I’m sitting here in 2026 runnin Fedora 43 on a laptop from 2016, and honestly? It’s smoother than it has any right to be. My entire workflow lives in Brave and Obsidian, and this "old" i5 handles it like a champ. There is something deeply satisfying about taking a "boring" enterprise machine, slapping GNOME on it, and watching it run circles around modern hardware,It’s actually fuckin depressing that a 10-year-old laptop has better utility than 99% of the "pro" hardware being sold today.have a native Ethernet port and a full SD slot. Imagine that shit No $60 Amazon adapters dangling off the side like life support just to get a stable connection 🙄that's what I call good hardware built to last.#r/Linuxmasterrace
"I’ve been eyeing NixOS, but I’ll admit I'm struggling. The way the package manager works is a bit of a headache. How has your experience been with it so far?"
I would skip it if that is an issue. I think Bazzite with a few Gnome extensions (Dash to Panel, Arc Menu, and GTK 4 Desktop Icons NG) is the best for beginners. It just works.
Moving to NixOS was quite a challenge for me. It felt like a Iot of different concepts that it took a while to understand.
I'm glad I pushed through because I take like it now. Now that I have my config everything is easy and straightforward.