this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Privacy
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Linux is often more forgiving on hardware requirements. I recently put Mint (with xfce) on a like 2013 laptop and it's fine. That's not even an especially lightweight distribution.
Yes, it is. Mostly what Windows 11 won't run on is not a matter of the machine's capability of running the software, it's more about the hardware security to back Microsoft's DRM shit.
Even if Linux Mint isn't especially lightweight, there's a Linux distro for just about everybody out there. You could probably find one that runs on 00's or maybe, possibly, even 90s hardware, it would look like shit, it might look like OSes from back then, but it still could have modern support for whatever you want to tack onto it. I will never underestimate the versatility of Linux and its community.
meanwhile NetBSD runs on toasters from the 90s
Can confirm, I had a laptop that took multiple minutes to boot and was sluggish as hell, installed linux and after that it booted in 5-10 seconds and felt snappy again