I get the feeling that Lemmy has a relatively higher concentration of Linux users. I’m preparing to move over to Linux when I build my new computer. I already put Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on one of my old laptops and I like it quite a bit. I figure that since I’ve been wanting to switch over for years, I should just do it. The games were the thing holding me back, and Proton seems to have taken care of that(I don’t really play multiplayer games that require anticheat… I’m a singleplayer kind of girl).

For me, anyway, I want to switch because Windows has been creeping me out with its telemetry. Windows 11 looks lousy, and I’d have to jump through some hoops to get my old hardware on 11, anyway.

  • Pigeon ( Lowbird@beehaw.org ) 
    3·
    3 years ago

    Linux is more lightweight generally, I think. It might work well for your use case. Linux Mint seems to be the most often recommended for similaroty to windows, though I ended up disliking it personally.

    For your laptop, have you tried defragmenting the disk / running chkdsk, or clean reinstalling windows? Could be software, or could be a hard drive failing, especially if you’ve had the laptop for years.

    You can also have a look at task manager to see if anything surprising is using up an inordinate amount of CPU/memory or constantly reading/writing to your disk.

    Windows Event Viewer can show you error messages, in case there is an obvious problem to see there.

    I had a problem like this at one point and it seemed to be related to Windows Defender, particularly if Windows Defender tries to scan its own folders. If you temporarily disable Windows Defender, does anything improve?