Arch w/ KDE gamer here. I have generally had a good experience with it. I think everything you said is generally accurate. In terms of customization, lack of bloat, and a good wiki, Arch is generally considered to be all of those things. A rolling distro like Arch I believe will also be getting the latest proton updates, which may help with sooner game compatibility/optimization updates on more recent releases.

I say go for it.

Yes, but my larger point is that you are doing the same thing, but in the negative. You are taking your specific problems and then putting forward the conclusion that they are the reasons why “regular” Linux users should not use Linux, as though these were universal problems. I am saying that I do not have those issues and that they are far from universal.

Yes, the modular nature of Linux is both a blessing and a curse. There is legitimate debate to be had on that. But that is not how your post frames the issue.

As stated above, not all of these things are even Linux problems. I would say that if iOS refuses to play nice with Linux but every other ecosystem works fine, the blame lies with Apple, not with Linux. It is not Linux’s job to fix the interoperability problems of other ecosystems. The GNOME problems are related to a specific subset of Linux users, and even before today I would have said that I would not recommend GNOME to new users because of how nonstandard it can be.

I am looking through these issues and I cannot say that I can relate on almost any of these. Sorry to hear you have been having so many issues!

I do plenty of gaming and cannot think of a time where I have had GPU driver issues (despite the fact that I have Nvidia graphics on 3 out of 4 of my systems, which is supposedly more problematic).

My bluetooth works fine, and it has been literally years since an update broke something, bluetooth or otherwise (which I cannot say the same for Windows on my work computer).

I use KDE connect, SFTP, and SMB servers and I have never had any issues transferring files between Windows, Android, and Linux. What do you mean about that? (seeing other replies, it sounds like you are using iOS. That sounds like that may be an Apple problem and not a Linux problem, because Apple tend to be terrible about playing nice with other ecosystems)

The scaling is the one point I can sort of relate on. I think there is still some work to be done regarding DPI and scaling on Linux, but it’s not enough of an issue to make me want to switch operating systems.

As for GNOME issues and window decorations, that sounds like a GNOME problem. GNOME does things very differently to all of the other DEs and forces programs to manually define their own window decorations rather than allowing standard default icons like other DEs, so my understanding is that GNOME in particular tends to be a source of constant headaches for Linux developers.

And I’m not some sysadmin or CS major. If I have a problem, I do a web search. If I can’t find it there, I make a forum thread. I don’t post a rant saying that Linux is a bad OS, lol.

I am only a few pages in, but speaking as a Linux user in the 2020s, I am skeptical of the claim that Linux in 1999 would “never, ever break down.”

I am not sure, then. If you are on a laptop, you might try one or the other of those utilities regardless simply because they can improve battery life, but that is a separate issue.

Interesting. Do you use Powertop or TLP, by any chance? Some power utilities will turn on USB power saving if there is no activity on a USB port for a while, which can cause issues with USB mice. Generally I turn off that specific setting, or I believe there might be some way to whitelist certain USB devices to not have this sleep behavior.

Are there mice which are not supported in Linux? Everything I have used from a junky unbranded wireless mouse to a high end Logitech gaming mouse have all been plug and play for me. Even the RGB settings can be configured in openRGB.

Comfort should always be an important factor in a mouse for any OS, I would think. In terms of build quality, I have had the rubber on some mice start to degrade over time, but that is about it. Even the cheapest mice that are hard plastic can last for decades with no problem.

I would say that switchable DPI would be a must-have feature for me with modern displays. As someone with a 4k monitor, some junky office mice do not have enough sensitivity for me on high resolution monitors even with the setting cranked to max in the settings menu.

For wireless mice, I prefer AA battery mice over USB rechargeable mice, but that is a matter of personal preference. If my mouse battery dies in a AA mouse, I can swap the rechargeable NiMH battery in a minute and continue using it. However, if a USB rechargeable mouse is dead, I either have to use it on a tether for a while or remember to constantly keep recharging it. Also, having an integrated li-ion battery will give any mouse a limited lifespan unless you are willing to open up and solder in a new battery when it wears out, whereas I have some AA-powered mice which are going strong probably a decade later, so long I have had to open them up and re-solder them with new microswitches instead of new batteries.

I think you would need to provide more detail to know what you have. Does it have a model number on it anywhere?

No problem! Mint XFCE sounds perfect to me.

That covers a pretty wide range of hardware, but that era would be around 2009-2015, give or take, so you would be looking at around Intel 1st gen to 6th gen most likely (Let’s be honest, there is nearly zero chance institutions would be using anything but Intel in that era). Pentium-branded CPUs from that time range, unfortunately, likely means low-end dual core CPUs with no hyperthreading, so 2C/2T, but I have run Linux on Core2-era machines without issue, so hopefully the CPU specs will be okay.

2-8GB of DDR3 RAM is most likely for that era, and as others point out, will be your biggest issue for running browsers. If the RAM is anything like the CPUs, I am assuming you will be looking at the lower end with 2-4GB depending on how old the oldest machines you have are, so I second the recommendation of maybe consolidating the RAM into fewer machines, or if you can get any kind of budget at all, DDR3 sticks on ebay are going to be dirt cheap. A quick look and I see bulk listings of 20x4GB sticks for $26.

In terms of DE, I second anything with XFCE, but if you could bump them up to around 8GB RAM, then I think any DE would be feasible.

Hard drives shouldn’t be an issue I think, since desktop hard drives in the 320GB-1TB range would have been standard by then. Also, you are most likely outside of the “capacitor plague” era, so I would not expect motherboard issues, but you might open them up and dust them out so the fans aren’t struggling. Re-pasting the CPUs would also probably not be a bad idea, so maybe consider adding a couple $5 tubes of thermal paste to a possible budget. Polysynthetic thermal compounds which do not dry out easily would be preferable, and something like Arctic Silver 5 would also be an era-appropriate choice, lol.

I am not sure that I can really call what I did distrohopping, but

Mint w/ Cinnamon (several years ago on an old junker laptop and never ended up using it as a daily driver) -> Manjaro w/ KDE Plasma (daily driver for ~1 year) -> Arch w/ KDE Plasma (~2 years and counting).

I have also used Debian with no DE on a file server I made out of an old thin client PC and I have used Rasbian on a raspberry pi.

Arch gamer here. I can confirm that it works well.

What is your use case? For me, something like a fileserver which I am mainly SSH-ing into anyway, I may not install a DE at all, but if this is going to be a general-use desktop, I see no reason not to install the DE right from the beginning, and selecting a DE will be part of the install process of most Linux distros, or some distros have different install disk images that you can download with any given DE which it supports.

If you are very concerned about keeping your system lean and want full control of what gets installed, you might want to look up guides for installing Arch Linux. The initial setup process is more involved than other distros, but once you have it installed, I think its reputation for being difficult is overblown.

Yep, I dual boot on my laptop so that I can run certain programs for my schoolwork as well. I use Refind as my boot manager so that I can easily select one or the other on startup.

I have done some basic testing, and the speed of the USB stick you use does make a noticeable difference on the boot time of whatever you install on it.

If I recall correctly, A low speed USB 2.0 stick took around 30-60 seconds to load (either time to login screen or time to reach a blinking cursor for something like an arch install disk). If this is something for occasional use, even this works perfectly fine.

Slightly faster USB 3 sticks in the 100MB/s range can be had for only around $5-15 USD and work significantly better, maybe 7-15 seconds. These usually have assymetric read/write speeds, such as 100MB/s read and 20MB/s write, but for a boot disk the read speed is the primary factor.

Some high end flash drives can reach 500-1000MB/s and would load in only a few seconds. A high speed 256GB stick might cost $25-50, and a 1TB stick maybe $75-150.

An NVMe enclosure might cost $20-30 for a decent quality 1GB/s USB 3 enclosure, or $80-100 for a thunderbolt enclosure in the 3GB/s range so long as your hardware supports it, plus another $50-100 for a 1TB NVMe drive itself. This would of course be the fastest, but it is also bulkier than a simple flash drive, and I think you are at the point of diminishing returns in terms of performance to cost.

I would say up to you on what you are willing to spend, how often you realistically intend to use it, and how much you care about the extra couple seconds. For me, I don’t use boot disks all that often, so an ordinary 100MB/s USB 3 stick is fine for my needs even if I have faster options available.