You can still install other distros, but the power profiles won’t work well, and you might fry your cpu if the fans don’t kick in – for example.

Enough packages show up.

I avoid flatpaks, so I don’t mind.

Linux Mint, because I don’t like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).

Yeah, I don’t understand flatness either. Neither I understand the dark themes either. My eyes and brain simply can’t do the separation easily, I spend more time trying to process an image. Old style icons and UI colors are the best IMHO.

I’ve tried several distros to fit on my repurposed Chromebooks that came with 16 GB emmc storage. Debian was the smallest one, using by default about 5.5 GB of data, plus 1 GB for swap, plus the boot partition. I had about 9 GB left after installing, with XFCE. After I installed a few apps and games, I ended up with 6 GB free space. It works fine and it updates fine.

I don’t like flatpaks. Some builds don’t support printing, for example. Same for snaps. That’s why I always prefer appimage from these types of binaries, but my favorite always remains the repo versions.

Gimp 3 is scheduled to be released in May, around the time that Debian 13 is about to come out. Given that Gimp is never on time, and that Debian will only include stable software in their repo, you won’t see Gimp 3.x on Debian for another 2.5 years (the next major release).

However, don’t fret. There’s a way to run Gimp 3, even now, without overwriting the 2.10.x version of Gimp that comes with Debian: https://github.com/ivan-hc/GIMP-appimage/releases That’s how I run gimp 3 on my Debian too, I just download the 3.0-rc1 .appimage file, make it executable, and it’s up and running.

I’d say Linux Mint is your best bet. It’s easy to use and it works well. Update it after you install it, and then install a new menu applet for it, Cinnamenu (from the applets dialog). It’s much nicer than the default imho.

You are making a mistake. You are comparing an Android or iOS tablet, that have a user interface that makes sense for these devices, and you’re trying to shoehorn Linux in them, and expect the same “fine enough”. It won’t be, because while it might work, it won’t be ideal. Linux was optimized to be used as a desktop OS, with a mouse or touchpad. You’d have to install something like LineageOS to get it working properly, but then you will lose the cool abilities of a linux desktop for the most part. Conclusion: get a tablet if you want, but don’t throw away your laptop.

Edit: Also, this was posted just an hour ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H669Fwtv-3o

Can’t wait, it’s becoming really usable (I always needed adjustment layers, and it now mostly has them). I wish they offered an appimage though, I’m not big on flatpaks due to size.

Actually, I’d trust the Graphene guys’ evaluation. They do know what they’re talking about there. And it’s true that Playstore is more secure than foss store offerings, unfortunately. You see, these are built securely. Google is a security-driven company. That much is true, and I know that first hand. BUT they are not a PRIVACY-driven company. There is a difference here.

What we need, is a totally de-googled Chromium with added hardened extensions (e.g. bringing back the v2 manifest to run various privacy and security extensions). This would have more security than Firefox, but also more privacy.

I believe that’s the best way forward, because creating a new web browser from scratch with these performance expectations, is a pipe dream (looking at you, ladybird). So, yeah, the open source community needs to fork chromium, not firefox. Firefox was never great to begin with as a technology, it’s measurably slower than Chrome for example, and it uses a LOT more RAM. Linux users are known to want to resurrect old computers with less than 4 GB of ram (I’m one of them), firefox can’t deliver that. I always have to resort to Chrome to make it bearable. But I rather use an official foss fork instead. One that is trusted.

Everyone is replying as if the OP is asking about normal live environments, but I think he’s asking about having Linux actually fully installed on a usb instead of the ssd. In that case, most of the replies don’t apply. However, Mint has a way to install itself properly on a usb drive. Boot with the burned iso, insert a second usb drive, unmount it, and then install on it (you choose it during installation). It has to be unmounted first.

It doesn’t matter if we “people use it in new projects”, but rather, we often have to compile stuff that use them. So they need to be around, regardless of how bad they are. Just last week my husband had to compile two emulators that used autotools.

Usually this is a problem of permissions on the mounted-folder. Even with the jellyfin server you need to change the permissions to get the server to see the mounted folder. I expect it’s similar with kodi.

The oldest I have is from 2009. It’s quite old. It came with 4 GB of RAM. That’s how I was buying computers back then, with enough ram. We have to go back to 2006 to find me buying a computer with 2 GB of RAM. I got my lesson in 1995, shortly after having bought my first PC, a 486DX/40 with 4 MB of RAM. 6 months later Windows95 came out, and I couldn’t run it, it needed a minimum of 8 MB. It was swapping like hell. So I got my lesson early on. Now, I buy new laptops or computers with minimum of 32 GB of RAM.

I’ve been running Mint and Debian on old hardware too. A Macbook Air 2011 and one from 2015, and a Mac Mini 2014. Mint works great on them AS LONG AS you have at least 4 GB of RAM, especially since it can install the broadcomm wifi driver. Lots of screenshots and images from them here: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/media

Not my experience here, especially if extensions are used on gnome, but I hear you. I find xfce to be lightest. Sure, there are other more light wms, but they’re not modern and suitable for daily use.

My sentence above explains it. The source is available, the distros provide binaries in their repos, but if you want the latest version, the creator only provides paid binaries. The GPL allows for that. Same for ZRythm.

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