Think of the opportunity Linux creates in a place like India. If you have some smarts and a good work ethic, Linux and a machine from 2010 allows you to run the very latest software used by tech giants all over the world.
You can self-teach a huge number of skills on Linux and become deeply familiar with the REAL software that professionals are using—even in the West. One you know your stuff, you can leverage that into a job that pays fantastic money by local standards.
If you want to be a developer, you can build a GitHub portfolio or participate in Open Source projects.
If you are more entrepreneurial, you can post videos showing others how to use the skills you have acquired. These not only make a fantastic resume but they can generate advertising income. What may seem like a poor return on time in richer countries can provide important income in poorer ones.
If you have not tried it, you may be amazed that you can run up-to-the minute current versions of Docker, Kubernetes, databases, dev in any language ( even .NET ), and almost any other in-demand technology on really old Linux hardware.
Beyond hard technology skills, a Linux computer is just a fabulous productivity tool. You can get hardware and software to help manage your business that you perhaps could never afford otherwise. If you are a creative professional, you have access to amazing tools. If you are a photographer, you have pro level tools. If you are an architect or engineer, same thing. Again, we can say that some of these are not “professional” but I bet they do the job in markets where few can afford expensive software.
About the only things that push the hardware envelope these days are video editing, AI, and gaming. Even these work better than you may think though. It will take you longer but you can do pretty good video editing on 2010 HW for example.
For monospace, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Was set in my terminal already, but I've just switched Firefox to it as of this comment because I forgot to after a recent upgrade. The default was Liberation Mono, which I don't have much of a problem with (hence me taking so long to do anything about it), but the serifs on BVSM are a bit less severe.
Liberation Serif as the default browser font is fine. Most sites define their own proportional fonts these days anyway, but less so for preformatted text.
For the OS in general, usually the defaults are inoffensive. There was a push a while back to use the Ubuntu font that I really don't like, and there I think I actually substituted it for the non-mono Bitstream Vera Sans, or some other similar font.
Vera is a Verdana-like font, which you'll know if you prefer the Microsoft options.
Thanks for the reply. What’s weird is that I’ve done what the endeavouros forums said (and, looking through them, they did similar steps as the ones outlined on the archwiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Tips_and_tricks#Preserve_video_memory_after_suspend and I still get that black frozen screen with just a cursor. I’m guessing this is exclusively NVIDIA’s fault… or KDE’s as I never had this problem on GNOME. Thanks anyhow
I’ve used Ardour to capture keyboard midi input before. Not beginner-friendly, but it works if you want to play something, pick a soundfile, edit a flubbed note or two, and add it to a project.
Where’s the fun in paying someone else to do it all for you?
MergerFS+SnapRAID will give you a very similar set of features/flexibility compared to UNRAID storage. OpenMediaVault has native MergerFS+SnapRAID support and can also do ZFS - I would look at that for a comparable alternative. Otherwise, I’m very fond of a Proxmox host with a TrueNAS VM for ZFS pool management, or just managing the ZFS pool with the Proxmox host itself through this cockpit extension.
I've noticed a lot number of questions on reddit/etc. suddenly gets asked in that way ("why" in front of a statement). As an ESL I was confused for a while because I've been drilled in asking questions using auxiliary verbs.
I blame explanatory headlines. If you searched “why does [blank] happen?” you’d get articles like “why [blank] happens.” ESL speakers (and under-educated native speakers) bungle the difference. (They’re already trying to solve some technical crap. Their [blank] stopped working.) As this spreads, reddit and Stack Overflow start displacing tech-support blogs, and suddenly the headlines themselves are wrong.
The problem with older machines is the web browsing, not the system itself. You could use a browser with Java script disabled but a lot of websites will refuse to work.
You have to sacrifice with browser functionality to improve performance.
I’ve had good experiences with Midori and Dillo as alternative browsers on low-memory machines. Obviously features will take a hit but they’re surprisingly functional. Don’t expect to be able to open many tabs but you can do the usual things including YouTube etc.
Yep. All this optimization you see here about “minimal installs” and which DE to choose is completely moot, if opening Firefox takes up more RAM than the entire operating system.
Even 4gb are really low these days, if you actually want to do something in the browser.
The better approach is to grab the most popular distros that have different DE. See how the made their DE and what is possible. Also, think about what your goals are with a DE because if you are researching it then that means you have a desire in mind or want to know what a DE could do for you.
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