GabrielKnight123 wrote on 2026-01-28, 07:10:

I've bought a new PC for Windows 11 and now I'm wondering what to do with the old PC, its too old to run Win 11

Absolutely not; my Core 2 Quad PC runs Windows 11 and it's very responsive. Your processor has AVX, so it should run modern operating systems for a good while.

but it should be good with some sort of Linux I just don't know which flavour because I don't have much experience with Linux, are there any good versions with a GUI like look to Windows?

Out of all the desktop environments available, I'd say KDE looks the closest to Windows at present.

That said, I wouldn't get hung up on a distribution due to its choice of window manager. KDE can be installed on almost all of them, so you have plenty of options. I'd suggest Debian, Fedora or their derivatives.

I've read some windows games work with Linux

The number of working games grows with each passing day, in part thanks to Valve's commitment to Linux. Looking at the 100 most popular games on Steam, 28 of them are Linux-compatible. Even more of them might run with Proton or Wine.

but for cheat protection on Steam some games wont work mainly for online multi player games.

Some games use kernel-level anti-cheat software, which Wine can't cope with. Anti-cheat drivers are almost never ported to Linux, since the system's open-source nature makes it easier to modify the kernel.

I was thinking I should just sell the main good parts and sell the motherboard dirt cheap because of the bug I mean I tried selling it complete but I had to mention the bug part and no one wants to buy it

I'm not surprised, since there isn't much demand for a PC that doesn't officially support Windows 11, yet can't run 10.

and I sure wouldn't like a parent to buy it for their kid and the PC keeps going into standby mode so if you understand what I'm saying is there a good Linux to install so I can sell it as a whole or should I part it out?

As previously mentioned, I'd look into Debian, Fedora and their derivatives. I've had some good experiences with Debian, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu; Mint, on the other hand, proved exceptionally quirky.

That standby bug the OP describes reminds me that the last PC I built often behaved like that in Windows 10. That was a Ryzen 7 and an Asrock X570 board. Eventually (many moons later) it acted up in various other ways and I recycled it rather than troubleshoot. I put the standby issue down to Windows being flakey but I guess it could have been some hardware or firmware bug?

I've had standby issues from overclocking before on my previous ASUS-based Intel system, like it never actually suspending. Windows 7 at the time though. Gained a hibernation habit because of it