Lubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu…I’ve gone from Lu to Xu, but I think I’ll end up with ku because PipeWire and wayland and flatpak (I get the impression that they’re the way forward for the next while…). They’ll make pretty much anything work better than whatever windows version retired them.
The reason this doesn’t work so well is that Lemmy communities are ActivityPub groups, which is not a feature the Mastodon has really implemented - right now you just follow the group as a user and it boosts all the posts to you.
However, Mastodon plans to do groups in their next major update, and this will most likely make the integration much nicer.
I had a similar thing happen with my keys not too long ago. They had fallen from a cabinet and managed to get stuck halfway down a radiator besides it. Spend a boat load of effort cutting off the lock off my bike…
Even if they run only a window manager 2gb if RAM is just not enough for web nowadays.
Recently resurrected a 10-ish year old Lenovo Chromebook-like with an atom CPU and 4gb RAM, running nothing but qtile as a DE and it’s struggling with more than 5 tabs open.
Upgrade the RAM to at least 4gb, preferably 8 and the HDD to SSD.
Also, don’t bother with “lightweight” browsers, in my experience Firefox simply runs much faster.
Those Atom processors don’t have the power to be much more than an in-car navigation system with MP3 playback. Forget actual web surfing. You’re actually better off with a RasPi imho.
You can do plenty with any old paperweight. The difficult part is thinking if what you need it to do and if that thing is worth the higher electricity usage of older tech.
You can sqeeze plenty of use from these laptops, especially the really light ones.
My gf works as an arts teacher in a primary school and needed something very small and light that she could carry every day to school.
The usage is mostly very light browsing (the school system, some Pinterest), showing the kids some reference images and the ocasional document editing and printing.
For a piece if what essentially is e-waste it handles that admirably, and because of the atom processor it sips power, which still gives it a few hours of battery life after about 10 yeas of ownership.
Tldr: Don’t underestimate how useful an old laptop running a minimal linux disto can be for a casual user.
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