Should i switch to linux

[G O D Z I L L A]

I have an old pc not cappable to run even the oldest games and i wonder if i switch from windows 10 pro to linux will it get better and smoother

Should i switch

And how can i make a backup if it failed

[Tristerin]

I had Win 10 on an i7 650m with 2gb of RAM - ridiculously not usable.  With Manjaro distro on it, its a usable PC for web browsing, email, streaming video.

[G O D Z I L L A]

1 minute ago, Tristerin said:

I had Win 10 on an i7 650m with 2gb of RAM - ridiculously not usable.  With Manjaro distro on it, its a usable PC for web browsing, email, streaming video.

Gaming?

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

I have an old pc not cappable to run even the oldest games and i wonder if i switch from windows 10 pro to linux will it get better and smoother

Should i switch

And how can i make a backup if it failed

No, Linux won't magically make it be able to run games much better. You'd probably get a similar performance in games as you get under Windows.

[Tristerin]

Just now, G O D Z I L L A said:

Gaming?

It has a K series Quadro in it, and even then I never tried because its a potato.  

 

I only swapped out of Win 10 because the low RAM qty (and Im not investing any money into this laptop) made it extremely slow (as Windows uses closer to 2gb than away)

[G O D Z I L L A]

Just now, WereCatf said:

No, Linux won't magically make it be able to run games much better. You'd probably get a similar performance in games as you get under Windows.

isnt it smoother and less ram consuming

[G O D Z I L L A]

Just now, Tristerin said:

It has a K series Quadro in it, and even then I never tried because its a potato.  

 

I only swapped out of Win 10 because the low RAM qty (and Im not investing any money into this laptop) made it extremely slow (as Windows uses closer to 2gb than away)

i only have 2gb

[Sauron]

16 minutes ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

I have an old pc not cappable to run even the oldest games and i wonder if i switch from windows 10 pro to linux will it get better and smoother

Categorically, no.

9 minutes ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

isnt it smoother and less ram consuming

That's irrelevant, a few hundred MB extra available ram won't make an old graphics card and cpu suddenly able to run games better. On the other hand by using Linux you'd be using an inferior gpu driver, which would probably reduce your gpu's performance, and possible be running your games under wine which almost always causes a performance loss.

 

On the other hand anything other than videogames might run a little better.

[Srijan Verma]

1 minute ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

I have an old pc not cappable to run even the oldest games and i wonder if i switch from windows 10 pro to linux will it get better and smoother

Should i switch

And how can i make a backup if it failed

no guarantee for gaming but day to day performance   

[Nayr438]

As far as inferior drivers, that depends on the Card. Typically AMD has better Driver Support under Linux and Nvidia has better support under Windows. At least from my experience. No idea about Intel, but they seem pretty active. Your AMD experience will also tend to vary from Distro to Distro as well, depending on the card and how up to date Mesa and the Kernel is.

 

Regardless, your gaming performance will probably be noticeably worse under Linux.

Linux Ports are usually bad, and nearly everything that runs under a wine+dxvk Instance has to be recompiled constantly causing a performance hit. There are some exceptions to this, but overall there is usually a performance impact. Sometimes small, and sometimes by quite a bit. There is also no guarantee that a game would be compatible.

 

For everything else, you might notice a slight performance increase.

[wamred]

As a Linux user every day, I would say that it would definitely run better but it wont necessarily run games any better. If you just want to be able to run a web browser and watch YouTube videos then yes, but don't use Ubuntu, go with probably Fedora would be the easiest to get working. Honestly, just don't use Gnome it is a Ram hog.

[doommood]

10 hours ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

I have an old pc not cappable to run even the oldest games and i wonder if i switch from windows 10 pro to linux will it get better and smoother

Should i switch

Definitely you should try Linux. It give the second life to an old workstations. Try out Manjaro or lightweight Ubuntu Mate/LXDE. Either one should do the job for you. Use Wine to run Windows-based games.
https://manjaro.org/

https://ubuntu-mate.org/
https://www.winehq.org/

 

10 hours ago, G O D Z I L L A said:

And how can i make a backup if it failed

Do a full backup using Clonezilla, Veeam Endpoint, or Acronis True Image. Either one does a full system backup you can restore from.

https://clonezilla.org/

https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

[MasterGeekMX]

Linux will make an improvement on the general usability of your system, but it won't automagically make it more powerfull.

 

The thing that makes Linux a good option for slow computers is that they use less resources. Think like buying special small furniture for a small apartment instead of regular sized ones. Thay will give you more space to do stuff, but won't make your apartent more ample.

[lal12]

Yes Linux most definitely will give you a better experience for daily tasks (Mail, Browsing, Videos). But for gaming it probably will be worse. For one you have to use a compatibility layer like WINE, while it got pretty easy with Lutris and Steam Play (Proton) it won't work out of the box and hassle free for every game. Also it adds quite a bit of overhead to the game which will make it run a bit less performant usually. If a game has native linux support it usually will run a bit faster (than on windows) though.

 

FYI nowadays the graphics driver are pretty good from Nvidia and AMD (if you've got a relatively modern GPU). Especially the last couple versions of the Nvidia drivers had big improvements