As someone who has been exclusively been running Linux on my personal machines, I can attest that Linux has indeed come quite a long way over the past two decades.

These days, it's really a generally usable desktop OS for most average users.

People who used it years ago and got burnt by it should really give it another chance.

And thanks to Valve and Proton, even for playing (Windows) games, it's a solid platform now. One major thing holding it back in terms of gaming compatibility is the issue of anti-cheat mechanisms that actually require kernel-level access in Windows, which not only doesn't work in Linux, but is actually a security risk on Windows. But I believe Valve is already working with some game manufacturers to tackle that the challenge of anti-cheat compatibility as well.

As someone who has been exclusively been running Linux on my personal machines, I can attest that Linux has indeed come quite a long way over the past two decades.

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity.

Compiling/building Unix/Linux projects from source code takes days on high-end hardware of '99.
I've noticed by building the basic GNU parts of MacPorts on a Macintosh G4 400 MHz.
Compiling the basic dependencies took 14 days, no really. Actually, a bit longer (Mac ran 24/7).
It included wonderful things such as GCC7 or GCC10.

Or, let's take a current Raspberry Pi OS (ex Raspbian) and try running it on an original Raspberry Pi. Indeed, how far it has come!

These days, it's really a generally usable desktop OS for most average users.

Linux Mint. All the old guys I know try out Linux Mint. It's the seniors' OS.
It's the kind of Linux used by ex-Windows users who want Linux to look like Windows.
The modern Lindows OS, so to say.

I am not sure how to take that 🤣

It DOES make me realize how much of a stranglehold micro$oft has had on things. You can't do anything without having to go online an activate it, then have it tied down to a specific piece of hardware. Now the crap with the having to have an account. This is partially my attempt to escape windows11.

Nice to see that it is working out for you.

It's nice that some things you may have experienced trouble with back in 2009, like Flash and Java plug-ins, and DVD-video playback, are simply irrelevant. With other things, like Wi-Fi drivers, the situation has simply improved as releasing Wi-Fi chips without Linux support is rare now. Other stupid complications like having sound servers to handle multiple programs playing sound at once (arts/esound/etc.) have stabilized since pulseaudio's early days that you would have experienced, and automounting of removable media has more reasonable default behavior with the desktop software stack.

You may find that your printer either has drivers, or is one of these modern ones with "Mopria" so that there aren't any drivers needed.

As long as the Linux Mint repositories have all the software you need, it should be easy to use. If you have to start compiling things outside of there (like PCem) you'll need to deal with the system at a lower level.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 00:50:

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity.
...

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. More features means more code, complexity and higher memory usage. You can use Linux from a TTY without any GUI if that's what you want.

On the desktop my setup consumes about 800MB of memory without any application open. Firefox with a single tab uses more memory than that.

zirkoni wrote on 2025-09-13, 05:11:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 00:50:

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity.
...

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. More features means more code, complexity and higher memory usage. You can use Linux from a TTY without any GUI if that's what you want.

On the desktop my setup consumes about 800MB of memory without any application open. Firefox with a single tab uses more memory than that.

The original Raspberry Pi (Model A) had 256 MB of RAM, a third of that.

How is this difference being justified? 😟
Why does Raspbian of 2012 needed so much less, while having same feature set?

For comparison, OS/2 Warp 3 had lower requirements than its predecessors.
It had more features and offered better performance. So it's not impossible to truely improve something.

In my opinion, it's eyewash to think that Linux is exceptionally good or resource friendly.
To my experience, the illusion falls apart once anything out of the norm happens.

Like compiling things from scratch (no binary available, maybe because of arch type).
Applications and libraries have lots of dependencies,
so in the end a user needs to install about 50 to 100 commonly used packages.

Things like LIBGCC, M4, OpenSSL, axel, curl, wget, openpng, python27, python310, python311, python313 etc.
And if just one is broken or not available, or not available in right version, the whole compiling/building process fails.

So it's not like Linux is great for old hardware, it's a myth in my opinion.
A current Linux can be very heavy, like a current macOS or Windows.

Personally, I would treat Linux just same as the other resource hungry monsters and do a RAM/CPU/SSD upgrade just in case.

And a fast internet connection, too, because Linux is litterally addicted to the internet (it used to depend on 10 CD sets a long time ago).
Someone can't just install drivers from CD/DVD, after all.
Well, okay. Changing the package manager is possible, but needs some work to get all the repository paths right.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 00:50:

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity. […]
Show full quote

As someone who has been exclusively been running Linux on my personal machines, I can attest that Linux has indeed come quite a long way over the past two decades.

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity.

Compiling/building Unix/Linux projects from source code takes days on high-end hardware of '99.
I've noticed by building the basic GNU parts of MacPorts on a Macintosh G4 400 MHz.
Compiling the basic dependencies took 14 days, no really. Actually, a bit longer (Mac ran 24/7).
It included wonderful things such as GCC7 or GCC10.

Or, let's take a current Raspberry Pi OS (ex Raspbian) and try running it on an original Raspberry Pi. Indeed, how far it has come!

These days, it's really a generally usable desktop OS for most average users.

Linux Mint. All the old guys I know try out Linux Mint. It's the seniors' OS.
It's the kind of Linux used by ex-Windows users who want Linux to look like Windows.
The modern Lindows OS, so to say.

I'm closing in on the half century mark and I mostly use Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and RHEL these days (for personal and professional purposes).

ncmark wrote on 2025-09-13, 01:05:

It DOES make me realize how much of a stranglehold micro$oft has had on things. You can't do anything without having to go online an activate it, then have it tied down to a specific piece of hardware.

Recent versions of Windows are pretty lax when it comes to activation. I've seen a number of customers at work where they just use it with that need activation watermark. Though with test VMs, I figured it would restart at times if you didn't disable Software Protection service.

Though I got technically two legitimate license keys for Windows 10 (DreamSpark), I still use alternative means out of principle. 😜 No cracks, the keyword is KMS.

Windows XP was much more PITA. Over half-life ago, I remember looking for cracks to activate it because their server complained about activating too often.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-09-13, 01:28:

It's nice that some things you may have experienced trouble with back in 2009, like Flash and Java plug-ins, and DVD-video playback, are simply irrelevant.

Hey I just figured now in 2025 how to get audio in Flash Player working properly when you have PulseAudio / PipeWire and Flash normally uses ALSA. It was infamous for having audio delays and the only thing suggested I found at the time was launching the web browser with some PulseAudio env variable dealing with latency.

I didn't know Linux Flash has the means to plug new audio backend and the guy who made PulseAudio also programmed .so loadable by Flash that would make it talk to PulseAudio rather than ALSA.

https://forum.palemoon.org/posting.php?mode=q … e&f=65&p=264978

I don't know how well it works with current day distros, but I found it crazy that no one packaged Flash with that .so for Debian based distros back before they decided Flash and NPAPI are horrible and threw them in the dumpster. Unless I missed something, I was never a regular (desktop) Linux user.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 05:32:

How is this difference being justified? 😟
Why does Raspbian of 2012 needed so much less, while having same feature set?

The crazy amount of programmers think it's NORMAL for used CPU cycles to scale with CPU advancements, for the same task! They're nuts!

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 00:50:

Linux Mint. All the old guys I know try out Linux Mint. It's the seniors' OS. It's the kind of Linux used by ex-Windows users wh […]
Show full quote

These days, it's really a generally usable desktop OS for most average users.

Linux Mint. All the old guys I know try out Linux Mint. It's the seniors' OS.
It's the kind of Linux used by ex-Windows users who want Linux to look like Windows.
The modern Lindows OS, so to say.

I use many flavors of Linux on many of my machines, most from the Debian branch of the family. Some without desktop environment. But my daily driver is still Mint. I've used Manjaro for a period, but I wasn't satisfied with its stability. Mint is really just an easy-to-deal-with distro which makes it perfect for daily use, not just for people freshly coming from Windows.

I've used dozens of flavours of Unix since the mid 90's, and for the last 25 years it has been my main role at work - we're mostly a Ubuntu and RHEL shop within the University; Ubuntu on the desktop (where it's the research / development OS of choice) and RHEL on infrastructure - though we did have a fair bit of CentOS before they made the suicidal choice of rolling releases....

We've just rolled out our new University HPC facility using RHEL 9.

I use Mint on my home desktop/laptop equipment after spending several decades with pretty much every flavour of Linux you can think of - mainly Debian and Ubuntu in the last 10-15 years. Mint is just... well... sensible, and it all works as you would expect things should.
The desktop environment defaults to a much more traditional choice of Cinnamon or MATE, and for anyone who has used a WIMP environment in the last 30 years it's a far, far saner than Gnome 3.

I mostly use Debian based distros nowadays, usually MX Linux with KDE. It's amazing how much customization KDE offers, you can make it look and feel like WinXP or Win7, or whatever you prefer.

I do still have Mint on one of my systems, but it will likely get replaced at some point.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 05:32:

The original Raspberry Pi (Model A) had 256 MB of RAM, a third of that. […]
Show full quote

zirkoni wrote on 2025-09-13, 05:11:

Jo22 wrote on 2025-09-13, 00:50:

Yeah, especially in terms of memory consumption and complexity.
...

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. More features means more code, complexity and higher memory usage. You can use Linux from a TTY without any GUI if that's what you want.

On the desktop my setup consumes about 800MB of memory without any application open. Firefox with a single tab uses more memory than that.

The original Raspberry Pi (Model A) had 256 MB of RAM, a third of that.

How is this difference being justified? 😟
Why does Raspbian of 2012 needed so much less, while having same feature set?

For comparison, OS/2 Warp 3 had lower requirements than its predecessors.
It had more features and offered better performance. So it's not impossible to truely improve something.

In my opinion, it's eyewash to think that Linux is exceptionally good or resource friendly.
To my experience, the illusion falls apart once anything out of the norm happens.

Like compiling things from scratch (no binary available, maybe because of arch type).
Applications and libraries have lots of dependencies,
so in the end a user needs to install about 50 to 100 commonly used packages.

Things like LIBGCC, M4, OpenSSL, axel, curl, wget, openpng, python27, python310, python311, python313 etc.
And if just one is broken or not available, or not available in right version, the whole compiling/building process fails.

So it's not like Linux is great for old hardware, it's a myth in my opinion.
A current Linux can be very heavy, like a current macOS or Windows.

Personally, I would treat Linux just same as the other resource hungry monsters and do a RAM/CPU/SSD upgrade just in case.

And a fast internet connection, too, because Linux is litterally addicted to the internet (it used to depend on 10 CD sets a long time ago).
Someone can't just install drivers from CD/DVD, after all.
Well, okay. Changing the package manager is possible, but needs some work to get all the repository paths right.

This sounds very much like an angry old man shouting "Get off my lawn!" 😁

I'm really not sure you can compare the original Raspberry Pi 256mb model with much else - even when they were released (I was the head of the School of Computing Science IT service at the time) they were treated more as embedded devices and tended to have very limited application-specific deployments... certainly not used by anyone I knew as general purpose computers... that really only started with the advent of the Pi 3.

The complaint about gcc, m4, openssl etc is just bizarre... if you haven't got them installed on your Linux system then you've got a very odd software selection. And if you've got 5 versions of Python installed then I suggest you see a doctor, as you've got a problem! 😁

In the end, if you try to fit a full desktop environment version of Linux onto a tiny device then you're going to have resource issues... but that does not stop you from building absolutely minimal deployments with just the kernel and the core tools you need; Linux is out there, in just a few tens of MB, right now in countless embedded devices around the world.

It's also out there, right now, in every single one of the top supercomputer installations (and absolutely-not-one-of-the-top-supercomputer-installations like the one we're just finishing; which will power medical and engineering research discoveries).

It's literally running the infrastructure powering the modern world. I'm not sure there has ever been another software project in history with the accomplishments it has, and it absolutely has changed over time, since kernel 1.0 capable of running on a 4MB 386, to the present day. To complain that it has larger resource requirements than it did several decades ago, when the current levels of functionality are many, many more times as complex as back then is, perhaps, akin to saying "things were better in my day!" .... sometimes you just have to move on.

I used Linux Mint XFCE for a while this year. Installation went fine, but it ended up being glitchy and weird like Linux always is. About 20% of the time the whole system would freeze. I'd launch a browser and nagging dialogs would come up every time that made no sense. About 30% of the time the browser would freeze at a gray screen and I'd have to close and relaunch it. I couldn't find any way to display a clock that showed seconds.

Obligatory https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is. … ktop.final.html.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-09-13, 11:30:

Obligatory https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is. … ktop.final.html.

What a load of drivel.

There's so many half truths and outright fabrication... for example Linux isn't ready for the enterprise because "Ansible and Puppet need significant experience".... as if you are going to appoint a fresh faced college kid to set up and run your Active Directory domain and design your GPOs or build your SCCM infrastructure.

Linux on the desktop is already here. It has been here for many years. Just because it's not on your home desktop doesn't mean it's not already being used heavily in almost every sector.

I tried Mint and Ubuntu but ended up with Debian on my touchscreen web browsing PC. Basically its like having a giant iPad on the wall. Neither Mint or Ubuntu worked oit of the box with multi-touch.

My experience of Linux is that it works out of the box if you have a basic PC and basic use cases. But I have had trouble with things like multiple monitors, streamdecks, video playback etc. When you google for solutions the only suggestions are commandline based. On another PC I have with Linux, it initually boots and has no network access. I have to reboot it after first boot to get network. I really dislike Windows 11, but IMHO its simply much easier to use than Linux.

^ THIS
At least, that was my experience in the past with PC Linux. It was fine as long as y I stuck to the installed software.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 should be the same as Debian Bookworm, but with Cinnamon as GUI. I like it, but it's definitely not optimal out of the box. I needed to manually update Wine, because provided repository was atrociously out of date and didn't had desktop integration. Then again, that's what you get on Debian generally.