{"id":12365,"date":"2025-11-03T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12365"},"modified":"2026-02-03T16:56:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:56:44","slug":"reviving-an-old-laptop-with-linux-mint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12365","title":{"rendered":"Reviving an Old Laptop with Linux Mint"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n 1 <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

As I write this on October 28, I got a phone call from someone I had never met before. He\u2019d been referred to me by a mutual friend whom I had helped with a technology problem a couple of weeks ago. This fellow said, \u201cmy computer is no longer getting security updates and a technician with my internet service provider thinks i have a virus.. Can you help me?\u201d I said, \u201cHow old is your computer?\u201d He said, \u201cIt\u2019s eight years old and it\u2019s running Windows 10.\u201d I said, \u201cWindows 10 end of life happened recently, and there\u2019s no way for you to get security updates and\/or antivirus protection.\u201d I said, \u201cAre you willing to think differently?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told him that I\u2019d be happy to meet with him at our village library at noon, following my early morning gig with Meals on Wheels. He was glad to oblige. I walked into the library and met with my client. He had a Dell Inspiron 15 with a 935-gigabyte hard drive, an i5 CPU, and 8 GB of RAM. I said, \u201cThis is an ideal candidate for Linux Mint Cinnamon.\u201d I inserted a USB drive in the laptop and rebooted it. I pressed F12 while it was rebooting, which is the key combination you need to boot from USB with Dell machines. I demonstrated the desktop and explained how easy it would be for him to make the transition. His hard disk had been encrypted so I had to remove the encryption before I could install Linux Mint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I entered the following command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$ lsblk\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The lsblk<\/strong> command lists block devices like hard drives and SSDs, along with their partitions and mount points, to provide a clear view of the system\u2019s storage structure. Now that I knew the block device information, I wanted to wipe the data and have a clean drive to install Linux Mint on. I used the following command to wipe the data:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$ shred -v -n 3 \/dev\/sda<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ate my lunch while the process completed. Then I reinserted the USB drive, started the computer, pressed F12, and started up with Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.2 \u201cZara\u201d, and in about ten minutes, I had a fresh install of Linux on this excellent eight-year-old computer. I called this fellow and told him I could meet him tomorrow at the library to introduce him to his new operating system. He was delighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And just like that, an aging laptop found new life\u2014and its owner discovered a fresh path forward. What began as a cold call turned into a warm collaboration rooted in trust, community, and a willingness to embrace change. By choosing Linux Mint, we not only extended the usefulness of his device but also empowered him with a secure, modern operating system free from the constraints of proprietary software. Tomorrow\u2019s meeting at the library won\u2019t just be about learning a new interface\u2014it\u2019ll be about reclaiming digital independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1 As I write this on October 28, I got a phone call from someone I had never<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":3005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[503,862,746,864],"tags":[863,865],"class_list":["post-12365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux-101","category-linux-mint","category-moving-to-linux","category-saving-old-computers","tag-linux-mint","tag-saving-old-computers"],"modified_by":"David Both","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12381,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12365\/revisions\/12381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}