This is sort of a thinking-out-loud thing.

About ten years ago I bought a laptop for a coworker. I haven't seen her in some years until recently. She said she doesn't use it much and asked if I'd like it back. Sure thing, why not.

It's a ThinkPad SL510 with Intel Core2 Duo processor, 8GB RAM, 250GB HD.
When I got it back I was surprised to find it was pretty much in the same condition as when I bought it. Not a speck of dust or scratch on it, just a dead battery (recently replaced). The Windows 7 Home was also barely touched. With the exception of personal photos/videos everything else was as is. The Opera and Comodo Dragon browsers and other apps I installed were never upgraded and no new apps were added.

I partitioned the the drive and did some Linux non-systemd distro hopping on it. Currently using MX Linux.

Wondering: Since I have no ties to the Win7 installed (not linked to my Microsoft accounts) do you think I should just wipe out the Windows OS and recovery partitions and dedicate the laptop to Linux only?

I already have an Asus laptop with Win7 Ultimate and Slackware so probably don't need another Win installation.

If I decided to do so, any recommendations on a preferably non-systemd distro. MX Linux is nice but maybe something else? To be honest I wouldn't mind re-acquainting myself with BSD but not sure any of them would work on this laptop.

Sure. I have ThinkPad T430 with Devuan and Slackware only. Last time I used Windows was in 2012. I had powerhorse to play some nice games. Usually having two installations I create one ntfs partition to make easy file sharing. No worries about permissions, ownership etc.

Plenty of laptops will do it nicely.

In 2012/13, I got a twin core i3 with hd4000 graphics. UEFI was just out, windows 8 fell on it's sword updating to 8.1, but I never wanted it anyhow. I have it in a VM, but you want 4 cores for that. It's there in case I needed something that absolutely has to go on windows, but there's nothing, except Silverlight, perhaps. Only a loser uses that anyhow.

I got Samsung, and had to format with MBR to turn off UEFI. Most better known brands are OK, but be careful with Toshiba, Acer, & Sony (If you're buying old stock). Check Linux support on your peripherals before paying your money. Get 4 cores if you can.

The first thing I always do with a second-hand computer (and all my computers have been second-hand) is to test the hardware with a live distro. Then if everything works, I wipe the disk using dd if=/dev/zero, repartition with gparted and install linux.

That's for an mbr boot. With uefi, I prefer to leave the esp as is and just wipe the Windows partitions.

If it works for you, I'd install AntiX Base version, (add what else you might require).

I've been running Linux, (& occasionally BSD), on all my computers for the past 20 years.

Never missed that 'blue screen of death'.....


P.S. Maybe try OpenBSD on it.

I wouldn't hesitate to go "IX" full time on it. I had an ancient Compaq laptop that my boss let me have that I loaded SUSE on that I could haul from site to site when I needed to log into a system when working with different teams (I was normally a desktop system user). The old "Vista-ready" Dell that I have now (virus-infested when given to me) was initially running openSUSE after I got it but nowadays is running Slackware (14.2). I pulled out the original disk and bought a larger one. The original drive got reformatted to ext4 and gets used in a USB/SATA drive bay for backups of my user data if/when I decide to reinstall. (Waste nothing. :^) )

If you've a good idea of what hardware is under the hood, I don't think you'd have any trouble going with Linux full time. The most trouble I've had with Linux on laptops has been the WiFi chipset and, frankly, dealing with that wasn't as big a deal as I imagined it would be. For non-Systemd, my choice would be Slackware but that's mostly because of familiarity. I've been curious about Devuan but I'm not much for devoting a lot of time trying out different distributions.

Good luck...

Yeah, I stopped dual-booting years ago, and now whenever a Windows machine comes my way, I test it out in a live Linux session and then wipe the drive, like what "hazel" wrote. I don't have Windows at home anymore, but when I did need it, seemed like everything was a lot nicer once I started keeping Linux and Windows on separate computers.

I'd probably at least try Devuan first if I was gonna go non-systemd, but I can't make a recommendation.

Suggest adding a SSD for performance


Of the Devuan family, I found Miyo runs better on my D630 with 4GB RAM, Core2Duo


IME, antiX is better for old hardware than its big bro, MX


Salix and Slackware, of course


PCLOS does not run systemd


Beware -- problems may arise going beyond the 4.19.x kernel, but then again, the old nVidia Quadro I have may have something to do with this. [See here -- bassmadrigal]


Have fun!

The one and only thing I would recommend before loading Linux (only) on an old computer is to go to the vendors web site and install the latest firmware updates. I have a couple that will not charge the batter properly, a known issue with a firmware update fix that will install only with the original Windows installed. Since the poriginal version of windows is not available I cannot apply the fix. Avoiding that would be the ONLY reason I would want a windows version around. I have run Linux only (windows free) since 2004.

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Wow, thanks folks. Didn't expect so much good suggestions and info.
It's weird, I feel like noob 101 here in some ways.

First got behind a TRS-80 Model III in high school. Was jazzed. A stint in the Army meant I didn't get my own machine until 1988 (eventually had the most tricked out Tandy 1000HX and became one of the DOS internet guys). First came across Linux in '92/'93. There was some UNIX mag/newsletter that had a "special" Linux issue with interview with Torvalds. It came with a floppy. Kernel 0.95 and had to do the whole bootstrap thing. Once I squared that away the first thing I ever compiled was pcomm(sp?) (was heavy BBS user and used ProComm Plus) which was cool. On a 386-40 I had Kent Robotti's DOSLinux which was was really nice. His Midnight Commander with fully populated F2 menu meant I could do almost everything from within the program. Config eventually went with me later on. Anyway, couldn't deal with DOS FAT corruption and cross-linked files so I eventually went with a dedicated distro. Slackware. Quite a few machines and OSes since then but called it quits in 2014.

Android became my focus. I'm a multibooter at heart so I run mostly older Android. Anyway, had only one laptop, the ASUS, used only for phone duties. Unlocking, rooting, unbricking. Otherwise it went unused. The initial COVID-19 lockdown made me return to Linux. New battery, max RAM, 500GB SSD. Tried different distros at first like Devuan, Void, etc. but had to have Slackware first and foremost. So that machine is set (NsCDE is my desktop). But man, I used to hack and build and configure like nobody's business (Linux, UNIX, BSD, WinXP [msys, mingw, multiple SDKs and compilers]) but today even the simplest tasks seem foreign. Feel like a newbie noob. :-o

For the ThinkPad, you guys have given me a lot to consider. Can't address each individually but will take everything into consideration. Making sure firmware is updated first is a good tip. Thanks @wpeckham. Didn't think about using the removed spinning drives as external storage. I would've just boxed them away. Another thanks.
Regarding no systemd, when thinking about the ASUS I came across distrochooser site. Pretty cool. That's how I found out about Devuan and Void. Then came across the 'No systemd' site which is a good jumping off point. I really do miss BSD so I may give OpenBSD another look also. Back in the day I used MidnightBSD. Also had NetBSD in a Win7 VM acting as a repo for IRIX. *sigh* Dang, I miss those days.

Once again folks, many thanks for the suggestions and tips. Gotta make notes and carefully consider everything.

I haven't really used windows to any usable degree since 2002. The last time I had a job that required windows. Most of my laptops since then have run linux. Most times on an external drive, leaving the drive that came with it untouched, sometimes never even booted for the first time. Given the option I even pull out the drive that came with the laptop. As the USB sticks use a lot less power than the spinning rust of my old laptops. About the only time I have run windows in the past 20-ish years is to take online aptitude tests for temp agencies stuck in the 1950s.

Greetings.
Sad that I never came back to follow up. Time sure flew. In all that time I still didn't fully settle.
Tried a bunch of distros and BSDs. Even OpenIndiana, which I used back in the day. Surprisingly it ran very well with no driver issues. I would've settled on it as one of the main candidates but hit a niggle. I really dislike touchpads and never use them. Since OI isn't necessarily laptop oriented I could not, for the life of me, find a way to disable the touchpad (scoured the web to no avail). Seemed to have a single pointing device (mouse) driver. Disable that and lose the ability to use any mouse or trackpoint.

Anyway, MX Linux, OpenBSD, and Artix were settled on. After some time Artix was replaced with Obarun but I couldn't wrap myself around the init system and went back to Artix. As seems to be the case with Arch-based distros I get hit by the occassional breakage. More so when I was running Arco and Garuda on the mini-pc. Recently finally decided to dump Artix and put Void. Been awhile since I tried it and am happy with it. Plus wanting to stay familiar with its packaging system.

No real reason to post this but it kept bugging me if I didn't. :-)

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Yes.. If you need Windows for whatever reason (on that machine), you could rather run it on a virtual machine. It's safer, easier and better than to do dual boot. Microsoft even allows you to download Windows as an ISO these days.

Do a search for the app "touchpad-indicator". Lots of distros have it in their repos and if not it can be installed by building it from source. It allows you to turn on or off the touchpad when you want and you can even have it auto start when you log in. Good luck!

It looks OK: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:SL510
Currently you've got Slackware and Debian based systems. How about a descendant of Mandriva, such as Mageia or PCLinuxOS? Or an Arch derivative like EndeavourOS or Manjaro?