Am I the only one

[qslim]

I’m much happier with how games and applications perform on my PC.

I feel you. I use a PC for work set up to run engineering applications based in CAD and a few others. My company experimented with a small number of Macs for engineering purposes awhile back and it didn't come close to panning out.

I'm not a computer guy though, and that's why I think I like Macs. I'm competent where I have to be, but I just don't care enough to get involved if I don't have to. When I'm not working the only thing I use a computer for is personal email, reading some websites and shopping for angry grilles. Macs just always work for those purposes.

 

[mots]

I went to arch a number of years ago because most others include way too much that I never used (and I wanted to know more how it all worked). It’s a love/hate relationship sometimes with maintaining it

Very true. I have a beloved Asus Zenbook Ultrabook from 2014 with a 4th generation i5, SSD, 16 GB RAM, retina IPS quality touchscreen, glass lid with aluminum frame, back-lit quality keyboard, Intel graphics only (on purpose to keep it simple and stable for a Linux laptop). I've been running Arch with cutting edge Gnome ever since I got it. Since it is a "rolling" distro, I have never reinstalled the OS fresh and it runs better today then it did back in 2014 due to the open source software improvements. It was my goal for the machine when I bought it and will continue to be as long as I have it. I will admit that I have had a handful of head-scratchers on updates over the years, and early on even had to maintain my own custom kernel for the high quality display to work, but this little Ultrabook is definitely one of my favorite machines of all time!

Linux here too, mostly Debian based. xfce

HP Mini 10" screens, running AntiX, they're perfect for travel, backpack friendly.

Daily driver as late, win8 with Oracle running Arch, Antix, LibreELEC, winXP, IPFire (Testing)

I hated KDE over the years because of the bloat, complexity, and branding etc. Gnome wasn't much better, but I still liked the look and feel better. I dabbled in XFCE and LXDE, and even other "thinner" environments, but never came away as satisfied as I am with a modern desktop experience. Howver, the "thin" part was necessary for me some cases as it likely is for you. However, in 2019/2020, KDE Plasma is now where it is at IMHO. Plasma is as thin as XFCE any more, check out the article below about the current state of the lightweight desktop.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...ght-linux-desktop-crown-in-2020/#2eb2798126d2

KDE Neon, while I'm not super crazy about the Ubuntu base, has been fantastic on my 8th gen Intel desktop. I have some widgets on my desktop to monitor RAM/CPU etc. The Plasma desktop sits and idles ~500 Mb RAM of total RAM usage after startup and login. It is simply amazing for such a full featured and able to be customized desktop (docks\panels, widgets, themes, window effects like genie bottle, wobbly windows etc.).

My Arch laptop described above might get Plasma soon, but I'll feel guilty bailing on Gnome after all these years!

 

[rasband]

Very true. I have a beloved Asus Zenbook Ultrabook from 2014 with a 4th generation i5, SSD, 16 GB RAM, retina IPS quality touchscreen, glass lid with aluminum frame, back-lit quality keyboard, Intel graphics only (on purpose to keep it simple and stable for a Linux laptop). I've been running Arch with cutting edge Gnome ever since I got it. Since it is a "rolling" distro, I have never reinstalled the OS fresh and it runs better today then it did back in 2014 due to the open source software improvements. It was my goal for the machine when I bought it and will continue to be as long as I have it. I will admit that I have had a handful of head-scratchers on updates over the years, and early on even had to maintain my own custom kernel for the high quality display to work, but this little Ultrabook is definitely one of my favorite machines of all time!



I hated KDE over the years because of the bloat, complexity, and branding etc. Gnome wasn't much better, but I still liked the look and feel better. I dabbled in XFCE and LXDE, and even other "thinner" environments, but never came away as satisfied as I am with a modern desktop experience. Howver, the "thin" part was necessary for me some cases as it likely is for you. However, in 2019/2020, KDE Plasma is now where it is at IMHO. Plasma is as thin as XFCE any more, check out the article below about the current state of the lightweight desktop.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...ght-linux-desktop-crown-in-2020/#2eb2798126d2

KDE Neon, while I'm not super crazy about the Ubuntu base, has been fantastic on my 8th gen Intel desktop. I have some widgets on my desktop to monitor RAM/CPU etc. The Plasma desktop sits and idles ~500 Mb RAM of total RAM usage after startup and login. It is simply amazing for such a full featured and able to be customized desktop (docks\panels, widgets, themes, window effects like genie bottle, wobbly windows etc.).

My Arch laptop described above might get Plasma soon, but I'll feel guilty bailing on Gnome after all these years!

Plasma is pretty great. I also have liked Cinnamon and Mate, but stick on a very slim KDE/Plasma.

 

[qslim]

Very true. I have a beloved Asus Zenbook Ultrabook from 2014 with a 4th generation i5, SSD, 16 GB RAM, retina IPS quality touchscreen, glass lid with aluminum frame, back-lit quality keyboard, Intel graphics only (on purpose to keep it simple and stable for a Linux laptop). I've been running Arch with cutting edge Gnome ever since I got it. Since it is a "rolling" distro, I have never reinstalled the OS fresh and it runs better today then it did back in 2014 due to the open source software improvements. It was my goal for the machine when I bought it and will continue to be as long as I have it. I will admit that I have had a handful of head-scratchers on updates over the years, and early on even had to maintain my own custom kernel for the high quality display to work, but this little Ultrabook is definitely one of my favorite machines of all time!

Plasma is pretty great. I also have liked Cinnamon and Mate, but stick on a very slim KDE/Plasma.

I went to arch a number of years ago because most others include way too much that I never used (and I wanted to know more how it all worked). It’s a love/hate relationship sometimes with maintaining it

Linux here too, mostly Debian based. xfce

HP Mini 10" screens, running AntiX, they're perfect for travel, backpack friendly.

Daily driver as late, win8 with Oracle running Arch, Antix, LibreELEC, winXP, IPFire (Testing)

Y'all are nerds

 

[DaveF]

Very true. I have a beloved Asus Zenbook Ultrabook from 2014 with a 4th generation i5, SSD, 16 GB RAM, retina IPS quality touchscreen, glass lid with aluminum frame, back-lit quality keyboard, Intel graphics only (on purpose to keep it simple and stable for a Linux laptop). I've been running Arch with cutting edge Gnome ever since I got it. Since it is a "rolling" distro, I have never reinstalled the OS fresh and it runs better today then it did back in 2014 due to the open source software improvements. It was my goal for the machine when I bought it and will continue to be as long as I have it. I will admit that I have had a handful of head-scratchers on updates over the years, and early on even had to maintain my own custom kernel for the high quality display to work, but this little Ultrabook is definitely one of my favorite machines of all time!



I hated KDE over the years because of the bloat, complexity, and branding etc. Gnome wasn't much better, but I still liked the look and feel better. I dabbled in XFCE and LXDE, and even other "thinner" environments, but never came away as satisfied as I am with a modern desktop experience. Howver, the "thin" part was necessary for me some cases as it likely is for you. However, in 2019/2020, KDE Plasma is now where it is at IMHO. Plasma is as thin as XFCE any more, check out the article below about the current state of the lightweight desktop.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...ght-linux-desktop-crown-in-2020/#2eb2798126d2

KDE Neon, while I'm not super crazy about the Ubuntu base, has been fantastic on my 8th gen Intel desktop. I have some widgets on my desktop to monitor RAM/CPU etc. The Plasma desktop sits and idles ~500 Mb RAM of total RAM usage after startup and login. It is simply amazing for such a full featured and able to be customized desktop (docks\panels, widgets, themes, window effects like genie bottle, wobbly windows etc.).

My Arch laptop described above might get Plasma soon, but I'll feel guilty bailing on Gnome after all these years!

Conversations like these are why no normal person runs Linux... that and the fact that most of the ones that I know who do so, also run a VM with Windows for some application or other, or games.

 

[mots]

Conversations like these are why no normal person runs Linux... that and the fact that most of the ones that I know who do so, also run a VM with Windows for some application or other, or games.

Haha, there is some truth to it scaring folks off, but honestly Linux on the desktop is more of a perception problem and a competitive disadvantage, than a complexity problem that exists in reality. We can easily also say that many Windows or Mac developers and techs run a Linux VM because they need access to Linux because of it's popularity.

Many Linux distributions work great for the normal person, there are many choices for user-friendly distributions. It's the availability and ease of buying a Windows PC (or Mac) that keeps Linux out, not the complexity or the fact that Linux can't compare or compete. In fact, my 75 year old mother-in-law has been using Linux Mint for about 5 years now on an old desktop I gave her. She uses a browser for YouTube and Facebook etc., uses email, and does some word processing/printing etc. The menu system looks like Windows and OS updates are quicker and easier than in Windows. It just keeps working, I haven't had to help with anything since I set it up. I also had my Dad and some family friends using Manjaro on their laptops with good success. They may need help installing it, and some pointers to get started at first, but maintaining a Linux PC can be as easy as Windows with the stable and user-friendly distributions.

Things have been changing, albeit slowly, and Linux has been getting stronger year by year. The desktop, video editing, and gaming may be the final frontiers that it hasn't dominated, but it also a player in these markets and has made great strides on these fronts to be more on par with Windows\Mac. Chromebooks are lean little Linux distributions. Android runs on ARM Linux. Most modern streaming TV devices, car stereos, and TV's use embedded Linux, or a cousin thereof. Most home and office routers run on ARM Linux. Intel, Oracle and MS have all created their own Linux distributions and contribute heavily to the Linux kernel. The worlds faster supercomputers run Linux. 90% of the Internet back-end and Cloud computing platforms and services run on Linux. MacOS and iOS are much more like Linux\Unix than Windows. MS is ditching their Edge browser engine and will be using Chromium (Chrome open source) in their next browser.

My point is that Linux and open source have been slowly but surely dominating the computing space over the past 30 years on many fronts, so I wouldn't count them out of anything at this point. It might just take more time in some spaces. Bill Gates once said his goal or dream was "Windows everywhere", but Linus Torvalds and Linux are the ones that have actually delivered this reality.