Hi I just did this myself on an old Gen 6 Intel Thinkpad after Windows 11 force-installed Copilot and made it overheat so bad I thought the battery was going to catch fire. Pro-tip: Get Ventoy, it will create a bootable USB drive for you, that you then drag ISOs onto. Hit up DistroWatch and grab the install ISOs for whatever distros look good to you. Throw those ISOs onto the USB you just created and reboot. You’ll be able to test out different flavors of Linux with incredible ease. For you and your old laptop, I recommend Vanilla Linux, Ultramarine Linux, Mint Linux, Pop!_OS, and Solus, all of which work great on older hardware and ease you very gently into *nix-land!
Hi I just did this myself on an old Gen 6 Intel Thinkpad after Windows 11 force-installed Copilot and made it overheat so bad I thought the battery was going to catch fire. Pro-tip: Get Ventoy, it will create a bootable USB drive for you, that you then drag ISOs onto. Hit up DistroWatch and grab the install ISOs for whatever distros look good to you. Throw those ISOs onto the USB you just created and reboot. You’ll be able to test out different flavors of Linux with incredible ease. For you and your old laptop, I recommend Vanilla Linux, Ultramarine Linux, Mint Linux, Pop!_OS, and Solus, all of which work great on older hardware and ease you very gently into *nix-land!