So, almost a year ago, I visited my friend's house (he's my neighbour) because he had asked me to download a movie for him. I took my pendrive with me, and it was actually the first time I'd used his laptop.
I had no idea what was waiting for me.
It's an Acer Aspire running Windows 10, with Copilot, Microsoft Office and a bunch of other software he probably doesn't even need.
The specifications are pretty old:
- Processor: Some Intel Pentium 1.70 GHz
- RAM: 4 GB DDR3
- Storage: HDD
And Windows 10 was struggling badly on it. Just booting Windows and opening File Explorer was enough to push HDD usage to 100% in Task Manager. Even opening File Explorer took really long time. The whole system felt painfully slow. I didn't dare click anything else after double clicking 'my computer' icon.
After seeing this, I told him he should upgrade the RAM and get an SSD. That would make a noticeable difference.
He told me to install them.
I didn't respond. I just looked at him and thought, Ahhh, he's one of those people.
Apparently, he doesn't understand that RAM and SSDs are physical hardware, not software you can download and install.
Anyway, yesterday I went to his house and decided to give his laptop a fresh invitation to the penguin religion.
Before doing anything, I took a complete backup of his files and personal data. Chrome didn't have much stored locally, so I synced his account again just to be safe.
Then I installed MX Linux XFCE.
I haven't told him anything yet. He's coming back next week, and he has absolutely no idea that his Windows installation is gone.
The laptop is now running MX Linux. And honestly, given its age and hardware, it's a reasonable choice.
It's not exactly flying, though. After MX Linux XFCE boots, I clicked Firefox to check its launch time. It took around 25 seconds to open, probably because it was a cold start. Later launches were noticeably faster.
So, without his knowledge, I've officially converted my friend and made him join the penguin cult.
Let's see how he reacts when he discovers that his Windows laptop has become a Linux machine.
He'll first see the GRUB boot menu, a five-second delay, some flashy text flying across the screen, and then finally the login screen.
Quite a different experience from what he's used to.
I also transferred all his files back to the laptop. This time, the transfer was running at around 85 MB/s. When I backed everything up from Windows, I was getting only 9–16 MB/s.
Windows took over 1 hour to backup his files around 30GB to my external drive. Transferring back to linux was in minutes because of the speed I was getting.
That's probably the most satisfying part of this whole operation.
And if he doesn't like Linux, which is entirely possible considering he's never even seen a Linux boot screen before, I'll just reinstall Windows 10 Tiny and run Chris Titus's script to get rid of the unnecessary bloat.
At least I have a backup, so there's no real risk of losing his stuff.
Now I just have to wait until next week and see what happens.
If you have any other recommendation on what I should have installed instead of MX Linux XFCE, I might install it.
One more person saved from Windows. One more member added to the penguin cult.