I've done this with almost every computer I've built/owned from MacBooks to desktops, and it depends on your use. Want to use it to spin up say a small private nextcloud/plex/lemmy/Remote Desktop/NAS/whatever server? usually works pretty well! if you have no use for the computer then it could be worth it to just get your feet wet in linux/FreeBSD/HaikuOS or something like that. Otherwise it's probably better to just recycle or sell it if it's just going to collect dust either way.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Linux will run it no problem, but as soon as you open a web browser it might die
Mint MATE is good for old computers, but I wonder you'd need to configure the tablet-like "touch" input manually and that could be some work.
I've found touch input to work OOTB in most cases, what I've had issues with though is screen orientation detection 😟
It's pretty difficult to poke around with when the tablet is slow, I peronally gave up trying to create a new rotation config for an older Atom tablet
In general, the hardware on consumer devices is not as well supported as on business devices. And actually, older stuff is better supported than new devices. Anything between 1 and 10 years old should be ok. You can always try out Linux on USB before installing to confirm if stuff like touch, the camera, fingerprint reader or automatic display orientation work.
Sometimes linux might work poorly on some machines. Few days ago I had my "Round 2" with my friend's Lenovo ideapad 110 (this laptop came with Win8 preinstalled). It was a painfully bad machine in terms of performance (maybe some parts are failing in there).
In the "Round 1" I installed Linux Mint, but it was running okay-ish (since she's a beginner and didn't wanted any "ancient-looking" DE)
But I've done some basic look-arounds about chomebooks (low power, fanless devices) aaand instaling ChromeOS Flex hit the spot!
Yes, this OS is quite limited out of the box (form what I know. I didn't took a deep dive yet) but for her use case (browsing web and watching videos) it's perfect!
Not quite answer for your question, but it's a good thing to know that you can revive some junky-wierd devices
Xubuntu or Fedora will do you fine
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