It is common that system requirements do increase with each new version of windows and devices that exist overtime becomes outdated or old being replaced by the newer generation of devices such as High end computers, laptops, etc.
This however does not mean that old devices are "useless" as they still have a use to this today and this can be said to any low end device no matter how old it has aged as time went on.
The question is that, is it worth it to run modern windows on old hardware? That's what this readme is about and i will share my experience with windows 10 on a 2010 hp laptop.
Please note that this is an experience i had and results could vary for each modern windows on old hardware. Some old devices actually run modern windows without issues and some are not powerful enough to handle the resources it uses. I'm sadly one of the people that had bad experience with it but though, this is an afterall smth that i wanted to talk about and share it with people on internet.
My experience starts once Windows 7 reached EOL (end-of-life) and so it took me at least 6 months to migrate to Windows 10 due to our irl stuff not having the perfect time for this.
At the time, much like everyone else, i was forced by security and overall program support that might happen in the future and i had no other options other than upgrading to windows 10. There was windows 8.1 back then when it was supported but i see a lot of people doesn't seem to like it for some reason (perhaps metro menu?).
Eventually, after one day of this, i installed Windows 10 1909 without issues on it and the laptop performed like a fresh new laptop that you would think it's good to start placing things onto it.
During my early days of using windows 10, it was running fast than my slow windows 7 install and even managed to play games that were impossible to do on windows 7 at the time. Overtime, i began to get used to windows 10 as expected and since then, i decided to keep using it for years as i enjoyed some of the stuff it had such as ms store, apps like weather, etc.
However, this doesn't last long and this is where everything starts there from now on.....
At first, the os began to slow down at performance to the point that even stuff i used to do on windows 10 became impossible and so i sadly had to do only basic stuff without the gaming thingy for about a year or two.
As stupid as it sounds, more issues began to occur especially stability. A lot of weird stuff began to happen and even i got into windows recovery screen one of the times for strange reason and this never stopped here, it only went worse as my user account also got corrupted one time and i even had more issues such as flickering and high ram/cpu used by microsoft's services in task manager.
My laptop then began to have a lot of weird things happening as more and more issues do occur by itself without me knowing on why it does. It's important to note that at the time, i was young and had no experience with other windows knowledge such as figuring out the issues (since i used windows 10 at the time i was like 13 which is reasonable).
Eventually, my system files got damaged by the now never ending sudden shutdowns of windows after the last problem aka glitched BSOD kept appearing (alongside with very slow login timing).
Despite the issues, i struggled to use windows 10 and tried to do my stuff on it without thinking about it and as i was feeling safe about endless support then something happened. Windows 11 then began to appear and became a real thing when it was announced by Microsoft themselves.
At first, i didn't mind at Microsoft if i was going to get the upgrade in force, but then, all things went downhill when i checked the system requirements and now my laptop got it's support dropped by microsoft's latest OS that replaced windows 10 despite being supposed to be the "last" version of "windows".
I then became hopeless after 2023 where i realized that i won't be able to continue to use modern windows anymore on this crappy laptop. I didn't know on what to do... after all, i only wanted a supported windows that just "works" and do my job on it, i don't have money to buy new laptop to run windows 11 and after months of this realization, i remembered something. "Linux"...
I had only one memory of linux which was using Ubuntu on my old computer as a kid when windows xp for some reason got replaced with it. As a young kid, i didn't mind this and mostly used Ubuntu to browse the web and play online games on it. Eventually, windows xp returned again to that computer and since then i no longer own the computer as my mom gave it to other people irl who might want to use it and so in return, i got a laptop running windows 7 which doesn't seem a bad thing overall.
As time goes on, i began to think about using Linux after a decade of using Ubuntu on my old computer, even a lot of people told me to try Linux if my laptop doesn't work properly with windows and i made the decision to use linux again and perhaps check on what has changed over the years.
My first plan was to originally use them on virtual machine but then my specs wasn't great so it was bad experience. There're so many distros out there that i went into checking videos about them being unsure on what to use and even the "beginner friendly distros to try" videos on yt. There was of course Ubuntu again but it now requires more resources that my laptop would run slow on it so this wasn't ideal. My final resort was lightweight distros and i picked one of them named "Q4OS" which interested me enough to try it.
I then decided to setup dual booting as i wasn't ready to ditch windows and return to linux after a very long time ago and once i booted into Q4OS, it was like experiencing something new. Everything suddenly stopped with issues i had on windows, i had a very stable experience for the first time in years and i was able to use my laptop peacefully. Q4OS then became my main os and i never had weird issues since.
I guess "you can bring back your old laptop to life with linux" wasn't a lie, it was really "true"... I was so happy that i finally decided to stop being stuck on windows with same issues over and over again.
Running modern windows on very low-end hardware isn't really a good idea so you might want to consider using an older version of windows that fits with it or a lightweight linux distro if you're willing to learn a whole new os and being generally open minded.
It's fine to use modern windows on old devices as windows 10 for example in this case, still works on them as far as even windows 11 on unsupported hardware. However, let's be honest, not all may run smoothly just like my experience and you may consider to do something about it if it continues to get worse overtime.
I do not recommend daily driving this but if you do then it's your choice after all.