I know this is a really old topic, but I had saved the link because I finally loaded Linux OS to an old laptop I have. I've been thinking about doing this for years, and I finally did it today. A few small hiccups, but it all seems to work now.
I have a 10yo Lenovo Ideapad with Windows 7. (I have a newer laptop with W10). I'm a computer novice so I googled all my questions. I didn't understand half of what I was doing but I followed the steps as best as I could. I burned Linux Mint Cinnamon to a USB stick. I got the old Lenovo to boot from the USB drive so I could look at the Mint desktop. I went to install (wanted to wipe W7 totally, not dual boot) and it eventually gave an error and I had to do a hard shut down to get out of loop. I restarted and found that W7 was gone. Oh well, I was going to do that anyways. So did Linux install again and it all went well. Then the FF browser wouldn't connect to internet. Before trying a bunch of stuff I just restarted the computer, then browser worked. Loaded Chrome browser. This is a good computer for Linux, 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD. I'll mostly use it for web browsing.