Everywhere where I read about Linux, especially distros, people are always talking about how it is doing on their laptops. I guess that is why there are such emphasis on resource consumption between different distros (which I as a desktop PC user find rather boring ). This has given me the picture that Linux is mainly used on, mainly low end, laptops among the most users. I thought I would do a poll to see how it really is, are we who use Linux on desktop computers in minority?
I use linux on my laptop quadcore 8gb and desktop quadcore 16gb ram for the main reason it just works and does not break every month low maintenance
When I retired I switched to Linux [Mint] as my desktop OS. My new box initially was a dual boot with W7 so was restricted to i7-6700 CPU, but did have the new 1080Ti GPU and most of the bells and whistles. I needed access to Windows, because as much as I like Linux it is a disaster in many environments. It renders fonts like a blind man looking through a coke bottle and USB3 hub is a fantasy we may never achieve. Nevertheless, I love Linux, so in the end I ditched the W7 dual boot and now just run Mint as a solo OS. BUT, I did have to buy a Windows tablet, because it's nice to see some websites as the designer intended.
As my signature states, I'm preparing for migration to Kubuntu, before 2020, before the end of support for Windows 7. That will be both my desktop and notebook. State of the art or low end? Definitely not state of the art, as both my desktop and notebook are aging, the desktop has Core2 Duo E8600 3.33 GHz, the notebook P6200 2.13 GHz. But is E8600 low end? I think pre dual core systems, and systems with 2 GB memory or less, may be considered as low end, but I wouldn't know about E8600 with 4 GB memory. As usual, it's all in the definition - how to define low end. Anyway, I assume my E8600 desktop will be good enough to enjoy Kubuntu.
Puppy Linux on a 9 yr old budget laptop. It works OK except for the hideous font display, which I have yet to solve.
Voted for low end laptop. But pls consider adding option for virtual machine. Agreed, my laptop was high end at the time, but I believe Core2Duo w/ 3GB is low end now.
Using Mint on a 9 year old laptop that mostly just sits there in the closet, unused. No major issues, aside from encryption slowing it down to a crawl
Kubuntu on my wife's low end laptop. Manjaro KDE on my pretty fast desktop system. And Windows 10 in VirtualBox only if absolutely needed.
Code: $ inxi -Fxxxz System: Host: kububb Kernel: 4.15.0-39-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.3.0 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.6 tk: Qt 5.9.5 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (Bionic Beaver) Machine: Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 15-3567 v: N/A serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 9 serial: <filter> Mobo: Dell model: 0FGN4M v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 01.07.00 date: 04/07/2017 Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 35.5 Wh condition: 35.5/41.4 Wh (86%) volts: 16.5/14.8 model: SMP DELL VN3N047 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Full CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-6006U bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Skylake rev: 3 L2 cache: 3072 KiB flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 7968 Speed: 742 MHz min/max: 400/2000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 732 2: 738 Graphics: Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 520 vendor: Dell Skylake GT2 driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:1916 Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: intel compositor: kwin x11 resolution: 1366x768~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.0.5 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes I use qemu/kvm to run some other Ubuntu flavors.
I have used Slackware Linux on all my machines for ages. Toshiba, Sony and now a new Acer Aspire laptop. This machine is an AMD 4 process or machine. I selected all the choices in the poll. Until a few months ago, Slackware was installed on an old P4 machine; which finally after all these years kicked the bucket.
I use it on low end and on high end desktops and laptops. So I voted for all. The only problems that I have encountered is when a machine is fairly new and linux distribution uses an older kernel (e.g. touchp The other thing that I learned to avoid is amd gpus; do't know if amd changed their linux support the last 2 years but since they gave me so many problems in the past for me is a "big no-no".
Similar but rare experience, most distributions these days have fairly recent kernels. Slackware64-current has 4.19.2 right now. Slackware64-14.2 has 4.4.157 and there are reports of it not working with some hardware. Yes, I too have had nothing but problems with AMD. That said I know several Slackware users who prefer AMD over NVIDIA or Intel. I have a recently declared legacy NVIDIA card, so I am stuck with the 390 drivers branch, which requires a small patch to install on a 4.19 kernel. I really don't need the NVIDIA driver, the nouveau driver works just fine with this GPU, even with Steam. Saves having to reinstall the NVIDIA driver after kernel or xorg.server updates in Slackware-current. Unless I have a specific need for a GPU driver I don't bother with installing them. My laptop has an Intel GPU and works fine without any propriety drivers. Also a desktop with AMD on the motherboard is working a-okay
There were some delays for support for some newer GPU AMD generations. But this is common also for Wifi cards etc, so just don't buy newest generation hardware unless you know there is support already in kernel. In some distributions (Debian) users also need to install propriety firmware even for open-source drivers.
Linux is like any other new OS that someone tries. There's always some learning curve, unless all you do is use default apps & all default settings - to check email, etc. It takes so much less resources than the last Windows I used (Vista), it's not funny. Aside from later Windows' being called giant spyware (by people a lot more advanced than me), Linux just runs faster.
MX-19 on a newer, reasonably high end laptop. Dual booting with Windows, which I hardly ever use nowadays.