I rescued a laptop with a 7th Gen i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. Not going to set the world on fire, but perfectly fine for general business use. I downloaded and installed Linux Mint. A note of caution: If you aren’t experienced with creating install media, the process for Linux is not for the faint of heart. However, you can get the software already set up on install media (USB/DVD/CD), for less than $30 on amazon.
Aside from creating the install media, the installation itself went smoothly, and much faster than a typical Windows install. The updates were straight forward and everything worked. Everything was handled via the GUI, with no appearance of the command line interface. The installation and basic setup done, the next step was to investigate what software is available. In the (distant), past, I found the software choices limited and many of the apps buggy and disappointing. Would I find things different now? I’ll tell you in next weeks post.
