I know that there are Linux fanatics out there but frankly I have tried the system and found little or no advantage in it.
However I do have a problem, I have an old desktop that I use only to download videos that are not available in Australia. It is also used to convert those videos to a specific format, remove the metadata and then transfer them to one of my NAS servers. It is used for nothing else other than by my youngest granson to play a game on
Am in a quandary, I upgraded the desktop to Windows 11, it was slow before, now it is as slow as a wet weekend however being slow for what I use it for is not necessarily a great disadvantage just really annoying.
The problem might be just a memory issue - not sure - it has an i7 processor but only 8gb of RAM, all my other machines have at least 16gb (it is 64bit)
I could load something like Ubuntu because the few programs I need are all available in Linux but my experience previously is that Linux is not much faster than Windows on any given machine, even the light versions. Has that changed? However my grandson’s game “Roblox” is not available for Linux.
Has anybody any experience of dual boot machines where you choose at startup whether to load Windows or Linux?
There is an alternative the desktop goes in the bin and I use one of my older laptops that run WIN11 just fine.
I do have personal experience of using Linux and Windows in a dual boot setup. The option is given to chose either operating system in the early stages of booting. It was a while ago since I had this setup but there was not any problem with it. These days I have separate computers for Linux Mint and Windows 11.
Ubuntu and Linux Mint are the only Linux disros I have tried. I prefer Linux Mint out of the two because it uses somewhat the same Desktop and menus as Windows. It could be true to say that Linux may not be any more efficient than Windows. It is still the case (in my experience) that the better the computer, the better the Linux OS will run. The computer I’m running Linux Mint on at present has 16GB of RAM and an i5 processor. The latest version of Linux Mint runs well on that.
I don’t often use Linux in preference to Windows but I think that’s because of being so used to a Windows operating system …plus many of my paid-for Windows programs don’t offer Linux vesrsions. Many people do use Linux all the time though and many Windows programs have Linux versions that are workable equivalents (Firefox, Thunderbird, Libre Office are all included in the initial installation). Any additional programs can be installed from the Software Manager.
It may sometimes be necessary to use the Linux Terminal to tailor the computer or programs to personal requirements but there is no need to learn the code. There are Linux forums where people are very helpful in providing copy/paste code for nearly everything that might be needed.
I run VMWare which allows me to run Linux Mint “within” Windows. Linux is okay, but the worst thing about it is when it comes to installing programs. It comes with a software manager which is loaded with all sorts of stuff, but when it comes to installing anything outside of this, it’s a serious pain to deal with, which is the one thing Windows trumps over Linux.
VMware could be an easier way to run Linux and Windows on the same computer. I haven’t tried it but I think computer resources would shared between Windows and Linux i.e. Windows has to be running using the required resources and then Linux has to work on top of that. It might depend on computer specs as to how well it would work.
Even better I have two. The old one in discussion and the one I use most of the time a Lenovo Legend intended for gaming even though I never play games, I do use a dell laptop for the forum and I have a couple of Lenovo laptops for travelling.
All of them handle WIN11 with no problems though I did increase the memory and replaced the HDD with an SSD in the oldest laptop - a Thinkpad T420S - I like it because it has a “proper” keyboard
My experience of Linux is similar to @mart though probably less and I used Ubuntu,
I tried Ubuntu to resurrect old computers but found that while it was very slightly faster the difference was not remarkable so I couldn’t see the advantage but this computer might handle it better than it does WIN11 which it doesn’t seem to like at all (too late to go back to WIN10)…
Might have a look at the memory chip and see if I can upgrade it cheaply to 16gb for a start… As I said at the beginning speed is generally not essential for this computer it is just so damn frustrating when you do have to sit at the keyboard or when it boots up.
