Sponxx, indeed it is not only possible but not too difficult. You will in the process lose everything on the hard drive, however. If the laptop is running at all, move all your photos and documents to an outside drive - either large capacity USB sticks or an external drive (you can get terabyte drives now for under $100) before you make any change to the OS. Shoot me a PM with your email and I'll attach my article on how to change to Linux Mint.
Here's an offer: to anyone who would like to try Linux Mint, I will send you a USB stick you can plug into your machine and see what Mint has to offer without changing one single thing on your machine. Mint will run from the stick itself. If you then decide you want to become a convert, you can let the stick install Mint on your machine. Or just PM me to get the article and make a Mint stick for yourself.
Edit: Once you learn how to make a bootable USB stick, you can try any of the many flavors of Linux besides Mint. Some I recommend are Feren (comes with eight browsers!), Zorin, Enso, and MX. Some are simpler, some have more features and included program packages, and some are more visually stunning. But they are all free and reliable.
Last edited by RockyRaab; 01/13/21.
