Back on my "fast" computer again!

[Jason]

I'm hoping this isn't just temporary but I now have my i5 quad-core 3.2 GHz machine (with 12 GB of RAM) working again!

It's been in a coma for a almost 2 years, a few months past the start of the pandemic. I needed a replacement power supply and I hope that's all. Unfortunately, I do not remember my password from 2 years ago so I just installed a new Linux distro - Ubuntu. I wanted to test how well it performs. And I have to tell you, it's like pages and applications pop up faster than I can blink.

I came from an i3 (dual-core hyperlinked) 1.4 GHz laptop with 4 GB of RAM so it's like moving up from a Chevrolet Cavalier (the only model I can think of) to a Lamborghini. Yahoo!

[fox]

Well nice to see you're moving to the good side with Ubuntu, Jason. As you know, it has been my main distro for all but two years since I switched over from the Mac OS to Linux. I still get occasional glitches and freezes with it (on Mac computers) but overall I'm happy with it and have no inclination to switch.

That laptop I sold you years ago has served you well, but I'm not surprised that it has slowed down over the years. You certainly got your money's worth out of it, and I assume you are still planning on using it occasionally.

What model of i5 is your desktop? I assume you have an internal SSD; otherwise it would still feel slow.

[Jason]

That laptop hasn't slowed down. Society has just moved on. And I'm glad I had it. I was able to get a lot of use out of it. And there will be times I need to be mobile so it'll still see use.

I the computer I'm using now is 5th generation but I'll have to check. But I think that matters less than the overall number of cores and clock speed. And yes, thankfully, it has an SSD. It came with a tiny one - 64 GB but I upgraded it to 500 GB years ago.

I still have 4 x 2 TB SATA drivers that I was using in a RAID 10 configuration. I'm going to try hooking them up again just to see what's on them. They were just used for data. I don't think the much slower SATA speed matters when you're not running applications on it. And those are run on the SDD.

Ubuntu looked really good but there were a couple of issues with it. I loaded it mainly just to make sure the computer was working okay because I needed Windows 10 pre-installed on it so it was wiped pretty fast. Sorry, Fox! I still think Ubuntu looks great and it worked fine except for the glitches I came across. I just wasn't all that motivated to fix them.

And, I wanted to check out Plasma again because I've been stuck on Xfce for 2 years. I remembered that MX Linux has a Plasma edition. So now the computer has that and Windows 10 (for games and educational purposes).

I haven't given up on Ubuntu but decided I just wanted, for now, to run with what I knew so there'd be less fuss.

[fox]

I have issues with Ubuntu, too, but I have issues with any distro, just because I'm using Mac hardware. With rare exceptions, the issues are driver-related and specific to a given Mac model and year. The internal wifi, speakers and microphone on my 2019 iMac don't work with any distro, and I have tried quite a few. Those things work fine on my 2011 iMac, but until recently, the internal wifi of that Mac wasn't working kept cutting out when I upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04 because of a problem with the 5.15 kernel. (Now fixed.) I have fixes for all of these things, but some people would probably wonder why I bother when I have a perfectly good option with the Mac OS. Stubborn I guess. 

[Jason]

I was looking at Pop OS recently and was considering giving it a try. It's supposed to be a bit better than Ubuntu. And I noticed that they have the option to use a hybrid graphics setup which I believe you have with one of your Macs. Apparently, they'd added more driver support to it for other things, too.

Nothing wrong with being stubborn! Will you continue using Macs when they've moved to the ARM processors?

[fox]

....
Nothing wrong with being stubborn! Will you continue using Macs when they've moved to the ARM processors?

I purposely bought a 2019 iMac because it was the last Intel model. I have nothing against ARM processors. I like them but at the moment, there is no Linux distro that fully works on them. There is one that is getting close: Asahi Linux, which is currently in alpha.

[Jason]

It's surprising that there isn't a Linux version that runs on them since most phones, at least Android phones do. Android doesn't use all the extra GNU libraries but it does use a customized Linux kernel. I think some Chromebooks also use an ARM processor and the Chrome OS is also based on Linux. But I guess it's really a question of driver support for the particular ARM processor.

[Jason]

This is interesting:

https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-apple-m1/

But according to this article, the project is dead:

https://linuxhint.com/run-linux-m1-based-mac/

The article mentions some workarounds like running it on the Mac in a virtual machine but that feels like cheating.