this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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My kid destroyed my newish laptop and I could only pluck the memory off it to salvage something. So I am back to surfing and doing office projects on my old Alienware Aurora R4 from 2011 running Windows 7. No more gaming for me but also, no need for office products for now and the foreseeable future. Today it would cost me almost double to replace the laptop he destroyed with how much my memory and graphics card would cost. I am so happy that when my Office 360 is up in March I can tell them to fuck off. I am not now nor will ever be a fan of having to pay you over $100 a year so I can open a Word Doc or an old Excel spreadsheet. I am using the web-mail version of my email so I no longer need your Outlook, either.
And..... since I have been hanging out on Lemmy I have seen way too many posts about Linux and gaming to ever think I will buy a windows product again. I miss not playing my Flight Sim and games like Madden but I will never upgrade this OS on this old beast.
Like others I am looking forward to the day when I can build my new computer and install Linux on it and enjoy gaming again.
What I’m about to tell you might shock you, as it doesn't get brought up hardly at all, ever, but… linux.
Try Linux out on the old laptop, you'll probably be pleasantly surprised how much gaming it can handle. You can even run it off a flash drive. Which flight sim are you on?
Your use case sounds perfect for using LibreOffice as a drop-in replacement. Opening a Word doc or an old Excel spreadsheet is effortless. You don't sound like the "I use Excel every day for my job and there is no replacement" folks with very specific needs.
And I will echo what the other reply said: try Linux on your laptop! Not only will it probably work fine, it will probably also feel much faster and more responsive.
Trying most of the big Linux distros is super easy and zero commtment, too. When you boot from the install media, it loads directly into the OS desktop running natively on your hardware! Then once you're ready to install it, there's usually a shortcut on the desktop or something.
I recommend trying Linux Mint. It is so simple to install and full featured out of the box, plus being based on ubuntu and being very popular itself, information and help is everywhere.