I’m a Linux bore now, so I used my new powers to resurrect a ten year-old laptop forgotten by Windows
Publish Date: 2026-03-07 07:00:00
Source Domain: www.pcgamer.com
Dave James, EIC Hardware
(Image credit: Future)
This month I’ve been… on the terminal tip. With Linux finally playing nice with gaming laptops, and sweet-talking our IT team to give me access to my work accounts, the move away from Windows has been a joy. I’m a computer nerd and learning how a new computer works is always a pleasure. Well… mostly.
I am surprised at just how damned grotty this thing is. I pulled the old XPS laptop out of my wardrobe because I’ve started wearing cardigans and have therefore become a bit of a Linux bore. I was keen to see whether I could resurrect an old system—whose end times had come regarding shifting to Windows 11—with a lightweight Linux distro.
It’s sticky. And, I think, kinda moldy. And I’m not certain how that can happen to a laptop and it still turn on. Seriously, there really is something odd about the material Dell used around the keyboard of this ol’ thing, and it hasn’t dealt well with the intervening years in solitary isolation. But a little isopropyl and this thing is going to feel good as new. So, here we are with a resurrected little Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that now feels far more zippy and sports a way better battery life than it had back in the Windows 10 days of mid-2019. Well, it does sometimes, but as I found out, time is a harsh mistress on Li-Polymer batteries.
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I’m writing this piece right now on the ancient Dell machine and the system feels snappier than it has any right to with just 8 GB of LPDDR3 memory. And I’ve not made it an easy task, either, because I’m doing this on a 2-in-1, and Linux does not have the best history of touchscreen support.
But I will say things didn’t look good when I first tried to boot up this old XPS.
Powering the…
