Well it has been my "daily driver" for a week now. Here are my thoughts.

Linux has come a long, long way,, it does most of what I want it to do, but not a complete replacement for window$
The software installer worked for some things but not others (I KNEW it wouldn't be that easy!)
Kept having a problem with the screen going black for one second - might be fixed now, not sure
The zip utility kept crashing
Now I know that XFCE is supposed to be lightweight, but I am amazed by how little disk accessing there is. Window$ 10 is constantly asking the disk!

Overall grade - B+

This may get me to stop using Win7 semi-permanently

System = Optiplex 5070 SFF with 8 GB of RAM, drive = Samsung EVO 870 500 GB. Is this a high-spec system?

ncmark wrote on 2025-09-29, 00:10:

System = Optiplex 5070 SFF with 8 GB of RAM, drive = Samsung EVO 870 500 GB. Is this a high-spec system?

I run MATE (on Debian) on systems a few years older than that. The 8GB RAM is still pretty roomy with XFCE or MATE, and if you aren't running any virtual machines (which is where 8GB starts to bind really)

Like you, I find the boot process is a grind (literally if you're still using an HDD) but once it's up and running and your browser has been open at least once, it runs mostly from RAM

The issues you have might be XFCE-specific, not sure

After watching art creations like this:

I have some very good advice for you: Do NOT attempt to switch! That's just the best way to fail. Make the transition smooth as possible. There is nothing bad on Multi-booting.

An advice from someone who started with FC3 and will probably format their partition with Windows. After 20 years or something.

Grunt wrote on 2025-09-29, 17:21:

... There is nothing bad on Multi-booting...

It depends on how lazy you are. When I switched to linux I forced myself to do not have a dual boot with windows. Because in this way I have no way to avoid an issue, there is no way to go back to windows and ignore it. When I got an issue I was forced to solve it, that's how i started to learn how to use the system.

An to be clear, it's not related to how linux is complicated, because it is not. It's related to the fact that people are basically lazy, so if you have a system that you know, it's normal to avoid to learn another that you don't. Especially since the final use for both are the same, so you don't get any real advantage by using linux over windows, or vice versa.

Is LibreOffice Calc choppy for anyone else on Mint?

I've been otherwise happy with Mint but scrolling on Calc is anything but smooth, didn't have the same issue with Kubuntu previously. Wondering is this a Mint issue, system specific issue or possibly an issue with nvidia driver.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-10-05, 11:53:

Is LibreOffice Calc choppy for anyone else on Mint?

I've been otherwise happy with Mint but scrolling on Calc is anything but smooth, didn't have the same issue with Kubuntu previously. Wondering is this a Mint issue, system specific issue or possibly an issue with nvidia driver.

It could be the DE you are using is GTK based. I've found that anything GTK based as of late (GTK3+) is choppy or sluggish, including LibreOffice, as it will try to match your DE. You can switch the toolkit in LibreOffice to QT, and that isn't sluggish. However, at the time I tried this, the QT backend to LibreOffice was under development and had some problems. Maybe it is better now.

The reason why Kubuntu might have been better, is either because it was a while back and older version of LO or LO was using QT. Because I wasn't satisfied with recent version of LibreOffice using QT, I went back to the last version of LibreOffice that was still using GTK2, and it works fine.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-10-05, 11:53:

Is LibreOffice Calc choppy for anyone else on Mint?

Not sure which flavor of Mint you're running, but I would suggest trying a Debian based distro instead. Preferably something that uses KDE. With an Nvidia card, I had various issues with the graphics compositor on pretty much any other desktop environment.

MX Linux is what I currently use, specifically the KDE version with advanced hardware support.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-10-05, 14:22:

It could be the DE you are using is GTK based. I've found that anything GTK based as of late (GTK3+) is choppy or sluggish, including LibreOffice, as it will try to match your DE. You can switch the toolkit in LibreOffice to QT, and that isn't sluggish. However, at the time I tried this, the QT backend to LibreOffice was under development and had some problems. Maybe it is better now.

The reason why Kubuntu might have been better, is either because it was a while back and older version of LO or LO was using QT. Because I wasn't satisfied with recent version of LibreOffice using QT, I went back to the last version of LibreOffice that was still using GTK2, and it works fine.

Yeah, I'm using Cinnamon so GTK? I was using Kubuntu until late spring this year with the latest version of LO the software manager had and it was perfectly smooth, so I assume it was using QT since its DE was KDE?

In other words it sounds like the choppiness is just something you have to deal with until they eventually improve it. It's not so bad it's unusable but a bit unpleasant nevertheless.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-10-05, 14:52:

Not sure which flavor of Mint you're running, but I would suggest trying a Debian based distro instead. Preferably something that uses KDE. With an Nvidia card, I had various issues with the graphics compositor on pretty much anything that isn't KDE.

MX Linux is what I currently use, specifically the KDE version with advanced hardware support.

Just the basic Mint with Cinnamon, I did first try the LMDE version but as a Linux noob it was making everything annoyingly complicated. And funnily enough the last straw was when installing nvidia driver borked everything even though I was following instructions to a tee, so I bailed and installed the basic Ubuntu Mint. I've started to get the feeling Nvidia cards and Linux aren't the best bedfellows, but it's currently working fine on desktop which is all I need.

Also I had never even heard about MX Linux, the rabbit hole just won't end! 🤪

Sombrero wrote on 2025-10-05, 15:35:

I've started to get the feeling Nvidia cards and Linux aren't the best bedfellows, but it's currently working fine on desktop which is all I need.

You're not wrong there. Some distros handle it slightly better than others though. With MX Linux, you just click "Nvidia Graphics Installer" under MX Tools, and it does everything else by itself. Worked fine on my Ryzen 7 5700x + RTX 3060 system.

But I don't game on Linux, so I can't say how Nvidia drivers would handle that. For modern gaming, I use Win11 LTSC. No bloat, no ads, no AI slop.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-10-05, 11:53:

Is LibreOffice Calc choppy for anyone else on Mint?

I've been otherwise happy with Mint but scrolling on Calc is anything but smooth, didn't have the same issue with Kubuntu previously. Wondering is this a Mint issue, system specific issue or possibly an issue with nvidia driver.

Like other people said, it's a LibreOffice thing. It's choppy for me in EndeavourOS (Arch-based) with KDE. For me, all of Linux Mint was that choppy.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-10-05, 14:52:

MX Linux is what I currently use, specifically the KDE version with advanced hardware support.

Have you had any problems with it recognizing some removable storage? It looked to me like the "advanced hardware support" version specifically wouldn't mount old FAT16-formatted drives and put NTFS errors in dmesg in the process, even though no NTFS partitions existed on the connected drives.

lti wrote on 2025-10-05, 22:09:

Like other people said, it's a LibreOffice thing. It's choppy for me in EndeavourOS (Arch-based) with KDE. For me, all of Linux Mint was that choppy.

FYI, you can run LibreOffice with GTK backend on KDE. So we probably need to be a bit more specific than distro or DE.

Hmmm...never had problem with LibreOffice and Mint Cinnamon.

But that was long time ago.

Currently using Debian with XFCE and still no problems now.

Maybe something to do with the Windows Compositor or the Graphics card's Vsync setting?

Ubuntu and Linux Mint are the two OS`s I really like among the non Windows OS. In my main workstation PC which I use for AI workloads I have Ubuntu as my daily driver and on my retro Win XP PC I keep Linux Mint for house keeping. I think a lot of issues on Linux Mint and Ubuntu can be solved by turning the Wayland on/off and also trying out different kernels.

Personally, I have had no issues with the latest kernels. Back in the past I did run into an issue with my retro PC linux mint. I used an older version in the meantime before upgrading to the latest kernel and that solved my problems. Also another thing I do is avoid updating linux OS everyday unlike windows. If it is working keep it as it is. Maybe if it has been 3 months or so then I update my system. Unless there is a security bug or a feature that I need, I tend to minimize updates especially for retro PCs running linux. So far I have never run into issues with Libre office calc or any other software. Also I am a Cinnamon lover so both Ubuntu and Linux Mint with Cinnamon is my style.

lti wrote on 2025-10-05, 22:09:

Have you had any problems with it recognizing some removable storage? It looked to me like the "advanced hardware support" version specifically wouldn't mount old FAT16-formatted drives and put NTFS errors in dmesg in the process, even though no NTFS partitions existed on the connected drives.

I don't really use this machine for retro stuff, so I haven't tested that.

My DOS retro rigs are currently in storage, but when time permits, I might try accessing one of my FAT16 CF cards under MX Linux to see how that works.