Can I convert old Win 7 computer to Linux?

[bob466]

I believe a bit of that slowness has to do with the Gnome 46 or Gnome 47 desktop environment that Cinnamon is built from.

Gnome desktop environment is demanding on system resources and if them system resources ain't available it will load the processor and give slow overall performance.

Xfce and Mate desktop environments aren't very resource demanding and are a better choice for older not so powerful computers.

I know it's hard to believe that an old Laptop could run like new but it's just happened to me.

I installed Mint XFCE on my old Laptop and it now runs like lighting...type in my password..hit Enter...5 seconds to the Desktop...my Tower running Mint Cinnamon 22.1 takes 3 to 4 seconds and that has an i5 12th gen CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads which is only 2 years old.

 

[Brickwizard]

Beside mint and Ubuntu, have a look at Garuda, Manjaro,MX-linux , and Parrot home edition

 

[ascript]

As the poster is a Windows user and seems a little scared of Linux, I will throw another distro into the mix,

A Microsoft engineer made a Linux distro that's like a comfort blanket to ex-Windows users — I finally tried it, and I'm surprised how good it is

AnduinOS is the brainchild of Anduin Xue, a software engineer at the company famous for not building Linux distros. It's not Windows, but it has that familiarity.

www.windowscentral.com

download from

GitHub - Anduin2017/AnduinOS: AnduinOS is a custom Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that offers a familiar and easy-to-use experience for anyone moving to Linux.

AnduinOS is a custom Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that offers a familiar and easy-to-use experience for anyone moving to Linux. - Anduin2017/AnduinOS

github.com

Anduin os , i haved tried, and is so lag (heavy), my specs ryzen 3 4350g ram 16gb , no GPU just SSD + hdd 500gb, maybe not my luck but i tried nobara, bazzite, mint cinnamon, cachyos , opensuse tumble, fedora 42 all fine (not lag), btw i'm still in the distro hop way ... For my pleasure (gaming and virtualbox) not for working because i'm a farmer , and still looking the best experience with Linux system

 

[Condobloke]

Does my USB drive (pen) need to be formatted to NTFS to store an ISO on it?

No, it is better to either format it to ext4 or leave it alone and making a bootable .iso on it will automatically do the formatting for you.