Gave up on Windows for LinuxMint

Brons2

Brons2

Joined
Sep 16, 2003
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I have a Lenovo CoreI3 laptop, not really that old, maybe 3 years tops. 8GB RAM, 256 SSD, 15.6 screen. Not a bad laptop at the time I got it, paid $249 for it at BestBuy. I block all China IPs on my Ubiquiti router so it can't ever call home.

This laptop supported upgrading to Windows 11 and I was running it, up until Saturday. But with the Core I3 and 8GB of RAM was up to 70% of memory usage just booted up with nothing running.

I recently reset the laptop within Windows 11, told it to keep all my files but to reset evertything else.

This action didn't make that much of a difference, yes it was a little better, but not enough to make it a great experience.

Got frustrated with the whole deal just looking at it sitting there with so much resource usage, doing nothing. Decided to make a break for LinuxMint, which I use and like as a VM on my work machine. I created a Rufus bootable disk with Linux Mint Cinnamon ISO, got into my machine's BIOS and changed the boot order. Proceeded to boot off the USB stick and install.

After installing:

Pros:
Super fast
Way Less memory usage 1.2 GB fully booted up.
Way less CPU usage - nearly 0% just sitting there idiling
Battery life much better
Did NOT disable UEFI or Secure Boot in the BIOS, seems to be working fine with LinuxMint

Cons:
Some Lenovo keyboard buttons don't work.
Closing the laptop lid doesn't work, have to manually suspend machine using the power button.
Less software (but most of the stuff I use is cloud based anyway)
Doesn't natively support M365 - I have a family subscription, so integrating that will probably be my biggest challenge.

Other thought:
I did install VirtualBox, since the resource usage is so much lower, maybe I can get a Windows 11 IoT LTSC spun up :cool:

Parting thoughts:
I'm not sure this would work for everyone who is used to using Windows, but for me I think it will work fine and the benefits will be worth the effort it takes to work around things like M365 that don't have native integration in Linux.

There's nothing wrong with Windows per se but the hardware requirements seem to be ever increasing beyond what's reasonable. I think the days of having a good experience with 8GB of RAM with Windows 11 is over. You really need at least 16GB.

My work machine is a Dell Precision with a 10 Core, 12 thread processor and 64GB of RAM. Windows runs extremely well on it, but it's also expensive overkill.

I'm pretty happy with this experiment so far of going whole hog into Linux.
 
Unused memory is wasted memory.

Windows 10 and 11 cache a lot of stuff in RAM to make it run faster. As you've seen, even on a clean system, it'll use between half and 3/4 of your 8GB but that's by design. 16GB systems will have about half used, 32GB less so, and 64GB will have a lot available simply because that's a lot of workspace.

High memory usage is not necessarily a sign of a problem but it can illustrate when you don't have enough if it. 8GB is not a lot of RAM nowadays but 10 and 11 will manage it effectively if that's all it has to work with.
 
Brons2 said:
I have a Lenovo CoreI3 laptop, not really that old, maybe 3 years tops. 8GB RAM, 256 SSD, 15.6 screen. Not a bad laptop at the time I got it, paid $249 for it at BestBuy. I block all China IPs on my Ubiquiti router so it can't ever call home.

This laptop supported upgrading to Windows 11 and I was running it, up until Saturday. But with the Core I3 and 8GB of RAM was up to 70% of memory usage just booted up with nothing running.

I recently reset the laptop within Windows 11, told it to keep all my files but to reset evertything else.

This action didn't make that much of a difference, yes it was a little better, but not enough to make it a great experience.

Got frustrated with the whole deal just looking at it sitting there with so much resource usage, doing nothing. Decided to make a break for LinuxMint, which I use and like as a VM on my work machine. I created a Rufus bootable disk with Linux Mint Cinnamon ISO, got into my machine's BIOS and changed the boot order. Proceeded to boot off the USB stick and install.

After installing:

Pros:
Super fast
Way Less memory usage 1.2 GB fully booted up.
Way less CPU usage - nearly 0% just sitting there idiling
Battery life much better
Did NOT disable UEFI or Secure Boot in the BIOS, seems to be working fine with LinuxMint

Cons:
Some Lenovo keyboard buttons don't work.
Closing the laptop lid doesn't work, have to manually suspend machine using the power button.
Less software (but most of the stuff I use is cloud based anyway)
Doesn't natively support M365 - I have a family subscription, so integrating that will probably be my biggest challenge.

Other thought:
I did install VirtualBox, since the resource usage is so much lower, maybe I can get a Windows 11 IoT LTSC spun up :cool:

Parting thoughts:
I'm not sure this would work for everyone who is used to using Windows, but for me I think it will work fine and the benefits will be worth the effort it takes to work around things like M365 that don't have native integration in Linux.

There's nothing wrong with Windows per se but the hardware requirements seem to be ever increasing beyond what's reasonable. I think the days of having a good experience with 8GB of RAM with Windows 11 is over. You really need at least 16GB.

My work machine is a Dell Precision with a 10 Core, 12 thread processor and 64GB of RAM. Windows runs extremely well on it, but it's also expensive overkill.

I'm pretty happy with this experiment so far of going whole hog into Linux.
Click to expand...
Check out zdnet or tech mint for an article called all the things that I did to improve Ubuntu/Linux Mint.
 
Yesterday the wife's PC would not boot (has issues). Took the HD out and put onto a USB dongle so as to find some mp4 video that she needed for the day. The Win11 Laptop would not read the Users directory to get the file. Pulled out my Mint laptop and got right into User directory. So that was a nice workaround. Maybe there was a way to do so on the Win11 machine, some admin hack, but time was short at that moment.

Mint isn't perfect, at times mine seems to have liked reboots every few days for a WiFi issue--but for the price, I can't complain. My Windows machine is for work and they have an IT dept whose task is to keep these machines working, otherwise I'd probably not use Windows at all. Not a fan of change and all.
 
My mom's desktop had the same issue last year with Windows 10. Upgraded her to 16gb and the fastest CPU that vintage motherboard supported and she can do tasks again.

Does that particular model support changing the memory or an additional memory slot? The last few times I laptop shopped, those options are becoming limited.
 
In my experience, a 3 year old laptop, with a 256GB SSD (probably not an M.2) and 8GB of RAM is Grandma/Grandpa territory.

but......

For specific useage items, such as using linux Mint, it's a great choice for that. Linux is great for certain things. If you need windows, a dual boot environment can be done as well.

None of this is for the average consumer though.
 
Bottom_Feeder said:
Unused memory is wasted memory.

Windows 10 and 11 cache a lot of stuff in RAM to make it run faster. As you've seen, even on a clean system, it'll use between half and 3/4 of your 8GB but that's by design. 16GB systems will have about half used, 32GB less so, and 64GB will have a lot available simply because that's a lot of workspace.

High memory usage is not necessarily a sign of a problem but it can illustrate when you don't have enough if it. 8GB is not a lot of RAM nowadays but 10 and 11 will manage it effectively if that's all it has to work with.
Click to expand...
Not saying you're wrong, but, the system is way faster on LinuxMint, cache or not. It's a revelation how much faster it feels. At the end of the day, It's the end user experience that matters, not what technical wizardy that Windows is doing on the backend.

I can also confirm what you say, that with 64GB like my work laptop has, the memory usage of Win11 is not a consideration at all. With 2 browsers open with 20+ tabs each, 2 VMs running, Word and Excel running, Acrobat running, various utilites running, 10 screenshots open, Task manager running, I'm only at 49% memory utilization. I would probably run out of CPU on this machine before I ran out of RAM, if I threw a bunch more at it. But I haven't come close to seriously challenging either in the time that I've had this laptop.

In the case of my personal machine, I just want it to run well and be useful to me. Installing a Linux distro that I know already and am familiar with, accomplished it for me. Don't want to buy new hardware and if switching my OS makes the current hardware more usable, I'm happy. It's about choosing the right tool for the job and for this i3, 8GB laptop, LinuxMint seems to be the right tool for the job.

I'm not anti-Microsoft, I made my living off of their products for many years, and my knowledge of their enterprise products continues to serve me well in my current cybersecurity role.

Anyway.
 
Urshurak776 said:
In my experience, a 3 year old laptop, with a 256GB SSD (probably not an M.2) and 8GB of RAM is Grandma/Grandpa territory.

but......

For specific useage items, such as using linux Mint, it's a great choice for that. Linux is great for certain things. If you need windows, a dual boot environment can be done as well.

None of this is for the average consumer though.
Click to expand...
The Grandma/Grandpa comment is ill advised. I have worked in tech for many years and the field has definitely not left me behind. I know what's up, let's just leave it at that.

I'm not against spending some money on a nicer laptop but I have other plans for my money at the moment. And when I do drop some money on a nicer laptop, I'm going to be looking for ARM next time. Sure X86 continues to incrementally improve, but from a battery life perspective it's never going to be the equal of ARM. I'm looking for something that truly has all-day battery life, for no more than say $750. And I'll let my work continue to supply the gonzo hardware that I need for serious cybersecurity work.

For now, making a device that sits in my master bedroom nightstand 90% of the time more useful, seems like a win to me.
 
Brons2 said:
Not saying you're wrong, but, the system is way faster on LinuxMint, cache or not. It's a revelation how much faster it feels. At the end of the day, It's the end user experience that matters, not what technical wizardy that Windows is doing on the backend.

I can also confirm what you say, that with 64GB like my work laptop has, the memory usage of Win11 is not a consideration at all. With 2 browsers open with 20+ tabs each, 2 VMs running, Word and Excel running, Acrobat running, various utilites running, 10 screenshots open, Task manager running, I'm only at 49% memory utilization. I would probably run out of CPU on this machine before I ran out of RAM, if I threw a bunch more at it. But I haven't come close to seriously challenging either in the time that I've had this laptop.

In the case of my personal machine, I just want it to run well and be useful to me. Installing a Linux distro that I know already and am familiar with, accomplished it for me. Don't want to buy new hardware and if switching my OS makes the current hardware more usable, I'm happy. It's about choosing the right tool for the job and for this i3, 8GB laptop, LinuxMint seems to be the right tool for the job.

I'm not anti-Microsoft, I made my living off of their products for many years, and my knowledge of their enterprise products continues to serve me well in my current cybersecurity role.

Anyway.
Click to expand...
Yes, sorry, I wasn't trying to correct you or talk you out of using Linux. Very much the opposite. Just throwing some info out there for whoever reads your thread since there sometimes seems to be a general understanding of how Windows manages memory.
 
Did you set it up for dual boot? I did mine, Win10/Mint and it runs great. It's a little iffy sometimes to get Grub to come up, but I figure that's one of the things Microsoft does to discourage these installations. Once it does, it seems to work for quite a while. (the dual boot part) both systems run great.
 
My biggest beef is not Windows 11 or 10, but rather corporate IT adding bloatware and make laptops unusable.

I am using a Core Ultra 5 with 64GB of ram and 500GB SSD but 20% of my CPU cycles are used up for "Windows Hello" on the webcam trying to log me in after I'm already logged in. At one point somehow it was stuck turning my webcam on and the light was on when I am not using it. While doing real work usually taking 30% CPU cycles some security stuff is using another 20-40% on top of it trying to protect me.

For home use I had some incident of similar CPU cycle waste, and in the end I had to disable the webcam in Device Manager to stop that. I'm not a fan of Linux's GUI but at least they are honest about not including these nonsenses.
 
PandaBear said:
My biggest beef is not Windows 11 or 10, but rather corporate IT adding bloatware and make laptops unusable.

I am using a Core Ultra 5 with 64GB of ram and 500GB SSD but 20% of my CPU cycles are used up for "Windows Hello" on the webcam trying to log me in after I'm already logged in. At one point somehow it was stuck turning my webcam on and the light was on when I am not using it. While doing real work usually taking 30% CPU cycles some security stuff is using another 20-40% on top of it trying to protect me.

For home use I had some incident of similar CPU cycle waste, and in the end I had to disable the webcam in Device Manager to stop that. I'm not a fan of Linux's GUI but at least they are honest about not including these nonsenses.
Click to expand...
Sometimes things just need tuning? We have a cybersecurity agent running that solely gathers client telemetry for usage in our SIEM and we had to go through several rounds of tuning with the agent to get it to run acceptably with lower powered PCs in the field.

We don't run Windows Hello but the Microsoft reps that call on our organization have suggested it multiple times. This is an interesting data point that makes me want to think we want to keep saying NO. Our organization is super cheap and we have really old PCs in the field, we don't replace them until they are 8 years old.

Of course everyone at HQ gets new PCs every 2-3 years but anyway.
 
I am not sure if filing IT tickets once a week is enough but they told me those Windows Hello things are coming and they cannot stop that.

In the end I lost a few Zoom call with customers because the webcam got hijacked. If I can't use my webcam with the customers, I'll just disable my webcam because there's no incentive for us to keep it on and burn 20% of my CPU time.
 
My main computer is a 10-year-old Dell Laptop. Yes, 10 years old! I use it 90% of the time to browse the web. I ditched Windows and loaded Linux Mint, 8 months ago. For my use, it works perfectly. I even use the built-in LibreOffice software.
 
Last edited:
Bottom_Feeder said:
Linux Mint 8? Version 22.2 is out.
Click to expand...
I installed 22.2 personally with the Cinnamon desktop package, on my laptop that is the subject of this thread. For my LinuxMint VMs, I usually install the XFCE desktop because it is lighter weight and I am trying to minimize resource usage usually when it comes to a VM.

There's also the Gnome desktop, never tried it on LinuxMint, although I've used it extensively on other Linux distributions.

There's also a Debian based LinuxMint but I tried it and it didn't play well with VirtualBox.
 
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