Advice Request The Year of the Linux dissatisfaction

[shmu26]

What no....https://embeddedinventor.com/lightweight-vs-heavyweight-distros-a-comparison/

Okay, I stand corrected. Not sure why MX describes themselves as middle-weight, though, when they pride themselves on running well on weak computers.

 

[jackuars]

I believe what people refer to weak computers are subjective. The minimum & recommended system requirements might be an ideal case scenario here. MX doesn't work that well on older computers.

 

[bayasdev]

There's the mythical Puppy Linux if you need to revive a weak 64bits computer, it's based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=88&i=2

 

[bribon77]

I believe what people refer to weak computers are subjective. The minimum & recommended system requirements might be an ideal case scenario here. MX doesn't work that well on older computers.

If we talk about Pentium 2, it may be short to install MX Linux.

But I have an old quad core PC and it works great.

 

[shmu26]

I believe what people refer to weak computers are subjective. The minimum & recommended system requirements might be an ideal case scenario here. MX doesn't work that well on older computers.

Dedoimedio wrote an enthusiastic review about MX 18 working wonderfully on an ancient computer.

MX Linux MX-18 & 10-year-old EeePC netbook - Fantastic

Extremely enthusastic review of MX Linux MX-18.1 Continuum, tested on a 10-year-old Asus eeePC netbook, including live usage, installation with existing user data, new desktop configuration and tweaks, solid performance, low resource usage, battery life, updates, applications, music and video...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[bribon77]

I must admit that measuring RAM usage on Linux is a tricky business, because there are many different task managers and other tools to do it, and each one gives a different output, which has a lot to do with methodology: whether to count shared RAM, cached RAM usage, etc.

Sometimes I use the "free" command (without the quotes)

 

[bayasdev]

Sometimes I use the "free" command (without the quotes)

use -h for human readable output

 

[bribon77]

use -h for human readable output

I don't understand your command.
But, free in English works on Debian-based distributions.

 

[mazskolnieces]

This is because MX does not use systemd.

Systemd-shim is used.

IIRC this is what a default Ubuntu (GNOME) install uses on idle (~1.2GB according to htop) but Kubuntu (KDE) uses the same with Brave opened on MT

View attachment 247342

• Fedora KDE 847 MB
• Manjaro KDE 714 MB
• Kubuntu KDE 683 MB
• OpenSUSE KDE Tumbleweed 658 MB
• MX Linux KDE 549 MB

A difference of only 230 MB between the top and bottom is essentially meaningless. The only people I see worrying about resource consumption are those using 5+ year old hardware. I don't know what the rest of the world does, but most people buy new hardware every 5 years or so.

Hardware compatibility (drivers) is the top priority. Followed by available softs that are properly supported for the distro. Optimizations and speed come later.

On the whole, Manjaro seems to be the best balance of them all.

Linux running on an EVO 980 and 3990X Threadripper is absurd. You pay $4000 for the system today, and in 10 years it will still be the fastest computer in your city.

 

[bayasdev]

I don't understand your command.
But, free in English works on Debian-based distributions.

free with the -h argument produces an output in GiB

Quoting man free

-h, --human
Show all output fields automatically scaled to shortest three
digit unit and display the units of print out. Following
units are used.

B = bytes
Ki = kibibyte
Mi = mebibyte
Gi = gibibyte
Ti = tebibyte
Pi = pebibyte

 

[SpiderWeb]

I could never get used to a Linux distro until Chrome OS answered the biggest issues he is addressing:
-GPU drivers!!! And plug & play
-Media support
-Easy and simple SMB support
-Auto update of the main components without accidentally breaking things
-Auto backup
-Excellent battery life
-Consistency

Google answered all of these questions in Chrome OS but at the price of being bundled with all the proprietary code that is required to achieve this feat. The issue is not technological but ideological. You can get all the convenience but then it's no longer FOSS and Chromebooks only have 6-9 years of updates.

 

[bayasdev]

GPU drivers!!! And plug & play

Ubuntu based distros are pretty much straightforward for installing propietary drivers and codecs,

 

[bribon77]

free with the -h argument produces an output in GiB

View attachment 247377

Quoting man free

ahora te entiendo. = now I understand you.

 

[shmu26]

use -h for human readable output

Thanks for the tip!

 

[AG3S]

i didn't know linux was worse on battery life. i just presumed that since is ran lighter, it used less juice. the wifi limit is interesting as well!!

I would completely disagree...

As alwasy it really depents which Linux Distro we are talking about.

I have a ASUS Notebook, Zenbook Corei7 (gen7).

With Windows (without any apps installed ..only office ... as I am not using the windows) I have 1 hours and half less battery life than my ElementaryOS. I also tried POP_OS and it is the same. With the UBUNTU the story was different though and it was almost the same as Windows.... slighlty better.

I have not really a good experience with SUSE LEAP. It was slightly worse than Windows.

So, the it is completely wrong to mention "Linux" is good or bad in this and that. Distros make a huge difference in everything.

I personally prefer elementayOS or POP_OS over other distros as a desktop machine as I have been able to install all apps which I need including MS Office and Photoshop (with Adobe cloud connection) with no problems.

 

[bayasdev]

With Windows my non gaming battery life it's 2 hours and 1:40 hours for Linux. Yesterday I tried the Intel only graphics mode on the Nvidia control panel, this actually power offs the dedicated GPU on the next reboot, I squashed more than 3 hours of battery and still had 40% left using VAAPI enabled Brave and VirtualBox (running MS Excel) CPU usage was like 26% and 5% with the VM turned off and the temperature was almost cold to touch.

This mode fixed my laptop's battery at the cost of having to enable the GPU and rebooting before playing a game.

EDIT: I forgot to say that I always undervolt my laptop's CPU by -120mV and iGPU by -75mV no matter of what OS I use.

 

[AG3S]

With Windows my non gaming battery life it's 2 hours and 1:40 hours for Linux. Yesterday I tried the Intel only graphics mode on the Nvidia control panel, this actually power offs the dedicated GPU on the next reboot, I squashed more than 3 hours of battery using VAAPI enabled Brave and VirtualBox (running MS Excel) CPU usage was like 26% and 5% with the VM turned off and the temperature was almost cold to touch.

This mode fixed my laptop's battery at the cost of having to enable the GPU and rebooting before playing a game.

Have you ever tried elementayOS or POP_OS?

And also the kind of apps which you use in your Linux plays a huge role.

I have 5-6 hours with Linux and 3-4 hours with Windows depending on the softwrae which I am using.

 

[shmu26]

On most distros, your discrete graphics will not be used unless you expressly set it to be used. By default, the integrated graphics of the CPU is used, resulting in great battery life and poor graphics performance.

 

[AG3S]

On most distros, your discrete graphics will not be used unless you expressly set it to be used. By default, the integrated graphics of the CPU is used, resulting in great battery life and poor graphics performance.

I agree... that is why I mentioned POP_OS. They have developed even an open source BIOS software for INTEL CPUs. This OS is maintained by famous System76... which is the Apple of Linux world!

They make really amazing linux PCs with reasonable (this part is not apple) prices.

check their website: system76.com

They are using NVIDIA on all their machines and the drivers are also developed by themselves. All open source!

 

[bayasdev]

Have you ever tried elementayOS or POP_OS?

Yes, but I'm a KDE fan and they're technically using the same Ubuntu core so I use Kubuntu

And also the kind of apps which you use in your Linux plays a huge role.

Indeed, the advantage of using Brave it's hardware video acceleration it greatly reduces CPU usage to less than 10% (7700hq) vs 50% with a software decoder.

On most distros, your discrete graphics will not be used unless you expressly set it to be used. By default, the integrated graphics of the CPU is used, resulting in great battery life and poor graphics performance.

I know but on Linux the dGPU on idle still draws power from the laptop

PD: I also have KDE's Baloo file indexer disabled to reduce idle CPU usage (nothing opened) to 0-1%