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I have an old laptop with an Ethernet port, whereas my new laptop does not have have one. I need an ethernet connection to be able to set up a headless server, but the old laptop is not fast enough to do this. I'm new-ish to networking, but how can I use the ethernet port and share that connection over a USB cable. Similar to USB Tethering on Android, but both machines would be laptops (Windows 7 connecting to Linux Mint).

Connection >ethernet> Windows 7 laptop >USB> Linux Mint laptop

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    You can make a headless server communicate over a WiFi connection, it’s inefficient, but possible.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 5 at 12:25

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You can't.

Laptops only have USB host ports, so you can't even connect the two laptops through a USB cable.

There are special adapters to link two laptops through USB, but those don't make any sense in your scenario - it would be much easier (and cheaper) to buy a USB to Ethernet adapter, and leave out the old laptop altogether.

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  • leave out the old laptop altogether is the best advice here, indeed. Please don't ever use obsolete, unsupported OSes online.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Jan 5 at 21:25

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