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I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux
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I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux
If your laptop is stranded on Windows 10, the solution isn’t a new laptop. It’s a new operating system.
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by Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
News Writer
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Follow See All by Stevie Bonifield
Apr 3, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC
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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Follow See All by Stevie Bonifield
is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.
Two weeks ago I set aside my M4 MacBook Air and picked up a nine-year-old ThinkPad. It’s one of an estimated 200 to 400 million Windows 10 PCs that don’t meet Microsoft’s requirements for Windows 11. When Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 in October, it became “obsolete.” The solution, according to Microsoft, is to get rid of it and buy a computer that can run Windows 11.
But that’s not good enough. This ThinkPad — like millions of other PCs in the same boat — is still perfectly functional. Its hardware is more than capable of everyday tasks. I’ve been using it for web browsing, writing in Google Docs, talking to my Verge colleagues on Slack, and even some gaming on Steam. Not bad for a laptop that’s supposed to be retired.
All you have to do is reject Microsoft’s framing. It’s not safe to leave it on Windows 10, since Microsoft chose to stop offering security updates, and Windows 11 isn’t supported. But who says this laptop needs to run Windows at all? There’s another operating system that runs great on older hardware, is still actively maintained, and can prevent millions of computers from being scrapped before their time.
That’s right: The secret to saving this laptop, and maybe yours too, is Linux.
The spec that blocked my laptop from running Windows 11
This story was written on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 5 with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 7th-gen Intel Core i7-7600U processor. It’s a more powerful version of a laptop The Verge reviewed when it came out in 2017.
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