Linux has over 6% of the desktop market

[UCyborg]

Maybe they should just settle on "plinth". It's what I would call it instead if a panel, which suggests a much more screen filling element.
But, nobody will ever listen to me anyway... 😉

I am not sure what you mean by plinth, so I don't know if I should listen to that or not.

What language is that a translation from?

Btw, until a few weeks ago, I didn't know you lived in sweden. You are in such better shape to live in a very civilized country than a place like usa, austraila, uk, or worse.

Off-topic:
I wonder at times what the world would look like without USA's influence.

[frostknight]

I wonder at times what the world would look like without USA's influence.

Probably less sociopath level greed.

Probably less damage to the environment via their stupid data centers and generative ai.

[Gemmaugr]

Off-topic:

I wonder at times what the world would look like without USA's influence.

A much worse place to be sure. All things considered. Britain would still rule India and Australia (among others) with the resources and population of the US. Roosevelt wouldn't be able to save Britain from Churchill's terrible "strategies". We'd be weighing in pounds and paying with pounds. East-India Trading company would style the corporate climate. Magna Carta would be our Feudal Freedoms. Washington wouldn't be able to free the slaves.

[frostknight]

A much worse place to be sure. All things considered. Britain would still rule India and Australia (among others) with the resources and population of the US. Roosevelt wouldn't be able to save Britain from Churchill's terrible "strategies". We'd be weighing in pounds and paying with pounds. East-India Trading company would style the corporate climate. Magna Carta would be our Feudal Freedoms. Washington wouldn't be able to free the slaves.

In the short term maybe that's true. I do however think in the long term that might not be accurate though.

[mr tribute]

[Linux] seems generally better in non-desktop applications.

Have you got servers in mind, or other use cases? I am curious to where you think Linux shines.

Linux does shine as a server O.S., especially if you stick with the more enterprise-focused, less bleeding edge/gadgeteering distros, like AlmaLinux or plain Debian.

Linux also shines as a desktop OS if you are into FOSS and privacy. Linux might not be the most technically advanced and easiest to use desktop OS, but it is usable for everyday tasks like web browsing, email and playing games. Font rendering isn't as good as Windows. I took a screenshot of LibreOffice on Linux compared to LibreOffice on Windows (colored background) running on my Linux desktop. On Linux I use metric compatible FOSS fonts and on Windows I use standard MS fonts.

Windows font rendering is cleaner, but Linux and FOSS fonts aren't that bad I think.

[Night Wing]

Linux does shine as a server O.S., especially if you stick with the more enterprise-focused, less bleeding edge/gadgeteering distros, like AlmaLinux or plain Debian.

Linux also shines as a desktop OS if you are into FOSS and privacy. Linux might not be the most technically advanced and easiest to use desktop OS, but it is usable for everyday tasks like web browsing, email and playing games.

I am in total agreement with your comments above. I have enjoyed Linux when I went all in on Linux in January of 2013 and drifted, quickly away from Windows. With the direction Windows is now going towards, there isn't anything Microsoft can do to bring me back to using Windows again. This is the long and short of it.

BTW, after looking at your screenshots, on the linux side, nice to see a fellow user on here running MX Linux.

[Moonchild]

Sorry, but I don't equate "shining" with "being usable for a few common tasks"

[UCyborg]

Off-topic:
US is full of degenerates. They butcher (male) babies' genitals the moment they come out of the womb. And if that wasn't bad enough that in just world would be punishable by life imprisonment, they sell the harvested tissue for big $$$.

Though being from Europe didn't do me any favors. Might as well been from Degenerate States or fucking Israel.

[mr tribute]

Sorry, but I don't equate "shining" with "being usable for a few common tasks"

I mainly posted because there was a discussion about font rendering on Linux. I think font rendering on Linux has improved, but the defaults aren't always good while Windows default font rendering is good.
You can change basically anything on Linux, but that also makes Linux a (huge) time-sink.

Also, if Linux is considered good for servers, that might simply be because the alternatives are worse.

[Mæstro]

I confirm I'm using Pale Moon on Ubuntu since 4 years without any problem (and much before on openSuse).

Out of curiosity, why had you chosen Ubuntu? I ask because I know you also dislike Snap, which I notice I think about as modern Ubuntu’s characteristic feature.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

The choice was done where I work, less or about then 10 years ago, and I aligned later at home. The move from opensuse to (x)ubuntu was motivated by the larger richness of the repos, including some scientific packages. At the time there was no snap galore.
BTW I realized only aftewards that the differences between the various *buntu is due toi Desktop Environment. I do not care about the DE, as the first thing I do is to install fvwm (now fvwm3) as window manager, and use that with my customization (as I did also on opensuse). Also there is excessive concern among users about what is bundled with a DE. Under fvwm I use kdiff3 (often packaged with KDE), atril (often packaged with mate), and possibly something else packaged with gnome. The expense is just some more disk space for the library dependencies, and may be some temporary extra process.ut with fvwm I usually run at less than 5% of the CPU.

[frostknight]

Sorry, but I don't equate "shining" with "being usable for a few common tasks"

Well, in the future winboat and winapps might make it more able to handle stuff windows can do.

So... yeah, the potential is there.

How much resources cpu and memory that linux uses is another place it shines. Like 1/4th being used if you use flashy DEs like Gnome or KDE.

Otherwise it can go even smaller the resource usage.

It is also faster than windows for this same reason. My T480s rarely ever gets stuck due to having linux on it.

As long as I don't do really dumb stuff, I am usually fine. Currently using devuan on some of my stuff

[Mæstro]

Currently using devuan on some of my stuff

Does Devuan support German as a system language? When I checked years ago (I think in the Beowulf days), it did not, dissuading me from considering it. Navigating its site seems to have become harder since then.

[Night Wing]

Does Devuan support German as a system language? When I checked years ago (I think in the Beowulf days), it did not, dissuading me from considering it. Navigating its site seems to have become harder since then.

As far as I know, Devuan does support a German system language. But I think you will have to install Devuan to actually find out.

If you want a German Devuan system, simply choose German during installation or add the necessary language packages afterward to get a fully localized experience, from the installer to your daily applications. Just remember unlike Debian which "supports" systemd, Devuan "excludes" systemd.

[Mæstro]

As far as I know, Devuan does support a German system language. But I think you will have to install Devuan to actually find out.
If you want a German Devuan system, simply choose German during installation…

If German is available as an option in the installer, I should think it permits German as system language, and I take this as sufficient answer to my question. I would test this myself in a virtual machine, but I have never tried running a 64-bit VM on this computer before and doubt that the hardware could keep up.

Just remember unlike Debian which "supports" systemd, Devuan "excludes" systemd.

I have no strong feelings about Systemd per se, but as you know, if running Linux without it would reduce processor load and therefore make my computer colder on average when running, I would be happy to jettison it. The fact that lightweight distributions, such as Antix, eschew Systemd suggested this possibility to me; Devuan would appeal as otherwise maintaining the familiar environment that I have got in Debian.

[Night Wing]

The fact that lightweight distributions, such as Antix, eschew Systemd suggested this possibility to me; Devuan would appeal as otherwise maintaining the familiar environment that I have got in Debian.

I see by your signature, you are using Debian 10. But your signature does not reveal what desktop environment you are running in Debian. Devuan's default DE is Xfce. Devuan offers quite a few other desktop environments. Find one you consider "light" on resources for your computer. You can see them on the page at the link below.

https://www.devuan.org/os/

[Mæstro]

But your signature does not reveal what desktop environment you are running in Debian.

Cinnamon, which I know is not famous for low processor load, but empirically has been no more a burden when themed to resemble Windows 7’s Aero than Windows 7 itself had been in Classic (not Aero). I could switch to Xfce on a fresh installation, ie one clear of the debris left from past, abortive attempts to switch to it in the years past.

[Garland]

To get the best speed out of old computers, I recommend a Linux distribution that loads into RAM:
https://distrowatch.com/search.php?cate ... RAM#simple
The above list mistakenly omits EasyOS:
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=EasyOS
A compressed file system is used so that the effective storage in RAM is much larger than the physical RAM size.

I also recommend shopping for a new Linux distribution by trying a LiveUSB version first. My wife is using Pale Moon on MX Linux LiveUSB every day (while I research what our new OS will be). She is very happy because It runs blazingly fast on a 2024-vintage PC with the mid-weight Xfce desktop environment (DE) and sysvinit (no SystemD). The Fluxbox DE is lighter-weight, but I haven't tried it. I plan to try antiX-25 when it is released, as I need the modern kernel for my 2024-vintage PC.

In the default MX LiveUSB configuration, there is only one folder for persistent files. Any changes to other files get erased when restarting the PC unless the user chooses to execute the remaster utility. This feature was useful today because Pale Moon locked up on youtube.com, and I had to restart the PC to resolve. No changes to the PM profile though! My wife usually uses invidious.io to get sane speed and privacy from YouTube, but accidentally clicked on a direct link to youtube.com. She has a habit of also restarting the PC after visiting sites known for storing tracking info locally (like DOM storage).

I especially recommending trying EasyOS on a LiveUSB, which is based on Devuan. MX Linux (with sysvinit) and Devuan are SystemD-free. antiX and EasyOS are SystemD-free and eLoginD-free, which makes them more light-weight and better for privacy. EasyOS has a built-in container/sandbox system such that changes to Pale Moon's profile or any other creepy stuff downloaded gets erased when PM is closed. No need to restart the whole OS. I haven't taken EasyOS for a test drive yet, but I plan to. No other Linux distribution that I found makes security and privacy so easy.

[frostknight]

Cinnamon, which I know is not famous for low processor load, but empirically has been no more a burden when themed to resemble Windows 7’s Aero than Windows 7 itself had been in Classic (not Aero). I could switch to Xfce on a fresh installation, ie one clear of the debris left from past, abortive attempts to switch to it in the years past.

Off-topic:
the only DEs I think that are usable are lumina desktop and maybe lxde. The others look so beyond awful.

Too much bloat and shininess yuck to me.

As far as imitating windows goes, 2000 probably was the last one worth imitating graphics wise. Then again, people will look at this like a strange opinion probably.

Although, never said it wasn't,

I am semi-aware of this.

I just don't like obsessions with shiny eye candy on the outside while the inside looks like its going to rot to hell. IE, anti-features are not at all necessary except for greedy a-holes.

This world needs to tax billionaires to where it isn't worth seeking to become one. And ban tax evasion...

[Night Wing]

My wife is using Pale Moon on MX Linux LiveUSB every day (while I research what our new OS will be). She is very happy because It runs blazingly fast on a 2024-vintage PC with the mid-weight Xfce desktop environment (DE) and sysvinit (no SystemD).

I use MX Linux 25 (Infinity) Xfce now. When I was doing research on MX when it was at version 21, the first thing I noticed which I did not like was the "vertical" Panel. I like my Panel to be horizontal at the bottom of my screen. I watched a few YouTube videos to see how to make the changes which were: Menu > MX Tools > MX Tweak > Xfce Panel > Placement (Horizontal Bottom) > Apply > Close.

Below is a screen shot of my MX Panel listing all the applications icons I use. Some of these icons were kept, some were moved around to a different place on the Panel, some were deleted and some were added either by finding them and installing them via the Synaptic Package Manager (SPM) which is installed by default in the MX Menu.

And I will list the items just in case you may want to try one of them out. If you cannot find them, just reply back and I will tell where I got them from. In terms of placement. Starting from the very far left bottom and going to the very far right bottom to the end of the Panel.

1) Old Application Menu: Is a vertical stacked menu
2) Trash: Self explanatory
3) Minimize: All open windows and show the Desktop
4) MX Repo Manager: Where I choose the fastest mirror for updates
5) Task Manager: Monitor system resources
6) Format USB: Formatting a USB flash/thumb drive (stick)
7) Disks: Manage Drives & Media
8) MX Live USB Maker: Create a full featured live-USB
9) MultiWriter: Write an ISO to multiple USB devices at once
10) Synaptic Package Manager: Install, remove and upgrade software packages
11) Quick System Info: Self explanatory
12) KOrganizer: Offline calendar & scheduling program
13) Terminal: Self explanatory
14) Thunar File Manager: Browse the file system with the file manager
15) Vertical Separator: First one



16) Vertical Separator: Second one
17) Pale Moon: Browser
18) Firefox: Browser
19) Waterfox: Browser
20) "G"alculator: Perform simple and scientific calculations
21) System Monitor: View current process and monitor system state
22) Screenshot: Take screenshots of the entire system, of the active window or of a region
23) Applications Menu: Default Whisker Menu which comes with the MX logo on installation
24) Volume: Built in audio analog stereo
25) Ethernet Wired Connection: Since I use a Desktop tower computer with ethernet cable and with a laptop, one can find their wifi
26) MX Updater: Manage system updates
27) Unmount: Unmount USB drives properly to avoid corruption
28) Joe: My computer's name and in association with action buttons
29) Time, Day & Date: Self explanatory