Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

So I ended up going with Linux Mint 19.2 Xfce for the old laptop. Just didn’t want to mess with having to install 7 first and then do the 10 upgrade.

PatrickGSR94 said:

So I ended up going with Linux Mint 19.2 Xfce for the old laptop. Just didn’t want to mess with having to install 7 first and then do the 10 upgrade.

Who said about installing Windows 7 first? I would go straight for Windows 10. Forgive me Linux guys but I believe with Linux you never get 100% of your system's potential. You cannot expect the same performance and hardware/application compatibility with Windows. You are using at best 70% of the hardware capabilities. I always prefer to install Windows, even XP, than install any Linux. It might be slow but you get 100% of its features. I consider installing Linux to a former Windows machine as "sacrilege". Sorry.

My understanding was that upgrading straight from XP to 10 was not possible and that a Win7/8 license had to be installed first to make the 10 upgrade. To be clear I’m not interested in purchasing 10. I was looking to spend as little money as possible, and in fact spent less than $35 on the memory and SSD, so mission accomplished there.

Don't purchase 10. Just install it to check compatibility first. Then you can buy them or use a Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 key to activate (provided this key is not used anymore in another machine).

Well it’s a brand new SSD so it’s a clean install no matter what. But if I upgraded my desktop from 7 to 10 already using that 7 license, then I can’t use that one for the laptop correct? If so then I don’t have any unused 7/8 licenses laying around, so I went Linux to minimize cost.

sorry, maybe my post wasn't clear.

The only Win7 license I had previously in my household was my desktop PC. I upgraded that machine to Win10 back around Christmas 2018.

This old laptop I was talking about had XP Pro SP3 on it. From what I read, it wasn't possible to upgrade XP to 10 directly (neither upgrade or clean install), and that a copy of Win7 would have to be installed first, then upgrade to Win10. In order to do that, one must have a license of Win7 to use. Since my Win7 license from the desktop PC was already used to upgrade that machine to Win10, I assumed I would not be able to install Win10 on this old laptop unless I did a full purchase of the OS.

Since I did not want to invest that money, I decided to go Linux Mint. It's perfectly fine for what the laptop will be used for.

PatrickGSR94 said:

From what I read, it wasn't possible to upgrade XP to 10 directly (neither upgrade or clean install), and that a copy of Win7 would have to be installed first, then upgrade to Win10.

I found, when rescuing a dead XP machine which had software I wanted to keep (took an image of the HDD and installed it in a VM) that I couldn't upgrade directly from XP to W7. I had to upgrade XP > Vista > W7 > W10.

lol wow, even more of a reason to just use Linux. I've never had a Vista license on anything.