I would just buy a cheap RAM stick and install one of the mainstream distrobutions with KDE Plasma on it. You can turn off most of the desktop effects and unnecessary background services.
Just drop it! I like the idea. Who cares if it’s going to be used by a lot of people. You enjoyed making it, you make others happy, people might enjoy contributing, and you give inspiration to the community. That’s all that matters.
Distro won’t matter so much as Desktop Environment. KDE Plasma and MATE are both sensible choices, both very popular, and good for anyone who wants a familiar mouse and window kind of experience.
If it were me, I’d probably just download something like Debian and then set up one of those two DEs (which might even be possible directly from the installer; I can’t remember).
If that is still not enough you could try Chromeos Flex. It’s not Linux but it could at least maybe make your old Laptop usable again for casual web browsing.
I spent a few weeks learning the arch installation for my old laptop and it’s had the same installation now for about four years. It’s awesome and I have only the packages I need, no more, no less.
I decided I preferred dealing with issues caused by the limited resources of a well-meaning community (And often largely corporate contributions, I know) rather than issues caused by some giant company’s malice and greed. Goes without saying I don’t use Chrome either or any Chromium-based web browser. It’s not just Linux. There’s no surprise “Now you gotta pay a subscription to get the next updates!” catch when I get up in the morning and I never have to figure out how to disable anti-features.
Basically every non-game program on my home computer I don’t strictly need for work is open-source, often worked on by volunteers or crowd-funded and that just kinda feels good, y’know? I decided to completely switch to Linux around 12-14 years ago and I sometimes laugh when I hear of the deliberate nonsense Windows users have to deal with at every major update. Or when installing basic software.
To install any program I want, it’s just a matter of opening a terminal, or GUI package manager like Pamac and typing its name or often a related keyword. It gets installed along with anything it requires. No need to cautiously find the proper website (Anyone remember when SourceForge messed with Gimp’s installer to put ads in it?), download an installer and launch that. All my programs get updated for me through that very same GUI, along with my desktop environment, drivers and the kernel. Don’t gotta think about it or wait for some popup in each and every program to tell me “Click here to update! 😌”. And my computer doesn’t randomly reboot or slow down on me.
And Edit:
Last thing, but the Windows basic desktop utilities, like the file browser, text editor and such are all so much worse than the most common Linux alternatives that it’s kind of sad. I don’t know how people function without tabs and split-view when moving files. And I haven’t even touched on how ridiculously customizable Linux desktops are. Nothing compares out there.
We had to do a presentation in the first year of secondary school, and somehow I ended up with Linux as my topic. I found it immensely interesting after doing the (admittedly limited, but hey I was 16) research, and decided to try it out after I found out that I can have both Linux and windows at the same time.
Long story short, I loved the sheer choice of distros, working with the terminal (which is so much easier than GUI working for a lot of things), how looks can be insanely customized with so many desktop environments, how you can install all (okay, most) packages you need from the terminal, how the updates are all handled by the package manager, then I found out about free and open source software as a concept and so on and so on.
Now I have only linux on my laptop, and windows on a desktop for gaming. Once you get used to it, it’s honestly very awkward to go back to windows.
For me it was pretty gradual. In my university research a couple years ago I needed to work with the university’s supercomputer running RHEL, so I got some exposure there. At some point I put Mint on my laptop, keeping Windows on my desktop “in case I needed to do any real work”, then about a year ago I put linux* on my desktop as well. I do still have a Windows dual-boot just in case there’s some weird software I need to use, but I haven’t touched it more than once or twice since. I switched partially out of curiosity, but largely as part of an effort to de-google and de-microsoft my stuff so I’m more in control.
*distro-hopped a bit, but now am settled on EndeavourOS
I was surprised at how much you needed the terminal, but also how easy it was to use the terminal after a bit of practice. I prefer it to GUIs for a lot of things now (like git). Also, installing software from a package manager rather than going to a website and downloading it. I didn’t like that at first, but I love that concept so much more now, since I can just sudo apt upgrade and everything is up-to-date (no downloading the new version after an update).
I’m now to the point that when I do need to use a windows machine for some reason, it takes me a second to remember how things work. It’s kinda a weird feeling tbh haha
Maybe Im just lucky, bought tens of SSDs and never had problems like that. Well many of them failed including samsung evo, so I guess its just important to have backup, warranty and luck
Suse are a decent company (despite some history under different owners) with some excellent engineers who already support foss projects like Uyuni. I don’t know much about their new CEO but this might be a pivotal point in their history.
Redhat are proving themselves unpredictable, and that’s about the worst thing any company wants to work with. No good having a stable product if the organisation itself is erratic and makes bad decisions.
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