877
Sounds like a good way to make use of old eMachines, at a large discount too.
Finally, the year of the Linux Desktop! (eMachine edition)
i guess the eMachines truly were never obsolete
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
877 points (98.9% liked)
Linux
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I'm troubled that my older hardware is way less power efficient doing the same tasks.
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(1 replies)
What has kept me from trying Linux is my fear of not understanding what I'm doing all over again, and difficulty running all of my games. I've used Windows since the mid-90s and I'm very good/familiar with it. Diving headfirst into a new OS and feeling like an idiot again is not something I want, so I've been too afraid to make that jump. I also don't know whether or not the difficulty running games thing is overblown.
I was like you and I took the plunge when W10 was given its death sentence. I watched a few tutorials on YouTube, picked a distro (Mint, it feels very familiar if you come from a windows environment) and after a few days of dual boot I got rid of Windows for good. Never looked back.
Initially there were some little hurdles with games, you can install Steam very easily (flatpaks are a godsend) but only a small selection of games are Linux-compatible by default. Then I heard about Proton, and with another flatpak installation boom all my Steam games worked, and damn well I have to add.
Then I heard about Lutris, and my Sims games that I thought I'd never get to play again now work.
Please don't worry about not knowing what you're doing, if you pick a distro like Mint you will not have to mess up with the terminal unless you choose to. Try running a distro on a virtual machine to see how it feels!
There are some that will have a familiar interface to you. I don't have experience myself but since the Steam Deck came out gaming on Linux has been rapidly improving.
like others are saying: I installed a second NVMe SSD and put Linux Mint on it. This was a very simple task, and it automatically setup a boot window so when I start the computer it gives me the option to pick Windows or Linux. Linux Mint has a software center where I selected and installed Steam w/ Proton (again, super easy to setup, lots of online instructions) and my games work just fine. I keep Windows just because I dont want to lose my access to the OS, but Linux is now my main.
I have close to no problems with games that are compiled for Windows.
The only real problem is anti-cheats actively combating Linux/Wine/Proton: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Anything else either works or does so after a few Wine/Proton updates.
I can't speak to games, but I've found that when I used Ubuntu, it was pretty easy to figure out. I'm thinking other distros should be comparably simple.
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$20 👍
you are a good person <3
Ubuntu? Yuck! Give me Mint.
This would be the only way to convince me to try Linux.