Fun fact: you don't even need a hard drive (or ssd or usb stick or any storage device) to run linux. You can just flash it directly into your firmware
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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You could probably get Linux to run on a decently close friendship and a stack of paper.
When Win11 first released, the idiot I was (or maybe still am) decided to install it on my ancient laptop because it was the newest one. It had a 6th gen i3, 4GB of memory, and 128GB storage. Didn't have TPM 2.0, so I found a workaround (forgot what it was but I did) and when I installed it, it CHUGGED.
I even installed Unity on the thing because I liked game development, and when I tried to mouse click while it was running, it took a good half a minute to register (and I somehow put up with this for like a couple years). Even without Unity, I remember the battery life being a lot worse and simple apps took ages to load.
Once I got a new laptop and learned that Linux isn't voodoo computer magic and had a usable GUI, I installed Mint on my old laptop to try it out, and it was FAST. Gone were long load times. The battery at this point had completely died so it only powers on when connected to the wall, but the laptop felt like it was new again. The screen was still garbage so I wouldn't use it as my daily driver, I much prefer my current laptop. If I ever got a new laptop, I would definitely install Linux again. (honestly I'm just not bothered to re-setup everything on Linux and backup all my data and settings and such on my current laptop, don't think I have a thumb drive large enough to back up everything)
Comfortably runs on electronic thermometer or pregnancy test.
Linux 🤝 DOOM
it actually did not run on the pregnancy test, just outputting on it's display. something else was computing
for now
The pregnancy test has firmware in ROM as you'd expect, so it cannot be reprogrammed. You'd have to replace the chip.
I'll take the computer on the right to the car wash and pressure wash it, then go find an air compressor to quickly dry it out.
Sure it might need a new fan and perhaps hard drive and other mechanical parts, but that looks almost totally salvageable.
Fun fact: Linux can actually run on faulty RAM, if you configure the kernel to just avoid the bad RAM regions.
Linux doesn't actually need any functional components to run; if you put on enough pairs of programming socks and take some psychedelics you can simply sit in front of a blank screen and hallucinate a fully functional Linux distro!
I don't have to; I just need to hear you described it to me. :)
be alpine linux
copy bootloader from the installer to ESP usb drive
load entire OS from bootloader to RAM
lbu commit, save changes to bootloader
378mb fully loaded to RAM
Linux. Hard disk optional.
How slow would that windows box be with the minimum specs? That seems like it would be a nightmare.
Linux on the other hand will run on anything and it's glorious!
i have a laptop here with a gemini lake celeron n4000, 4gb ram, and 64gb emmc. it barely meets the requirements imposed by microsoft for win11.
windows 11 on it is as horrible as you might imagine. someone brought me one very similar last week to 'fix'.. basically same model but with upgrade to 16gb ram. was not any better at all. essentially unusable, just like mine. their 'fix' was buying a new ryzen 5 laptop 12 hrs later.
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At this point run Linux in every device is already a meme.
I was just looking at that windows 11 list yesterday. My mother-in-law has a 7th gen i3.
She’s not eligible to get windows 11, but her computer works surprisingly quickly. Well it did after I removed 2 different antivirus programs from it.
But it’s fine for what she uses it for “Netflix”, maybe an occasional dock.
No, Microsoft, I’m not buying her a new computer for that. If ever, she’d just get an iPad.
My wife’s in favor of just letting the computer get infected if it gets infected since it’s just a Netflix machine.
I’m not here to debate whether that’s a good idea or not, but I’m here to say that this is what is going to happen for the majority of people.
I’ll probably end up putting Linux Mint on it if the WiFi card will play nice, but I expect that it will.
It’s crazy that microsoft, a company that once had 90+ market share of the OS market and is now down in the low 70% range and falling, would rather force this shit and potentially lose people to ipads than simply just make an upgrade path for older hardware (that isn’t even that old)
What could possibly motivate this? They have to see the folly in such a decision with all their market research and shit. Do they really have the hubris to think that people will just go out and buy new hardware en masse because they said to so they could check emails, go on social media, and do streaming shit? Tinfoil hat time: were they influenced by a three letter agency or something to include the need for secure boot and tpm? Is there an exploit or backdoor in these?
I have to imagine it's because most of their money comes from business customers who rely on windows and would have to spend tons of money to switch to something else or OEMs who are making new computers anyways who this won't affect. There's a reason windows upgrades have been free for a while, I don't think they really care about getting money from people anymore, they're just after money from businesses and OEMs.
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Getting infected with a crypto miner is the more likely outcome for such a computer, which can be a bother
Since it’s currently working, I don’t want to make any major changes because, as you know, that will be my fault when something doesn’t work as expected.
So, once it has a problem, I’ll switch it to Linux and a crypto minter as a way to fix it.
Put my mother on mint. The only issue she encountered was the mouse cursor not appearing sometimes, but that hasn't happened in a while. Other than that, she can hardly tell the difference from windows 10. You should go through with it.
She might get a video quality downgrade on Netflix because of DRM
Which is such a bullshit. On Linux we can met all requirements yet Netflix and co decides to not give us the best streams because we run Linux...
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of all that shit microsoft forces upon you..
it's the msa (online microsoft account) that's the biggest deal-breaker for me.
absolutely not. never gonna happen.
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I have Debian running on an ARM board that has 256MB RAM. Handles Audio and 720/video streaming without having to use swap.
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You'd have to settle for a very primitive WM to get a Linux system to run on those specs though, let alone less. KDE and Gnome both idle at about 5GB ram.
5 gigs is a bit high; just checked and my Mint Cinnamon installation is idling at under 2. I used to have an old 4GB Macbook Air with Cinnamon, which ran acceptably considering its specs (and was a heck of a lot faster than MacOS).
You get six consoles at boot. Isn't that enough for you?
Only win 11 home needs internet.
You can run Linux on an esp32 using using a risc-v or pdp 11 emulator.
ok but can you run linux on a toaster
Of course, just make sure you paint a penguin on the side first.
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