What Linux Should i use on an old Dell D630

I had the old D630 - which "expired" last September (cracked GPU connections!) - for well over 2 years. Had the misfortune to snag a lappie off eBay with an Nvidia GPU built at the time the industry was switching to lead-free solder.....and which had a tendency to run as hot as a furnace into the bargain. (The inevitable extreme thermal cycling with 'dodgy' solder led to an inescapable conclusion. But I didn't discover all this till well after I bought it...)
What a bummer although I've seen a lot of electronics with melted cold solder joints where high power and hear were involved.

Apparently the ban on lead in solder used electronics according to this article came about around 2003.

Don't know the accuracy of the article posted.

This is not meant to be political.

Moderators if this appears to be political than by all means please remove it.
 


Seeing the suggestion to try Mint has me a bit confused. I changed to Cinnamon 2 years ago because I got notice that Mint support was ending. I kinda liked Mint. Being that I don't have any friends, even someone who is tech savvy, I made the change without consulting anyone out of a panic. Would not mind going back if it is still functioning OS.
Linux Mint is the most popular distro on Distrowatch. It is ahead of all others by a large margin

Because it has this popularity, that also gives notice that it has more and better support than all the others

I have no idea where you got your info from re Mint, but it was wrong....flat out wrong.

i have been uisng and continue to use Linux Mint becasue it is quite simply the most user friendly distro out there, with a ton of support if it is needed.

 
I have a 2 core laptop and Linux Mint runs flawless on it.
Also have 2 9020 pc's on the Linux crack as well as my main rig.
It's just what I'm comfortable with because I started from that OS.
The great thing about Linux is you can test drive many flavors on usb before committing I use Raspberry Pi imager to make my Live usb .
 
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There's a lot to customize in Linux Mint they have changed the game.
Screenshot from 2025-01-18 09-03-51.png
 
To be honest for the period I used Fedora rpm installation had a lot of chasing dependencies issues, so I went to Debian and Ubuntu based systems with .deb and synaptic which made installing programs easier. Of course at one stage I was a Puppy Linux user as well. Fedora may be easier now but it wasn't then guess I was impatient.
 
Linux Mint is the most popular distro on Distrowatch. It is ahead of all others by a large margin

Because it has this popularity, that also gives notice that it has more and better support than all the others

I have no idea where you got your info from re Mint, but it was wrong....flat out wrong.

i have been uisng and continue to use Linux Mint becasue it is quite simply the most user friendly distro out there, with a ton of support if it is needed.

Okay. I remember when I was doing an update, I got a message that said support for Mint was ending in such-and-such a time/date. I would agree with you that Mint is a good OS. I kinda miss it. But I didn't have someone to consult with. I just remember getting some alert when I tried to update that support was ending. Felt like I was living in the Win-Doze days again.
 
I just remember getting some alert when I tried to update that support was ending
You were using an end of life version. You needed to update to the next version
 
Mint Hasn't stopped, changed or gone away, Its a shame you panicked how long ago was this? For the last few years [I came across it when upgrading from Mint 19 to mint 20, that would have been mid 2020], Mint have used their own auto upgrade app, when a new LTS version comes out.
Yeah, I think I panicked. I just moved to the state I'm in now, and don't know anyone. I was in New Mexico when I started on Linux and had a neighbor upstairs from me that built his own servers, and was on Linux himself. I think you're correct on the date too because I left New Mexico in July of 21. When I moved here, I had some rude ass tech dude install Cinnamon for me since I had no idea where else to go. I even tried both the local college and university IT Dept's to see if someone there knew of this OS. The university ran entirely on Mac's-no Win-Doze. So out of total frustration ( and I remember clearly I was beyond aggravated and frustrated) I went to this computer store where the guy said he knew on Linux and had him do it. He was rude and just wanted my $$$$$. His English was not that good either.I wanted someone here that was familiar with Linux that I could call every now and then to stop by and give some assistance if I had a problem or question. Don't have that. And while I'm thinking of it, I heard of a Linux group that is up the freeway from me ( 2 hours) that has forum like this--kinda. I left a message for someone to get back to me, and I've heard nothing.
 

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Linux Mint is the most popular distro on Distrowatch. It is ahead of all others by a large margin

Because it has this popularity, that also gives notice that it has more and better support than all the others
I understand that you very much like Mint but I find this portion of your post disturbing because distrowatch is very vague instrument to measure popularity, and then based on that, support usefulness.

I'm not criticizing in a negative manner but I think it's would be great to start a new thread to discuss applicable instruments on what makes some distro great, e.g. what determines popularity, what determines support value, what determines if distro is user friendly etc. and also which other categories like these can be considered to measure if some distro is great.

I'm sure there are better methods to determine this than distrowatch.
 
I heard of a Linux group that is up the freeway from me


There used to be many LUG's [Linux user group's] across the world but most of them now seem to have gone to the wall, I tried to contact all the ones i could find in the UK, to post a free link to their forums here, not one replied.
 
what determines popularity,
Unfortunately Linux is not windows, you dont have to register it so there is no body count, Distro watch counts downloads, it cannot account for how many times that download will be installed on different machines [if installed at all after running live]
the most accurate account would be from websites with OS counters, but that will not help as all the 500 or so desktop Linux, are all counted as one
 
Unfortunately Linux is not windows, you dont have to register it so there is no body count, Distro watch counts downloads, it cannot account for how many times that download will be installed on different machines [if installed at all after running live]
the most accurate account would be from websites with OS counters, but that will not help as all the 500 or so desktop Linux, are all counted as one
AFAIK distrowatch counts website visits, if for e.g. you're using Mint and go visit distrowatch that increases counter toward Mint right?
Right above ranking it says "Page Hit Ranking":
distrowatch.png


But how many Linux users visit distrowatch?
I'm one that does not, and I'm sure there is plenty of others who don't, so what about their "votes"?
 

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