HDD, plus I looked inside and confirmed it's a silver box. I haven't really used Linux much, other than helping my sister with Ubuntu, and I'm not looking to invest money into this laptop since I already have a daily driver. I just want something that will work without any major upgrades.