Sorry to be that gal but other slow hardware not software

Ehhhhhh I wouldn't say brand new hardware. A lot of times Linux still needs a few months to properly support a new Gen of graphics cards or processors

Though it generally at least works which is a huge improvement over back in the day

My primary laptop is a Lenovo T495s. I'm a big fan because my requirements for a laptop aren't particularly demanding, but while a 5 year old Ryzen 7 is a bit aged, I'd hardly consider it underpowered, at least for my (and many others) needs. Laptops like this can easily be found in great condition and under $200. I spent a little more after a new nvme and maxing out ram.

I see what you're saying, but I also think it's actually a mark in Linux' favor that is continues to run so well on older or underpowered hardware. It's how I really got into it, being broke and able to eke out years more life on older computers when I could ill afford upgrades. These days, I'm happy that I can get off the upgrade treadmill for longer. The most demanding games I've installed are the Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remasters and Grandia. I'm not a programmer, don't have to render graphical stuff for work, etc, so it's pretty great that I don't have to worry about my budget desktop being unusable in 4 years because the OS devs have made it a practical impossibility to run on older hardware. I've got 32GB of RAM, and my biggest threat to usability is leaving Firefox running with a ton of open tabs for weeks on end, which can conveniently be solved by closing Firefox and watching my RAM use plummet.

Not everyone is going to be a gamer, graphics designer or programmer that really needs the latest and greatest in hardware. In fact, I'd wager the majority of people won't notice an improvement outside of a few cases. Upgrading from an HDD to an SSD, <16GB of RAM to >16GB of RAM and from an older graphics card to a newer one that supports 4K are pretty easy differences to note in normal use. Those aside, I think most people would be hard-pressed to identify an objective difference in the quality of their browsing and word processing experiences. Depending on how flexible people are with adapting to different workflows, even those could be minimized, to an extent. I have a desktop I bought second hand twenty years ago that served as my main computer into and beyond my initial forays in university. It has a whopping two cores, and I think I might have managed to get 16GB of RAM into it. It'd probably suck for web browsing and wouldn't be terribly efficient for power use, but I bet you if I reinstalled things, it would work just fine for serving up my music library via mpd, playing it with ncmpcpp and writing term papers in Auctex, same as it did back then. Even if I put an older version of Windows on it like Windows 7, I bet it would struggle to run those same programs on top of the base OS. That's legitimately impressive, when you think about it.

Wiggly windows in compiz probably converted like 10 thousand 12 year olds to linux… I know from experience!

Cloud infrastructure engineer at 12 years old? Damn son!

Rejoice brother as you are amoung friends.

My mother is very happy now. Bonus points she doesn't call me up and have me dismiss the Microsoft upsell every other update.

She says she doesn't want to break anything but I think she wants me to do it so she doesn't have to give it a nanosecond of a thought. Also she doesn't throw a fit every time she has to wait for updates to finish anymore!

Your tech illiterate friend is not so tech illiterate

now I gotta become an astronaut and be the first to install gentoo in space

Doesn't the ISS run Debian?

Edit: Yes, they introduced Debian on user devices back in 2013

It's not about paying for Windows, usually it's included in the device you buy. The real reason why Linux helps broke people is because bloated Windows can't run on the budget PCs they have (and they can't just buy a faster computer)

I mean you pay for Windows on preinstalled computers, too. There are Laptops sold without OS and they are cheaper than the same model with windows installed.

I did once. I built a pc. I hated the watermark. Y’all hadn’t enlightened me yet

The watermark annoys me so I grab one of those £20 fell of the back of a truck keys.

I think the point is you can put a fully updated new Linux on a decade old ThinkPad but with windows you'd need to buy a whole new laptop to run modern stuff also it would be unusably slow

I keep hearing stories like this but all I see in thrift stores are like busted DVD players and other grimey old stuff that was second-rate even when released. In that awkward valley where it's not vintage, and newer stuff is objectively better.

I think people caught on and the good finds are pushed to their auction sites and stuff now. =\

I'm happy with my X230 I got for $200 off eBay though, like 5 years back.¯_(ツ)_/¯

Free cost and free as in freedom to understand and modify the code. I also think it's a beautiful way of doing things. We also have Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. The internet has a tremendous potential for collaboration, people doing things because they want to, for the benefit of everyone.