I was pleasantly surprised today to find that Linux Mint and the updated Firefox it came with happily run YouTube on an old, slow PC that was incapable of doing this with Windows XP. It could not support 7, only being able to have 2 GIG of RAM installed. It's also a single core 2 GHz processor. However, it does have a Radeon 1 GIG video card, which Linux was happy to grab onto, and Windows with its old browsers was afraid to use. I still haven't found the resource monitor in Linux yet, if there is one, but it sounded and felt like (not too hot) it wasn't laboring at all.

Yep, Linux provides better performance than Windows, on the same hardware. This often means that computers that are no longer adequate for the latest version of Windows run fine with Linux. You can even get light weight distos for really anemic hardware.

I'm running archlinux on a Nintendo switch. It's running on the 1TB microsd card I bought

Paolo wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 6:12 pm I still haven't found the resource monitor in Linux yet, if there is one, but it sounded and felt like (not too hot) it wasn't laboring at all.

From command line - either top or htop (top is usually preinstalled), there are others. There are graphical ones too, but do not remember where it is in Mint.

Again - from the command line - free shows memory stats.

iotop (you may need to install it) shows disk access stats, by process (must be run as root).

I found it today by scrolling down the programs list, which is identical to the start button's menu in Windows.

Today's adventure involved getting it to see the Windows machines on the network, and vice versa. I watched a video that told me install Samba. I already had it, it said. So I followed some prompts and after a few "sudo" commands to configure things, there it was. I was surprised to see that Windows 7 (after 4 hours of hell-scape updating) saw Linux right off.

I didn't expect Linux to just up and offer that it had already found the WiFi printer, though, which it did. I may go driving around looking for unsecured printers now for entertainment!

I still don't understand the turmoil over 7 being retired, and then a pile of updates coming out for it on the last day, though.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 7:43 pm I found it today by scrolling down the programs list, which is identical to the start button's menu in Windows.

I still don't understand the turmoil over 7 being retired, and then a pile of updates coming out for it on the last day, though.

What's happening is free security updates will end.

These are useful. Most of the "Ubuntu" ones work on Mint also:

https://www.lifewire.com/complete-list- ... nt-4064592

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-shortcuts/

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/45

https://shortcutworld.com/Linux-Mint/li ... _Shortcuts

I have Linux Mint 19 on one computer, Ubuntu 18.04 on the other, both as a secondary OS, ie: boot menu allows me to choose either Windows or Linux during startup. So far I like both, Mint a little better because it "feels" more like Windows. Linux tends to run faster on the same computer than Windows 10, and no updates automatically downloading at the wrong time, slowing down the machine and then bugging you to reboot.

However, I don't use Linux day-to-day. I do plan to "transition" everything (or as much as possible) to Linux eventually. But for now I rely to much on Windows for work stuff. Also I often need to get a lot of things done quickly and don't have the time to re-learn how to do it in Linux. I just need to get the task(s) done, right now!

I ran into a lot of problems yesterday installing the Opera browser for Mint, even with a genuine download of the proper file from Opera's site. It wasn't in any of the lists in Linux for software, and the file refused to install. Finally had to resort to a help forum, where a list of manually typed commands got it right in.