alt Hacker NewsI’m currently coding a Flutter app on a 15-year-old Dell desktop, running Linux. The experience is great. I’m running latest versions of VS Code, Flutter, you name it. It’s nice and snappy and a joy to use. I’ve upgraded RAM, SSDs, GPU over the years to keep it somewhat up to date. Eventually I’m going to have to cave in and buy a Mac so that I can publish my app for iOS. I’ve been loathe to do it though and I’ve been putting it off. This article is a great explanation of why I’ve been so loathe. It articulates reasons that were semi-subconscious for me.
> The experience is great.
Aside from it being a principled thing, Linux does work a lot better on older machines. Newer hardware tends to have shit driver support for a few years.
Like my 10 year old Asus laptop which is supposed to have horrid Linux compatibility runs multiple versions of Ubuntu with KDE perfectly, with only bluetooth crapping out occasionally.
A new Lenovo laptop that we just got at work that's supposed to be tested with linux? Completely broken, can't adjust the display brightness, can't read the battery level, touchpad doesn't work, and more. I'm sure it'll be sorted out by Ubuntu 26 or whatever, but damn is it a crap experience. Using linux on a machine that's less than 5 years old is already too bleeding edge for productivity.