@nevj
You are my friend, but you fail to miss the point “my Nvidia GT430” just shows the weakness of Linux, and why should I settle for an OS that can only partially perform what I need!!!
You dont have to, of course.
The one big thing that Linux has enabled you to do is building itself from scratch ( LFS) . Win does not offer that, but it does do some other things well, I agree.
We are all lucky to have a choice.
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Ah, but I now know I can take Windows and VirtualBox and build LFS!!!
And our choice is not as broad as it used to be, especially with Windows!!!
Look around. Have you tried one of the BSD’s?
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Not wanting to offend you, I am surprised by your comments Daniel as a pro member of this site and given your helpful contributions in the past that you prefer to use windows 11 now.
There are so many computer users who have been abandonded by microsoft over the years forced to scrap computers that just will not run the latest version of the operating system they offer.
Ok they need to sell products I understand and many users want bigger faster newer toys either for work or play.
Linux still offers 32 bit versions, ok not many now. Will still run on 10 or 15 year old computers. As I have written before for a lot of users internet and mail is about the only use they have. Without looking at the cost to buy new every 5 years. Apple is just as guilty with this.
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I am sorry that you and some “others” feel this way, but being a, Pro Member of It’s Foss, has nothing to do with the hardware I wish to run on this PC. You have no idea as to what it takes to get W11 on this hardware and if Linux Mint, is working for you and your clients, then fine, but the only Linux, that I have had any luck in running on this PC is Gentoo and EndeavorOS, and I do not like Systemd.
AS for W11, then what would suggest, not much choice. Sure, I could have opted for a AMD GPU, but why should I opt for hardware I do not really care for, I run Nvidia, and if W11 is giving my PC, what it needs, then so be it!!!
At least, now, I can use VirtualBox and run most any Linux I wish, so before the bashing starts, remember, I build PC’s, I am not one whom just turns one on.
Thanks for the comment and have a good day!!!
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I have wasted hours installing windows on different computers including 11 as new and as upgrades, hence now I choose not to do it. If a client asks I send them to a local computer shop and they get the business and take the money.
Always personal choice. In fact this morning the local church asked me to upgrade there collection of computers to 11 which I priced out and could do them all for less than the cost of one new machine. But they have chosen to buy new to replace them all at great cost. But they are buying direct from the maker. Similar in my own village council.
Prefer to go swimming than do windows … my choice.
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I love this sentence! 
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I’m not partisan to any solution…
I use MacoS because it’s UNIX… and I have the shell…
I use Linux because it’s UNIX-like… and I have the shell…
I’d jump over to Windows in a heartbeat if the shell was bash or ksh or even tcsh (but not bourne or csh or “sh”)… Don’t mention WSL - it’s a nasty afterthought…
I admit - PowerShell is fairly powerful… but it’s still not a proper “shell”…
I can remember reading articles in the mid 1990’s how Microsoft was striving for POSIX compliance way back when it was still Windows NT 3.1 - they never delivered on that promise properly… IMHO…
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Then go swimming!!!
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Thanks done that this morning as every morning. Feel much better for it
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We’re all here because we all have a place reserved in our heart for FLOSS.
You could run Windows and still also run FLOSS software. Libreoffice, Firefox, Paint.net, etc. All run fine on Windows and are FLOSS.
It would be strange to see people here who want to promote proprietary software (if that’s the case, I can’t help but wonder what such a person is doing here).
Most of us happily run a Linux distribution for an OS, others run Windows, yet other run MacOS. It’s all ok. FLOSS is available on all platforms.
That being said, what baffles me is that normal users (those who do nothing more than browse, email, and write the occasional letter) would dump perfectly good computers in order to fork over hunderds of euros for a new computer, while the old computer’s life could be extended with an install of some Linux distribution. Even after being told and shown Linux is a very viable option, they still go for throwing away the old computer and buying a new one.
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It is part of the value system which our modern society encourages. New is better… do not ever attempt to repair anything… throw it away and replace with a nice shiny new one.
I did not grow up in such a world. Post-war Australia was frugal and full of work opportunities. It changed in my lifetime. Modern Australia is wasteful and lacking in basic skills. What promoted this change?
I think an oversupply of cheap easy solutions, especially consumer goods.
In industry it is different. Cheap mass solutions do not exist . People still repair things… eg our Farm tractor has a fuel injector pump problem. Replacing the tractor is very expensive… so we are repairing a 60 year old fuel pump… it has taken 4 months and cost $3000. Compare that to $60000 for an equivalent new tractor.
If computers were priced like that, people would repair them.
I am not convinced that our modern wasteful society is a good thing, but I have to live with it. Economy of scale is what keeps it running, but it is also responsible for our modern, boring, every brand is the same, choice of goods.
Perhaps one day developers will run out of ideas so that ‘new’ becomes the ‘same’ rather than ‘better’. That would slow down the rate of turnover and undermine economy of scale. Then computers would be like my tractor.
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With the demise of Windows 10 happening in the next few months, we may have an influx of folks looking to avoid buying a new computer. We should be ready and willing to guide them to a Linux conversion. We can all be smiling and pleasant about it, since that’s the best way to accomplish the task. Like Neville, I was raised to fix rather than discard.
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Yes. How do we prepare?
If it depends on our ‘raising’ it will take 2 generations ( about 50 years) to get back to fixing.
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There is always ReactOS. You can build that from scratch. Plus, there’s FreeDOS. Windows originally started out running on top of DOS. You can also build applications from source on Windows and many of the programs that build and work on a Linux system will do so on Windows too. It’s not difficult to port certain types of applications from Linux to Windows either. I just built X Windows natively from source on Windows because I need it for X forwarding at work.
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It’s older, but there’s winbash. msys2 uses Cygwin’s bash program. I thought there was a port of tcsh to Windows, but it may be older by now. I knew one developer who was trying to keep zsh going on Windows but that was a while ago and he probably gave up. Busybox-w32 offers an ash shell. I’m hoping to switch to that from the msys bash shell. I added a patch to handle == for the test command though (similar to bash). There are also older projects like gnuwin32 and GOW that have native core utilities. GOW also uses winbash. A version of bash has even been ported to FreeDOS.
I prefer Win32 native programs to Cygwin, Midipix or WSL whenever possible. I can do much of the same things on any operating system I use. I’m not a big fan of system lock in and like to work with programs that can be ported to a variety of operating systems.
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Several smaller lightweight Linux distributions don’t have the manpower to support 32 bit and even the large distros will be phasing it out soon. Many projects get annoyed when I even bring up the possibility of 32 bit. Linux has better driver support, but from personal experience, if I want something that runs well on an older low resource system, my choice would be BSD. It performed much better on legacy hardware than Linux. Also, every time either system (Linux or BSD) update their kernels, there are more older computers that may no longer be able to meet the specs to run them anymore especially if you can’t just add more RAM. FreeDOS works great on older systems. It’s very fast and not very resource intensive. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many FreeDOS users who are interested in FLOSS beyond the operating system itself. Most run proprietary programs on their FreeDOS OS and could care less about getting more FLOSS applications to ported to DOS. I thought XFDOS was an excellent project that showed the potential of DOS with Open Source software. I ported and compiled a few FLOSS programs for that distro. It’s a shame it couldn’t find a niche with FreeDOS users.
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Compilers and build tools for Windows tend to be expensive.
That was one of the things that pushed me to Unix… free and available build tools were important in the days when you had to write most software for yourself.
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