this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Which distro?
Asking for everyone.
Went with Mint as I was pretty nervous. Already thinking about which distro for my old laptops though...
Mint is a solid choice.
Ps. My (unsolicited) advice is this: at any time, make sure you have at least one computer that works.
Thanks! I'm lucky and at home I have a pair of computers from work. And happily, had so few issues with the initially install that I didn't really need to use them!
(That being said, absolutely great advice.)
I run Pop!_OS, btw
My first was Slackware. I don't remember much other than following instructions really well and coming away with a working, albeit slow, OS. There was a joke video making the rounds back then of someone opening their laptop in a library or something and the Windows startup chime playing so slooooooooow. That was unfortunately my embarrassing experience, in a community college class, with the KDE startup chime. I didn't know anything about TWMs, the terminal, or anything else really and foolishly thought my secondhand, 90s Compaq Presario (?) laptop would run a full DE in the mid 00s.
Anyway I got Ubuntu running a while later, when the Beryl (Compiz) cube desktop videos were showing up everywhere, and it was much easier. Same time Live CDs got popular and you could test run the OS. Then did DebΓan for a while because I hated Unity and the end of Gnome 2. Riced out Arch with Xmonad after that, learning Emacs, Vim, TeX, Bash and so on along with the various coreutils. Arch(wiki) and some solid YouTubers got me finally learning to be a proper power user.
Now, servers aside, I've just got a Steam Deck and WSL. My next build, when/if prices get less stupid, will probably be Arch again unless I do the lazy thing and run with Bazzite or similar. I love Arch but I hate the occasional troubleshooting after I don't update for a while, even if I have gotten better at it.
Damn. I read Compaq Presario and suddenly tasted bile. Iβd almost forgotten about them.
Just the battery for the thing probably weighed more than my next two laptops combined, and one was a 17" "Media" edition HP with the DVD ROM and the full keyboard with numpad. I actually loved that machine, and it ran Arch for a good while, before HP's garbage thermal management (and, likely, aging solder) killed it.
I still have it because of sentimental stupidity and it being the only one I've ever stickerbombed the hell out of. I might need to craigslist a toaster oven just for hobby projects and see if I can bake it back to life. Would make a fine addition to "in case of LAN party" stack of old laptops I keep around for when friends are over and want to run some CS:S, Quake 3, Brood War or whatever.
I am glad you have fond memories of it. I had to support them in a business environment so my perspective is somewhat different, lol.
I should've clarified: "I actually loved that machine, referring to the HP*, ..."
The HP was my first successful Arch machine, after various failures due mostly to impatience and incomplete knowledge; failing to install necessary drivers, not understanding how easy it is to just boot the live media, chroot back in and fix those sorts of things, and so on. It marked a point in my life where I just really went into crunch-mode, consuming as much as I could about as much as I could.
The Compaq was a hunk of junk, even when it was new. I can't imagine servicing them was remotely pleasant, but I'll give it credit for being the first machine I ever ran Linux on. Even if it did so poorly, "we all start somewhere."
Arch btw, fedora worked too well and was boring, gentoo was too entertaining, arch is the perfect balance of works and allows tinkering for me.
I am currently afflicted w fedora boredom but i have to deal with it until my current project is over
Iβve got an immutable Fedora distro so I havenβt needed to do anything for 2 years so far.
Got into self hosting to scratch that itch. Every virtual machine gets a new distro woo!!!
Try spinning up gentoo on a usb drive when u have some free time, if u can get a sucessfull install its the best feeling.