I’d stick with Win 10 and make sure its fully upto date with the latest 22H2, at least for now, as Win 11 is drought with issues having/had stability issues and as August win 11 update, rendered SSDs and HDDs invisible to users, while also risking permanent data loss, though of course Microsoft denies this, so you’d only be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
This is nonsense. Yes you can have issues, but by no means is that widespread. We have currently 6 PCs running Win11, not a single one has an issue – nor had one, ever, since i installed it.
Not to defend Microsoft here, they’re whatever – but the fact of the matter is that a few hundred cases on Reddit don’t point to a systemic issue when over 50% of all Win PCs worldwide run that OS. For the absolute vast majority, the OS is fine. Particularly for people who don’t go into depth with their software.
Ignore anyone that says there’s a work around to get Win 11 on unsupported devices, as Microsoft won’t update and allow security fixes on unsupported devices.
The alternative of course would be to continue running Win10 which Microsoft won’t update, nor develop security fixes for from now on.
Further more Win 11, also has higher system requirements (bios etc), without these requirements, essential security features such as Trusted Platform Module 2.0 and Secure Boot, will expose the system to security risks. You’d be brave to go Linux, unless @Rene has time to teach you, I don’t, but a good basic starting point is to get a Enigma 2 reciever.
That’s basically the gist of it – his PC will almost guaranteed not be able to run Win11. Heck, even high end PCs like mine took some tinkering to get it running (some oddities with X870E/ASrock boards and TPM/SB, or rather the setup of each in the bios).
I did mention that Linux isn’t for the average user.. Admittedly i’m not even up to date on the distros currently, haven’t looked into it for a while – so even if i wanted to, i could only give a basic instruction at best.
I certainly would be able to help looking for a basic Win11 laptop.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.