Is there a shortcut to rebooting that will still free up as much CPU power and RAM as shutting down and restarting?
I'm running a lot of stuff on my aging laptop lately (with a scant 4 megs of RAM, the most it can carry), and it understandably seizes up and misbehaves after a while of that. But I don't want to do a full shutdown and reboot just to clear things up.
Or is that the best/most efficient way to accomplish this and get things running smoothly again?
@reay The one possible way would be to stop and restart certain services but damned if I know which ones. That requires some in depth knowledge of Windows.
As for those who keep recommending moving to Linux, there is a learning curve. If you do move to Linux you'll need a "lightweight" Linux and lightweight desktop environment because of your 4 GB memory limitation. A more modern laptop or desktop with 8GB or more of memory would be so much better.
Yeah, a learning curve is expected. That’s the thing: I don’t mind a learning curve on the basics of how to interact with Linux day to day. But a learning curve of dealing with something going sideways — from huge to tiny but needed — and having to learn what to do within the coding itself to deal with that, or whatever?
I’d love to know that, but don’t have the time or inclination.
I need something pretty plug-and-play.
And yeah, a newer laptop would be great. Some day…
@reay Hmm, I'm very much no expert in Windows, but I'm not aware of a reboot freeing up less resources than a shutdown+start.
In fact, in recent versions of Windows and with recent enough hardware, the reverse is true, thanks to a feature called "fast startup".
Obviously, with only 4 MB RAM, your PC might not be recent enough for that feature to work, but still seems odd to me that you're observing the opposite...
@wtwagg Yeah, unless you specifically need some Windows-only software (and there's no reasonable alternative), that setup sounds painful enough to me that learning Linux is probably less painful.
You can try out Linux without overwriting your Windows installation, by creating a so-called "Live USB".
It will allow you to boot Linux from a USB stick. @reay
@friend@wtwagg Thanks. Heard about such stuff but haven’t tried it.
Honestly,I haven’t tried harder to switch to Linux up to this point due to a) bad luck with tech (see above) and b) the assurance from wide and far that even the most user-friendly distros may — MAY — still need trouble-shooting done, which is best handled by the user who, presumably, knows what they’re doing. And who don’t have shit luck with tech.
Big learning curve + bad luck = no Linux for me yet.
@reay Well, Linux works really well with older hardware, so our hope is that you'd need to do less troubleshooting long-term. That it would actually be pleasant to use your hardware, again.
Installing an operating system is tricky, if you've never done it before, so yeah, it will be rather challenging for you short-term... @wtwagg
@friend@wtwagg Tricky isn’t good. I’m no dummy, but I can’t do terribly advanced stuff as far as technical issues go. If it’s not something with easily applicable answers readily available online, it’s officially over my head.
My (extremely limited) understanding of Linux is that it helps if you don’t mind rolling up your sleeves to get into the nitty gritty of getting things to run smoothly. But while I’d be fine with that if I knew what I was doing, I’m not able to do that.
@reay@friend True that many Linux people really get into the minutia and techy stuff.
But today, that is not always necessary. I'm on Pop!_OS and I almost never use the command line. I've been Linux exclusive for years and almost never leave the GUI.
@wtwagg Yeah, tried that years ago. A friend sent me a CD with some distro on it, said to drop it in and installation is easy peasy.
Nope.
Didn’t work for me. And he had no idea why. I have a thing with bad luck with technology and people think it’s a cutesy thing I say until they see or experience it for themselves.
I’d be happy to try it again at some point when I have the time and patience to figure it all out, but I don’t know when that’ll be. 🤷♂️
@reay I had trouble with my first distro too. Always having trouble with the wifi. That was about 10 years ago.
While your mileage may vary on different hardware, compatibility has improved by leaps and bounds over the last few years. The odds of things just working for you are pretty good.
And if you just run it off a USB stick first to try it out, you wont have to lose anything but some time. Windows is still there if you have any problems you don't want to take time to solve.
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