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I can recommend running it on new hardware. I love that it runs great on old hardware, but it is a bit of a disservice to Linux distros that people always experience it on raspberry pies and other old laptops or otherwise relatively slow hardware.
Linux on a brand new hardware is insanely good.
Edit: software => hardware
Ehhhhhh I wouldn't say brand new hardware. A lot of times Linux still needs a few months to properly support a new Gen of graphics cards or processors
Though it generally at least works which is a huge improvement over back in the day
My primary laptop is a Lenovo T495s. I'm a big fan because my requirements for a laptop aren't particularly demanding, but while a 5 year old Ryzen 7 is a bit aged, I'd hardly consider it underpowered, at least for my (and many others) needs. Laptops like this can easily be found in great condition and under $200. I spent a little more after a new nvme and maxing out ram.
I see what you're saying, but I also think it's actually a mark in Linux' favor that is continues to run so well on older or underpowered hardware. It's how I really got into it, being broke and able to eke out years more life on older computers when I could ill afford upgrades. These days, I'm happy that I can get off the upgrade treadmill for longer. The most demanding games I've installed are the Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remasters and Grandia. I'm not a programmer, don't have to render graphical stuff for work, etc, so it's pretty great that I don't have to worry about my budget desktop being unusable in 4 years because the OS devs have made it a practical impossibility to run on older hardware. I've got 32GB of RAM, and my biggest threat to usability is leaving Firefox running with a ton of open tabs for weeks on end, which can conveniently be solved by closing Firefox and watching my RAM use plummet.
Not everyone is going to be a gamer, graphics designer or programmer that really needs the latest and greatest in hardware. In fact, I'd wager the majority of people won't notice an improvement outside of a few cases. Upgrading from an HDD to an SSD, <16GB of RAM to >16GB of RAM and from an older graphics card to a newer one that supports 4K are pretty easy differences to note in normal use. Those aside, I think most people would be hard-pressed to identify an objective difference in the quality of their browsing and word processing experiences. Depending on how flexible people are with adapting to different workflows, even those could be minimized, to an extent. I have a desktop I bought second hand twenty years ago that served as my main computer into and beyond my initial forays in university. It has a whopping two cores, and I think I might have managed to get 16GB of RAM into it. It'd probably suck for web browsing and wouldn't be terribly efficient for power use, but I bet you if I reinstalled things, it would work just fine for serving up my music library via mpd, playing it with ncmpcpp and writing term papers in Auctex, same as it did back then. Even if I put an older version of Windows on it like Windows 7, I bet it would struggle to run those same programs on top of the base OS. That's legitimately impressive, when you think about it.
Thank you for the nice write-up. I agree that it is great and whatis very impressive. Also to see old hardware not going to a landfill. I have definitely "fixed" up friend and elderlies computers by installing Ubuntu, and more lately I tried fedora silver blue for a friend. And I too have second hand ThinkPads, a P53 6 core, 64gb, rtx3000 and a t440 and then my work machine is a xps13 (not secondhand). It runs great on all of these and linux is a real workhorse.
I think my point of view come from windows "techies" that seem to be completely oblivious to Linux outside of running it on a Raspberry pi or the like, and linux is only as a way to "save" a computer because windows can't run on it anymore. To me, Linux is a first choice for server, workstations, home use, gaming.. really anything, but I might be biased.. like most of us in this forum 😅😉
Be me
Discover linux in an effort to be able to customize your desktop and make it look like the haxxors in movies at 12 years old
?????
Woops ... Linuxed too hard and became a cloud infrastructure engineer.
FUCK!
Wiggly windows in compiz probably converted like 10 thousand 12 year olds to linux… I know from experience!
ABSO fucking lutely ... that and the flaming mouse effect
I thought I was the coolest cat in the litter XD
Don't forget about the whole desktop rain effect!
If you, like me, enjoyed enabling mouse trails in Windows because wooo particles...
Wiggly windows and the cube desktop switcher were like a huge step up LOL.
Damn no reason for you to get on here and call me out so directly. Also I still have wobbly windows and the modern version of desklets. No shame.
Hey, I'm old AF. I STILL use wobble windows!
Cloud infrastructure engineer at 12 years old? Damn son!
You forgot paranoid people. I fall into all three categories.
I feel personally attacked lol
Running linux and foss software on my shitty hardware since ever
Really surprised when I randomly found out that my tech illiterate friend was running Linux. Back in 2014 or so. Ubuntu. Was no big deal for her. It did everything she wanted.
My mother is very happy now. Bonus points she doesn't call me up and have me dismiss the Microsoft upsell every other update.
She says she doesn't want to break anything but I think she wants me to do it so she doesn't have to give it a nanosecond of a thought. Also she doesn't throw a fit every time she has to wait for updates to finish anymore!
Your tech illiterate friend is not so tech illiterate
Lol, yeah they've just learned to pretend to be too avoid being everyone's tech support.
It's why I tell everyone to get a mac: I don't know anything about them.
I look at this meme and lift my hand gently from the track-pad revealing the uncanny logo, ThinkPad and I think: Yes, this meme is for me.
Well, if it's good enough for the ISS, it's good enough for me.
now I gotta become an astronaut and be the first to install gentoo in space
You hear a knock on the window of the ISS, you look over and see an alien in a spacesuit floating, it holds a piece of space paper against the window that says "I use arch btw".
Doesn't the ISS run Debian?
Edit: Yes, they introduced Debian on user devices back in 2013
literally the universal operating system
My GF is still using my 13 year old laptop running Pop_OS to do what most normal people do.
Watch youtube.
Now my current laptop is suffering my linux workflow abuse.
I fully support Linux and FOSS but, who the fuck pays for windows (not talking about pre installed computers).
It's not about paying for Windows, usually it's included in the device you buy. The real reason why Linux helps broke people is because bloated Windows can't run on the budget PCs they have (and they can't just buy a faster computer)
I mean you pay for Windows on preinstalled computers, too. There are Laptops sold without OS and they are cheaper than the same model with windows installed.
I did once. I built a pc. I hated the watermark. Y’all hadn’t enlightened me yet
The watermark annoys me so I grab one of those £20 fell of the back of a truck keys.
I think the point is you can put a fully updated new Linux on a decade old ThinkPad but with windows you'd need to buy a whole new laptop to run modern stuff also it would be unusably slow
My daily driver laptop is the T410 I found at a thrift store for $5.
I keep hearing stories like this but all I see in thrift stores are like busted DVD players and other grimey old stuff that was second-rate even when released. In that awkward valley where it's not vintage, and newer stuff is objectively better.
I think people caught on and the good finds are pushed to their auction sites and stuff now. =\
I'm happy with my X230 I got for $200 off eBay though, like 5 years back.¯_(ツ)_/¯
Goodwill is particularly bad about this. You can almost never find cool stuff in the stores anymore. It's all siphoned off for ShopGoodwill.
It was definitely one of my luckiest finds, but I think another part of it was that it was a pay by weight bin outlet. A St. Vincent De Paul in my case. Stuff isn't individually priced and you weigh your items on a scale when you check out and pay by the pound. It's usually very cheap because mine has a maximum of $5.00 per item so even heavy things like typewriters have been cheap.
I much prefer bin outlets because of this.
People don't mention it much but I think it's actually the most powerful thing about Linux (and open source more broadly) that it's free to use. It doesn't matter if you're down on your luck, were born in a poor nation through no fault of your own, or are working class and getting crushed by the capitalist economy. It's a leveller and, in my view, represents power, resilience and dignity in solidarity. It's literally one of the few important things left in the world that we have like that.
Free cost and free as in freedom to understand and modify the code. I also think it's a beautiful way of doing things. We also have Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. The internet has a tremendous potential for collaboration, people doing things because they want to, for the benefit of everyone.
Thank you Windows for making your latest version so shitty that I feel comfortable running Linux on all my hardware.
If the latest version is this shitty then I only expect the previous one to be enshittified up to the point of support drop.
Linux FTW!
All they had to do was to allow me to move the taskbar to the side and I'm only partially joking.
I'd say all they had to do is remove mandatory Microsoft accounts but the road windows is going down just makes me think it was just a matter of time.
can't fix whats broken by design
I'll just use my steam deck for writing code. Thanks though, boss.
If it wasn't for those rascally penguins I would be flat broke trying to afford the latest system requirements for Windows 12 or a mediocre MacBook instead of a $120 5 year old Dell Latitude, how dare they!!
Just threw Zorin on my secondhand x220, but been using the Thinkpad as a low end test bench so that may change. Runs surprisingly well, although I do need a new battery soon ("dies" at ~40%).