LeFantome

I made the same recommendation. Sadly the “latest” version in 64 bit only. Unsurprising as it is Debian based.

The older release is still available and still supported though. It would be a great option though the clock is ticking on it of course.

The most “batteries included” distro that is I can think of that is not Debian based is Adelie.

DSL is just AntiX with a curated list of software in a CD image. Just go with AntiX if you want to go that route.

Another option to consider is Q4OS Trinity. Trinity is essentially the KDE 3 desktop which is still surprisingly good and very light on resources.

All of these, including MX Linux, are Debian based and have access to the full Debian repos.

A potential issue with all these Debian based distros though is that Debian itself has moved away from 32 bit in Debian 13. It is hard to say how long these others will stay the course.

Adelie Linux is another one people forget about and certainly worth giving a spin. It is not Debian based.

Tiny Core will be the “fastest” as it runs out of RAM but of course that leaves you even less RAM for other things (like a browser). So it depends on your use case.

Are you sure CachyOS has 32 bit support?

Yes, it is gorgeous

Agreed. That does not change what I said though.

For me, “baloo” is the worst offender.

Also, great to see another btop fan. I use it a lot.

No argument.

I do not see much chance of a middle-man though and the alternative means much less adoption.

My issue is not with Kent’s strong technical opinions. I like those. Well, except that abusing other people as cover for his inability to follow the rules is not cool.

Linus can be a dick but he is typically making technical arguments at least (and usually quite good ones). Kent likes to play the “engineering” card but the drama is always about process, not technology, and he is the one being called out. So trying to pretend he is defending better engineering just makes the behaviour worse.

NVIDIA were breaking the rules (legally even). They have come around.

More big endiian in the kernel for no reason is a negative.

Not sure about the Intel engineer. Linus can be a jerk though so not assuming he was right if I do not know the situation.

And, while I like old hardware, the first x86-64 chips shipped in 2003. So, this is not exactly a Windows 11 situation.

Hardware older than that is going to struggle with modern browsers. A PC from that era would probably have less than 1 GB of RAM and perhaps a max RAM well under 4 GB (the theoretical limit). Using older software versions is probably best anyway.

Ironically, I think it may be because of Skia. So Google.

The replies here make me so mad at Kent Overstreet.

I love bcachefs and was using it on quite a few systems. When it was in the mainline kernel, interest was building. I feel like we could have been just a few months from experimental coming off and adoption skyrocketing.

Then Kent got it pulled from the kernel (so not interested in the “fighting for users” misdirection). Now, as evidenced by the comments here, most users will not touch it.

I needed it in the kernel so I have been migrating away too but it breaks my heart.

I am sure somebody will use it, maybe even more than the small number that have historically. And Kent will probably tell himself that is ok.

It sucks.

Now, I did not write a COW filesystem. So I guess I am getting what I am owed (nothing). That does not dull the sting much though.

It was quite good for a while but I feel like it has crept up again. It is over 1.5G at start for me these days.

It used to be under a gig.

It makes a difference when you only have 8G on a laptop.

Niri is a scrolling tiler. You do not even have to scroll if you really don’t want to.

Niri is absolutely the best tier for a laptop with a smaller screen. It provides all the benefits of tiling without the tiny, cramped windows that tiling tends to result in.

On other tilers, you end up using workspaces for single apps to avoid splitting the screen.