People familiar with Microsoft's plans say that the company moving to streamline or remove certain Copilot integrations across in-box apps like Notepad and Paint in 2026, after pushback from users.
Genuine question: What do you recommend? I want to replace Windows 10 on a 8-year-old midrange laptop with something that works reasonably well in terms of performance with a connected 4K monitor.
I’ve already tried Ubuntu, but unfortunately the experience has been marred by bugs such as poor performance, visual glitches, windows jumping around when attempting to move them, and DPI settings not being able to be applied per screen.
I am more impressed you got windows 10 to work well on 8 year old computers ngl. I had an HP pavillion around that age and it had torturingly low startup speed.
Definetely try mint-cinnamon and mint-xfce4, latter one uses xfce4 which has very good performance.
A lot of experienced users will find linux run without bugs for them but that’s because it’s an OS that gets better as you learn more.
In my case battery life was 2 hours on windows and 1.5 hours on linux. But once I past the skill-curve I tweaked it to be 6 hours because I knew how to find what caused the problem and fix it.
Either that or there is the IT-guy effect going on where once an experienced user shows up the aura just makes computers work normal again lmao.
I’ve had more luck with Mint, thanks to its Windows-adjacent GUI and user-friendly on ramp. Still encountered a few issues (a couple of peripherals that didn’t support Linux drivers). But on the whole, it’s improved system performance over Win10 and synced smoothly with my workstation.
Linux is definitely the route. A lot of people use Mint or Ubuntu. But they are usually running out of date drivers.
I’d recommend looking into distros based on Fedora Workstation. It stays up to date but not as much as Arch so that it’s stable.
My recommendation is any of the Universal Blue images that fit your need. They are based off of the Fedora Atomic image with added quality of life features.
I can’t say I’ve had those issues myself, so my recommendation may not be valid in your case. I’d say maybe give Fedora with KDE Plasma a try, and try switching between X11 and Wayland sessions if issues persist.
I personally don’t like Ubuntu, but that’s mostly because of Canonical making the occasional sketchy decision.
On the whole, distro choice doesn’t matter quite as much these days, as most distros should work fine out of the box. Whatever issues you have should technically be solvable with a bit of troubleshooting.
Sometimes Linux just doesn’t play well with your setup. Good luck, and I hope you find something that works for you!
Genuine question: What do you recommend? I want to replace Windows 10 on a 8-year-old midrange laptop with something that works reasonably well in terms of performance with a connected 4K monitor.
I’ve already tried Ubuntu, but unfortunately the experience has been marred by bugs such as poor performance, visual glitches, windows jumping around when attempting to move them, and DPI settings not being able to be applied per screen.
I am more impressed you got windows 10 to work well on 8 year old computers ngl. I had an HP pavillion around that age and it had torturingly low startup speed.
Definetely try mint-cinnamon and mint-xfce4, latter one uses xfce4 which has very good performance.
A lot of experienced users will find linux run without bugs for them but that’s because it’s an OS that gets better as you learn more.
In my case battery life was 2 hours on windows and 1.5 hours on linux. But once I past the skill-curve I tweaked it to be 6 hours because I knew how to find what caused the problem and fix it.
Either that or there is the IT-guy effect going on where once an experienced user shows up the aura just makes computers work normal again lmao.
I’ve had more luck with Mint, thanks to its Windows-adjacent GUI and user-friendly on ramp. Still encountered a few issues (a couple of peripherals that didn’t support Linux drivers). But on the whole, it’s improved system performance over Win10 and synced smoothly with my workstation.
Linux is definitely the route. A lot of people use Mint or Ubuntu. But they are usually running out of date drivers.
I’d recommend looking into distros based on Fedora Workstation. It stays up to date but not as much as Arch so that it’s stable.
My recommendation is any of the Universal Blue images that fit your need. They are based off of the Fedora Atomic image with added quality of life features.
If you identify your laptop (including model number) someone who has the same hardware might be able to make a solid recommendation.
It’s a HP Pavilion Power 15-cb091nd.
I can’t say I’ve had those issues myself, so my recommendation may not be valid in your case. I’d say maybe give Fedora with KDE Plasma a try, and try switching between X11 and Wayland sessions if issues persist.
I personally don’t like Ubuntu, but that’s mostly because of Canonical making the occasional sketchy decision.
On the whole, distro choice doesn’t matter quite as much these days, as most distros should work fine out of the box. Whatever issues you have should technically be solvable with a bit of troubleshooting.
Sometimes Linux just doesn’t play well with your setup. Good luck, and I hope you find something that works for you!