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I need to help out my parents' small businesses which are relying on weak PC hardware and running Windows 10/11. Most of the things that are done in the PCs don't require Windows at all, though. Most PCs are equipped with 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSDs, and low-end x86 processors from 8+ years ago. (1/6)

There is a Windows server running a SMB share through the local network, so that part's probably easy to set up. However, some others I'm not so sure, like some PCs are connected to banking card readers, so they handle transactions. The Windows server also has a MS-SQL server, which I can't... (2/6)

...tell if could be set up in a Linux environment. The (I think) proprietary software which requires login credentials to access this SQL database was also exclusively developed for Windows, so that could get tricky. My mum's PC uses a card reader to access her web-based banking, and uses... (3/6)

So we're either stuck in Windows 10 EoL hell or being on the mercy of Windows 11 on modest, unsupported hardware (also not good). A suitable Linux distro would need to be lightweight and dependable for employees that don't even know what sudo is, and freak out when a printer stops working (5/6)