yep, user friendly, easy install, gooey install, proprietary drivers; extra stuff.

i think they were aiming to loss lead, capture user base and ultimately get some b2b sales - oh well :( OP author even ignores stuff like Lubuntu and Xubuntu, which i assume canonical have at least some contribution to. OP gets downvote from me, worthless article.

They have had light official flavors (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Netbook remix). But primary distro that has always been either Gnome or Unity has been fully-featured. It'd only consider it "light" compared to Windows.

So XDA developers page too is affected by AI Slop.

Yup

Sure, why not? Isn’t that the whole point of the internet?

Same for you.

Ubuntu used to be the obvious choice for reviving old systems that couldn’t run Windows

It didn’t.

It was though. You are living in a bubble. For five years all I ever heard was "You gotta switch to Ubuntu! Windows is awful!" Except this is when I was still using Windows XP, so from my perspective Windows wasn't awful. It was just out of date. From 2006-2011, that's all I ever heard was Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu.

Finally I looked at Ubuntu, and instantly realized I hated it, but that's because of personal choice. For the masses, Ubuntu=Linux at one point. If you knew enough to dispute that fact, then you're already in the Linux ecosystem enough to have your own opinions.

But for non-Linux people, I'd say Ubuntu was the default Linux experience for most people for 15ish years. I'd say around 3-4 years ago it started shifting towards Mint.

And now Mint is the default experience. The problem is Linux users are very opinionated. Their distro is the best distro. Their distro "just works". And these opinions are on a spectrum. I don't mean autism, I mean the opinions are literally a whole spectrum. You could have someone who has almost an identical set-up as you, except they use a different file browser. So, slightly differrent. On the other end of the spectrum you might have someone who uses Arch. Or if you use Arch, maybe they use vanilla Debian.

Whatever the specifics, that's not the point. The point is Linux is a whole range of visions, which is why your vision will never be THE vision for Linux. Because regardless of your opinions, no matter which stance you take, there's going to be thousands of people who want to tell you how stupid your setup is, and how much better theirs is.

But the default Linux experience is just the one that the majority gravitate towards. 90% of normal PC users never change any settings, or try different distros. The difference is that most Linux users aren't the typical PC users. Linux users like to customize their PC. Most PC users don't even change the theme. That's why Windows has such a monopoly. The user buys their PC, plop it on their desk, and the factory settings are good enough.

The other thing I find most Linux users do, is they want to grow the Linux base. So they introduce the "easiest" distro, and that becomes the default. For a very long time that was Ubuntu. I actually like Mint, so I personally see this as a good step for being the default.

And if you don't believe that there are users who don't change their PC or customize things, I'm running ZorinOS, as my first Linux full time use case. The only thing I customized was putting a custom taskbar at the bottom of my screen. Outside of that, my PC hasn't been updated, or changed in any way since 2023.

And if all of this sounds like horror to you, then that just means you have opinions that I don't have. But you're also one of the advanced PC users who use linux easily. I still struggle with this. If Windows wasn't one massive privacy invasion, I'd still be on Windows despite all the things you hate about them. For me it was the spying. Linux just does it's thing, and isn't controlled by corporations, so it doesn't spy. That's literally the only difference for me. I don't even update firefox. I'm running 133.0.3. I think firefox is somewhere near version 200.

Ubuntu used to be the obvious choice for reviving old systems that couldn’t run Windows

This is a clear case of AI slop not understanding the context. Lots of ink was spilled over the years suggesting people revive old computers with Ubuntu - EXCEPT, they were targeting Windows users. Ubuntu was lightweight compared to Windows, not other linux distros. This hasnt changed.

Lubuntu definitely seems about the lightest weight desktop environment for it for sure. I suppose Ubuntu server can be pretty light... But so are most linux servers, that's kind of their selling point.

It was only lightweight in comparison to Windows, but every other OS is.

My exact thought. Always been at least mid weight, if not flipping heavy as.

Arch is as lightweight or heavy as you want it to be. Except for the Systemd stack, that locks you a bit in. That's where Artix comes into play.

Not for modern hardware from my experience. Instead of suggesting one distribution, I would say Debian for some old hardware models and fedora is the sweet spot for modern hardware.

It is an essential aspect of being Linux users that we claim our preferred distro is the absolute best and others are garbage not worth using. It's in the terms I'm pretty sure.

And Zorin is above both

How debian is lightweight ? Isn't it have too many bloats pre-installed ?

A distro i can build myself is actually lightweight. Like Arch or Void.

GNOME 3 and afterwards didn't help. And Snap was the last nail in the coffin.

I don't think they do, it's just a good plug and play option for people just wanting to get away from Microslop. It's not really meant for power users, but people that want as little tinkering as possible (while still having the option if needed). Though I think they should do marketing, and get more people off of Microsoft products.

And for the record, I am still waiting for my check from Linux Mint for this ad.

🐀

I ran hundreds of flatpaks and they never failed to run even once, what do you mean with "frequently fail to work"?

I feel like this was true maybe 10-20 years ago, but any semi-recent desktop or laptop can run KDE or Gnome fine. If you are running an SBC with limited RAM, then maybe you should look at another desktop GUI.

I've just deployed a full debain active directory business network. We've had suppliers in the last 2 weeks installing equipment and I'm now bored of explaining to people why our infrastructure is so fast and just works.

Even the 2 windows 11 machines we require to run some lab equipment have drawn some comments because they work so much better in our local environment without being bogged down connecting to MS cloud garbage.

I'm doing this for my partner as I've been out of IT for 15 years. I've never had this level of interest and enthusiasm about a business network I'd installed back then

The distro that hasn't seen an update in 13 years, according to Wikipedia?