Is gaming the main use case? If so, I think the distro won’t be the biggest performance factor.
If gaming is not the case, I would ask myself this question: Is a desktop environment a must? Because you’d be surprised by how much you’re still able to do without one.
In that case I’d go for something very barebone. Get a minimalistic debian up and running, and see how that works. There are plenty of lightweight desktop environments (to the extent some of them count as desktop environments), where TWM is an extreme example.
Arch with LXQT, maybe? Then you can choose to install specifically what you want with minimal overhead. Another option is the minimal version of NixOS, but like Arch, you’d need to install a DE separately, and you’d need to learn how to use Nix.
But if it’s still struggling, might be best as an art piece or command line only, given that a Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 can be had for <$100 and neither struggles with lighter DEs or browsers.
DankPods uses Linux on his gaming system, which I just found out recently. Seems like Linux is starting to gain traction in the content creator space now, which is neat.
That’s awesome, I remember him mentioning in much older videos that he wants to switch to Linux when its ready enough for him to game on. He also shits on Windows every chance he gets, so glad he got to switch.
Unfortunately until gaming companies see their base users move to Linux I doubt any changes will happen. But this could be a very good step in that direction if YouTubers start promoting Linux is the way to go for games and web browsers. Some people don’t use anything else.
I'm not a dev or into IT and I'm on Arch Linux playing games and working without any problems. My sister has more trouble getting some games to run on Windows than I do on Linux.
Only time I reinstalled Windows on a laptop was when I was trying to get an ODB2 over USB connector to work, and the program (FORSCAN) couldn’t automatically read the device in Wine. You had to run a series of commands to find the device and then create a symlink in that Wine prefix. I was not going to tinker around like that while sitting in a hot car upon the hope I get it right and don’t fuck up the instrument cluster.
But besides those weird edge cases, it’s been pretty easy for me too, and I still reinstalled Linux after that little project!
Now that I think about it, I wonder if a Windows VM would have worked…
A VM would normally work if USB passthrough is properly configured. That said, on operations just like that, I normally just boot to my small Windows partition that I keep around for just such an occasion.
So CAD is simple stuff huh. So does CFD, mathematical modeling of a complex control system, robotics… Man, if only mechatronics is so simple. I daily drive arch btw.
Except that it’s not a CAD, just an electric circuit modelling tool. I mean technically it can be called CAD, but you can’t do shit in it except for circuits.
CAD is “Computer Aided Design”. if you want to talk about parametric modeling, then fucking say that because it’s really a lot more niche than you think.
Really? I would say it has less simple stuff and more complicated stuff, although it obviously has a lot of both.
I guess you mean that a lot of proprietary ‘professional’ software doesn’t work out of the box? I guess that’s true, but I wouldn’t call all of the alternatives ‘simple’ lol
Lol, sheeeh, the ratio!! I’m a (sadly) Windows-focused sysadmin in higher education and I agree with this, Linux is amazing for servers but normal business users can’t do shit with it : (
The year of the linux desktop was when AMD open sourced their drivers around 5 years ago and Valve partnered with codeweavers to drop Proton. Its only been uphill from there.
Normal business users are fine if the Company hasn’t deep-throated Microsoft. Our Company does all the business work with no windows machine in the whole company.
Being locked-in on Microsoft Office is a thing and not the fault of linux
you can always try a puppy distro! they’re super barebones and you can get them really lightweight, shouldn’t really have any problems with running something like one of the slackware-based pups or maybe an older debian pup. you can check it out here! forum.puppylinux.com/puppy-linux-collection
Q4os with Trinity desktop really needs little RAM and runs fast even on old devices. The desktop is a bit old-fashioned, but ok. You may also try lighter browsers, perhaps Palemoon.
But 4GB is actually not that little, almost all distros can run well with it, especially rather slim ones like Debian lxqt. maybe it’s really due to the hdd.
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