Last week one of my computers running Linux Mint died. I took the SSD from it and put it in a completely different computer and it just booted and worked! Try that with windows!!!
This really resonates with me as I've just had a very similar story.
I've been trying to figure out what to do about my daily driver laptop given it's not eligible for the Windows 11 update and Windows 10 is losing support in October.
From 1999-2016 I was a full-time Linux user, but a change in my work status meant that I had to switch to Windows.
So, I bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th gen with Windows in 2016, and set the old Lenovo X61 (with Ubuntu LTS 16.04) aside and didn't even power it up in the intervening nine years.
Not being a huge fan of Windows, while using the X1 I kept a very strict strategy of not installing any software, but rather only using web-based apps in Edge. Basically I used it in an analogous way to a Chromebook-- I considered it to be an "Edgebook."
In the last 9 years I haven't kept up on Linux news, so while searching for possible Windows 11-running new machines to replace the X1 (and not finding any options I was thrilled about), I was surprised to learn that MS now makes Edge for Linux. Not only that, but I've seen several reviews saying that Edge is one of the better-performing browsers for Linux, having above average performance and lower than average resource needs. Nice!
That caused me to dig out the old X61 and see if I could get Edge running on it. All kinds of dependency issues trying to install Edge on Ubuntu 16.04, so I took a shot at upgrading.
To my shock, I was able to upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04, then to 20.04, then 22.04, and finally 24.04 with nary a hitch.
Installed Edge, logged into my MS account, and, unbelievable, absolutely everything I had previously set up in Edge on Windows (bookmarks, extensions, saved passwords, etc.) were all there and functional!
Bottom line was that I was able to completely replicate the "Edgebook" experience I have been using the last 9 years with an X1 Carbon running Windows on a 2007 Lenovo X61 running full Ubuntu (including full gnome desktop) with 4gb RAM!
It's been my daily driver now for the last week, and it works great. Just blown away by the fact that this old machine is now fully modern and functional, and with the carryover of all my Copilot history of conversations, it even a fully AI- capable machine.
Since I retired at the end of 2023, I don't need Windows anymore, so with this success, it looks like I'm back to Linux again myself!