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
Hello from late 2013 MacBook Pro with NixOS
"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?"
Sorry dude, I missed this notification. NixOS is a bit of a challenge. The key to understanding it is to know a bit of functional programming, as Nix (the language) is of this kind.
Of course not everyone is going to learn how to setup a system using Nix because there are far easier methods and honestly they are right, but what Nix gives you is the ability to precisely every single small part of your operating system or more generically your package. (The OS is a big package for it).
I wouldn’t suggest NixOS to anyone that started recently to use Linux, but I must say that with a bit of practice, even without being a pro in the Nix language, you can do very interesting things. The con of this is that NixOS shields you from learning the basics of Linux, as it configures everything for you and you will rarely touch configuration files etc.
My suggestion is to definitely have some practice with Linux at first and then make the switch. If you need help pm me
"I’m really intrigued by NixOS. The closest I’ve come is Fedora Silverblue and messing with rpm-ostree, along with a bit of Void in a VM. Even though I’m relatively new—starting with Lubuntu and Mint before moving to Fedora—I tend to pick up patterns quickly once I start breaking things. Gentoo is the end goal, but for now, I’m enjoying the learning curve."
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.
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.