Like I said elsewhere, the ideal way if you absolutely need to run Winblows on the same machine, is to do so within a VM on the Linux host. Not usually an option if the purpose is gaming, and, well, usually the purpose is gaming.

The BEST way if you must use Windows, is to have it in a VM on a Linux host. Isolated in its own sandbox.

Y’know, there’s a little part of me that suspects that just because Windoze will not read certain file systems for the user doesn’t mean it doesn’t read those file systems. Especially now that data theft is their business model. I know it’s a little paranoid, but the OS may very well be reading stuff it claims to not recognize. Just food for thought.

I happen to really like a lot of the motifs used by Ubuntu. Regardless the merits or demerits of the distro, the graphical iconography is pretty cool. Likewise with Arch. Like, that Arch pointing forward on the surface would be cool. The Ubuntu circular logo on the wheel rims, as well.

Indeed! It depends what you’re doing on it. Because there’s a wealth of computer activities that have not increased in actual power demand in decades. Sure they keep making software more bloated to keep the need up, but if you throw an efficient distro on a machine and only need it for basic office type things like office suites, email etc. and even basic graphics editing, you can use a 25 year old machine and do just fine. It will run, and it will do the job well, and you’re never going to feel like it’s slow. Maybe not as glitzy as newer ones, but that is where you’re already beyond need and into want.

The only things that are tricky are internet connections with anything using web protocols, due to certificate tech etc. and that can be handled by using a still-maintained browser such as a Firefox fork, and email can be done via software like Thunderbird, which doesn’t have to render the bloated front-ends of many email providers.

I’ve found two distros I enjoy on really old stuff: Bodhi and Q4. They run fairly well and for the footprint, they’re pretty feature-rich. I love the Moshka desktop on Bodhi.

I’ve gor 4x8TB units in my NAS running Synology’s equivalent of RAID 5, but better. And then I also have 2x12TB drives in my main workstation for downloads, eval, testing & staging, services and data hoarding from open directories. I’m not saying I’m filling it all up, because I do have plenty of space available, but I’m def using it substantially lol.

I cannot understand why anyone would be so childish. It’s not even as though money is involved; it’s some kind of juvenile popularity contest by people who clearly don’t believe their work speaks for itself, and clearly don’t take pride in their product.

Manjaro defaults to a defective dock that is riddled with bugs if you customize it. I broke it dozens of times just by making some minor modifications in the preferences. It also slows down a little gradually. That’s only minor but the dock thing really irked me. Really? Can’t just get the dock settings finished so the thing completely works? Anyway, that was a few years ago and I haven’t touched it since.

Heh. Yeah I get it. Just giving you grief ;)

I’ve been using it all the time. Currently I think uses windows 10 as the shell if I’m not mistaken? But there’s still also the 7.

Oh, now come on… 5 years is hardly where a system becomes “old.” It’s 2025 right now. Using a system made in 2020 hardly differs at all from one made yesterday. I’d say a cutoff for considering slim distros would be more like ten years ago. I’ve got some systems that are older than that even and they blaze. Only a few things really put that kind of thing to the test: games and heavy graphics editing. Am I wrong?

Distrowatch has been gamed for years

In what way? Elaborate, please? How and for what purpose?

I tried MX a few times on different machines maybe a few weeks/months apart. Every time I did because of it being up there at the top and I was like “What am I not seeing?” It’s a decent distro, yeah, but some of the customization is distracting to be honest. I can say it’s good but the top? For what… more than a year or two even, it’s been in the top few.

I just don’t get it.

I am shamed! Oh the humiliation.
;-)

I have. It doesn’t happen often; but when you take a situation before you can afford to buy a bunch so you have like, only a few and do installs constantly of varying distros and OSes, you’re formatting / preparing those multiple times a day for a few years. Eventually they just sort of give up.

But honestly, that’s not even close to typical usage. A typical user or even a very active user will likely never have to worry about it.

Out of like 50 usb drives I think I’ve lost like 4 maybe 6. And yeah they’re all good brands like Sandisk, Lexar. Nowadays I buy whatever’s cheap like micro center when they have a give away I’ll take the freebie, and otherwise I buy Sandisk, Lexar, Kingston, Samsung or Crucial.

Oh and on the subject, basically, I’ve spent the better part of my life immersed in tech. I got started in the early 1980s and yeah, I’m kinda old, but it still blows my mind that there are now microSD chips that hold 1.5TB. Just… fucking blows my mind! I still remember being jazzed about getting my first 1GB hard drive. Friends were jealous. This is just absolutely insane.

I think it’s counterintuitive insofar as it goes against a kind of social trope that laymen are blown away by tech because they don’t understand it blah blah but I have found that no understanding it is what makes them all just take it for granted. Techies who have lived through the growth of this stuff and seen it from its early stages are far more impressed and in awe of the crazy advancements. Because we actually appreciate it.

It’s like how my friend and I who are both aviation enthusiasts actually look up at planes flying by sometimes are we’re like damn, it’s still goddamn marvelous. Because we understand it and how amazing it is for people to have thought it up and made it happen. Although we’re each certain that had we lived then, we would have pioneered aviation as well lol. Seems obvious really.

Did I just say all that? Sorry, I’m passionate.

I’d start off by formatting the thing with Hiren’s boot usb. This way you’ve got that build as the base and the utilities that are prepackaged therein. Then you add all the portable stuff you think you might need.

What is the appcalupse??? Is that some Jamaican catastrophe that ends all software application?

Electron is useful, I’ll give you that.

I sincerely hope that that is true. Then again my second concern that I mentioned is how long before it becomes a felony?

Question: what happens when, inevitably, every manufacturer locks down locks out etc. everything so not a single smartphone made can be modified in the slightest? Because I figure we’re only a few years away from that at best :-(

Better yet, what happens when the oligarchs make it a felony to modify your spy-device smartphone? Because we aren’t far from that either.