It’s a fair article. Mentions that while it may not be the year of Linux (whatever that ever means every time it’s claimed), it does suggest the bot activity validates the death of the internet as we knew it. It also says that Linux is a great platform and they use it for certain things. If the adjusted amount it right, 4.7% is still pretty impressive, as I can remember people celebrating like 1% and 2% once. And for some reason I thought WIndows would be higher… they are slipping.

Five seconds? What’s hogging that system? Mine is about two, at most, from the WM shutdown selection.

Honestly, it could be because of the age of the hardware I’m working with. Just haven’t bothered pursuing why it occurs since I have a workaround. The surprising thing to me is how simple the install was for both Linux versions. I did not expect it to boot the first time with no issues at all to troubleshoot to get things to work.

My first question was going to be specs, but that’s new enough that there’s plenty of flavors that should work fine. I have a 2009 MacBook that I was able to up memory to 8GB, and that opened up being able to put Linux Mint vs. the Kubuntu it was running but struggling with (mainly due to Firefox needing 1GB sometimes which would kill its 2GB RAM).

Only real issue is every great once in a while Cinnamon acts flaky (garbage characters) but I put a shortcut to restart it that seems to fix it without messing anything up. Being a secondary computer for me, that’s good enough.

Firefox is a heavier browser, so there are other options to use when RAM is an issue. There are tradeoffs in features though, so pick what works best. The default RAM I had with the Macbook (2GB) was usable but barely, I had to stay away from something like Youtube or it would crash. But I was able to bump up to 8GB which opened up doing a lot more.

Good luck with the effort. I have a Chromebook that I was considering to do the same after messing with using it as-is but running Forefox under its Linux wrapper and seeing how painfully slow it was. But then I dived into Google’s efforts in locking them down and decided it wasn’t worth the effort (yet). I turned to an old Macbook that couldn’t be updated anymore and discovered the exact opposite. With a bit more RAM and a swap to a SSD, it runs current Linux Mint with little issues. I may explore the Chromebook again when I have extra time, as it’s doable, just a PIA.

The download is the title and what everyone is latching onto, but few are seeing the other problems, like how it secretly installed that model without user acceptance, how it uses obscurity to hide the model, how it will reinstall if you just delete it (fortunately there’s an uninstall process linked in the comments, does that include uninstalling Chrome?). And then how it pretends to be an extra AI thing on the browser but apparently will be used for any searching. Which is more energy use since it isn’t local, it’s just using the weights in storage.

It’s all bad, even if it wasn’t AI. It’s what malware does.

It can be, but it depends on how dependent one is on various applications and sources. I’m in the process of doing such a thing, but I’m taking the slow route so I don’t break everything. Meaning I’m moving one thing at a time off Snap, and then I’ll be closer to a Debian/Mint DE version in the switch over than if I did it right away with so much tied to it being Ubuntu.

For a casual user it may not be that dramatic and just a matter of moving data and learning a new desktop look. I’d still suggest the Debian version of Mint over Debian if they went to Ubuntu for the easy use.

As a Gen-X, I have embraced 6-7 and use it when I can. I appreciate that every generation has its own meme culture. Funny enough, it pisses off the younger kids when I do it. Mission accomplished.

It is. But at least Win7 wasn’t terrible, and it was just a bad promo.

Microsoft then said, “hold my beer” and went Win8 Metro.

MacBook 6,1 Core 2 Duo 2.26 13" White Unibody Late 2009

I got lucky, apparently Apple specs say a max of 4GB like so many of the others, but for some reason this odd motherboard will run 8GB. And I can confirm, 8GB works.

Linux is the way to go if you want to get a few more years out of your hardware.

Not Windows, but I got an almost new laptop out of a MacBook by putting Mint on it (and $15 of more RAM). Its biggest drawback is how much heavier it is than anything new. My next target is jailbreaking an old Chromebook I have.

Because of the two 7s, right? I saw the thumbnail and thought it was neat, but then looked closer and think the small 7 should go away.

MFW I first got my current router and went to set it up and couldn’t find the factory ID and password on it anywhere. Then realized it was on a damn app now. Which was bad enough, but after jumping through all the hoops, I discovered that (to no surprise really) what you can set up is very limited.

Sure I should buy my own router or flash an older one… but then again the last bad storm that fried the router this one replaced, the ISP replaced it at no charge. So… I live with it, I guess.

My spellcheck doesn’t recognize exabyte and zettabyte yet either. Same issue of common use and scale.

As the comic says, it depends. I was going to do DE or MATE for my old hardware, but figured out Cinnamon would run fine. But I knew better than to try Ubuntu. I use it on my main PC that can handle it, but older stuff, no way, it’s got too much going on.

Was running just the 2GB original, original HDD, and LM XFCE, and it “worked”, but it was painful.

I just put Linux Mint Cinnamon on an old MacBook and it’s running pretty well. I had an SSD that I could use and an extra RAM (total of 3GB now), and it made all the difference. Planning to get two 4GB RAM cards to max it out, yay for old memory that’s still cheap.

Audacious isn’t perfect, but it’s far better than the others that I tried. Had been using VLC forever in WIndows, but for whatever reason I kept running into issues that I couldn’t resolve, so began a search for alternatives.

The only huge issue I have is when I add more songs to my music directory, I can’t refresh the existing playlist. I have to delete and add the directory again. Don’t do it a lot, so it’s more inconvenience, and everything else works so much better than other alternatives did.

FWIW, using a shell function is preferred (according to Bash docs) and probably a lot more flexible, and less dangerous. No, actually, anything in Linux can be dangerous.

And while I’m also in the camp of trying to make the Basilisk happy, I doubt it’s going to work.