How about Wafrn?

I did some research and couldn’t find anything recent that fits your issue. However, using your time settings gave me a tinted screen even though it should still be considered day time. Changing the sunset time to 11:59 PM made it work correctly, but setting it to 12:00 AM or later made it change early. I think this is probably a bug.

What distro and Plasma version are you using? Additionally, do you have it set for a specific time or based on location? If it’s the latter, then you need to check if geoclue2 installed.

I’m not really sure what to do then. You might have better luck asking on the Mint forums.

Separate drives is safer since Windows might overwrite the bootloader when it updates. If you can’t do separate drives, then you want the second option on your screen right now.

Are you using a single drive for both operating systems or giving each their own drive? If it’s the former, then it looks like you’ll have to manually shrink the Windows partition and then create the necessary partitions for Mint.

I had a laptop with a borked Windows installation. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with any kind of recovery partition or DVD. So, I took a chance on Linux and I liked it better.

Some manufacturers have outlets for refurbished devices. They’re not like bargain bin prices, but it’s something.

There’s also a lot of electronics recyclers on eBay. I’ve haven’t had any bad experiences there.

You could also try going to local thrift stores. Don’t bother with Goodwill though. They put all their good stuff online. Unless you live near one of their dedicated electronics stores, like the one in Tallahassee, Florida.

The only other option I can think of is checking out something like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. Unfortunately, you do need a Facebook account for Marketplace.

I’ve tried running the diagnostics in the BIOS and the fan just doesn’t respond. It’s usually somewhere around 6,000 RPM.

It’s worth noting that we did send it in to Dell for repairs multiple times over the Yellow Light of Death (which turned out to be caused by a dead CMOS battery). After the last time it was sent in they basically told us to never contact them ever again. At that point I took a look inside the computer and found that it had the battery was wrong (it’s supposed to use a CR2032 and the battery in the unit was around half the size of that).

I don’t think that’s the issue, but thanks for trying. The computer is an Alienware Steam Machine (my sister gave me it after she got a new computer) and all the parts are stock except for the CMOS battery. It’s worth noting that it didn’t actually have the fan issue until after I replaced the battery, but it also didn’t boot at all before doing that. These things are notorious for the CMOS battery issue, but the fan issue seems unique to mine.

The fans in my computer are perpetually in MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. I assume it’s some kind of hardware issue that’s beyond my skill. Literally nothing I’ve tried has worked, so I just live with it. I just wish it didn’t always sound like it’s ready to takeoff.

I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to use a live USB. You can’t modify a partition while it’s mounted and you can’t unmount a partition that’s in use.

You would just install one of the KDE meta-packages. After that you can select the new desktop environment when you login again.

The only thing to note is that some settings don’t always play nice between the two (for example one might overwrite settings on the other), so maybe consider making a new user account just to see if you like it.

What desktop environment are you using? KDE let’s users do this pretty easily by just going into the color scheme settings. I’m not sure what the process is for other desktops these days.

Is it 32-bit? If it is, then that also severely limits your options. Personally, I just throw Debian or one of its derivatives on old hardware like that. You may want to consider Q4OS. It’s Debian based and is geared specifically towards old and low-end hardware. Interestingly, it’s also one of only a couple distros that ship with Trinity as a desktop environment.

Retro gaming is definitely doable with 2GB of RAM, considering that older Raspberry Pi boards can do it with just 1GB. In that case you could try Batocera.

Some other ideas include running something like Nextcloud or a media server on it on your home network. In that case, I’d again recommend Debian.

I think you can do that with AntiMicroX.

I wasn’t aware that there’s a paid version. Based on their website it does look like they have a lot of standard stuff locked behind Pro. Is it just like an additional repo or something? I’m also not too keen on the fact that the upgrade doesn’t carry over to the next major version.

I’m pretty sure that’s Zorin. I’ve never used it myself, but from what I’ve heard it might be a good choice for OP’s person.

The reason the US doesn’t do that is thanks to lobbying by companies like Intuit and H&R Block.

I got distracted and forgot there were two guys halfway through the sentence.