Debian will not run on Pentium anymore. It is not performance, it is compiler options. You need a i686 (Pentium Pro). This means none of the Debian derivatives will either.
Adelie, Arch32, and T2 all still run on Pentium though I believe.
[edit: sorry, I saw Pentium 75 from the comment above - Celeron M should be fine]
You would be surprised. If you stay text only and use a 32 bit distro, it would run up to date versions of most CLI programs.
Adelie and Arch32 still support Pentium.
Booting to a GUI, there are still a few options. I think Velox would run on that. I bet Xorg with FVWM would too. You are not going to have much left for apps though. However, you could run a couple of terminals.
Adelie Linux (totally modern Linux distro) lists 64 MB as the minimum server memory requirement.
Do you use any of the other XFCE stuff with Niri? Or just the terminal?
MPV is a much lighter video player. Try that.
I was trying to think of the oldest hardware I have run modern Linux on (probably an old Pentium II) when I remembered that I used to run SLS on a 486 (33 MHz, 4 MB of RAM).
Punch cards. The “true” PC era.
“Stone” tablets? Luxury. Ours were dried mammoth dung.
Are you running Trinity or KDE?
Not sure why I get so much less unless it is that. Or are you saying you run Trinity 64 bit?
I agree that 32 bit is not often going to be 50% less in practice. Sometimes I think we should be running 64 bit kernels with 32 bit userland.
I found my people.
I have Linux on a 2009 and 2012 MacBook Pro and 2013 and 2017 MacBook Airs.
The 2009 is getting a bit sluggish but for regular stuff, they all work great. We even played a Steam game on the 2012 earlier today (not AAA obviously).
All Chimera Linux.
It is because it is 32 bit. You can run a 32 bit distro on your machine too if you really want.
You can get a full Trinity desktop on Q4OS in 130 MB of RAM (32 bit edition).
.NET runs fast on Linux
Well, Niri is a dynamic and scrolling tiling compositor. So it offers that.
Well, and Niri supports Wayland.
I use Plasma 6 on Wayland on devices as old as 2009 and as new as 2020. Apple laptops to Intel desktops with GPUs from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.
Wayland is better than Xorg on every machine I run.
I can absolutely deny that Wayland has stability issues. Plasma 6 under Wayland is the most stable desktop I have used.
In any Wayland discussion, I think people using Debian or older NVIDIA drivers (pre-555 for sure) need to identify themselves. They seem to be the ones most convinced that Wayland does not work yet (because they are still experiencing what it was like years ago).
As for “support”, that is desktop environment dependent as it mostly depends on protocol and XDG desktop portal maturity. KDE has the most complete support (not a bias-just a fact), then GNOME, then Hyprland and the Wlroots based environments, with MATE and Cinnamon not quite there yet, and XFCE totally trailing.
The original code remains available under the original.
Any proprietary code would have to be code that was added on top of that.
You always have the ability to keep using the Own Source code. That is a freedom you have.
If you decide that proprietary version is “better” and choose to use that, well that is a freedom you have. But now you have accepted a proprietary license. Your choice.
So, you had to choose between the code that was still Open Source and the code that was now proprietary.
If you stick with the Open Source, what you describe does not happen.
If you moved to the proprietary, well, there you are. You clearly decided that the new features were more important than it being Open Source.
Remember, it is only the new features. All the old code remains as open as it ever was.
What could be the possible incentive to:
move core utils to a closed license if you are a company
for a Linux distro to choose that version over the already existing Open Source version
Remember companies cannot take Open Source code bases closed. They can fork an Open Source project and close their fork. But all that means is that their “future” changes are not Open Source
The original Open Source code still exists and we can all keep using it.
For a real world example of companies not closing their userland, Apple still releases the source to their userland even though the BSD license does not require it.
For a real world example of the community continuing on with the Open Source code and ignoring the closed fork, look at Valkey and Reddis.
GNU is completely dominated by Red Hat. The alternatives, like uutils, are far LESS corporate.
Fear and feelings over facts.
Any information generated or collected by government should only be stored in open file formats. That is the biggest issue right there.
Any software that citizens are required to use MUST be Open Source is the next biggest one.
Third is that any software created with public funds must be Open Source.
Finally, Open Source should be the preference in all government procurement. Exceptions where viable Open Source options do not exist should be allowed.
All government data needs to be stored in-country if possible and at least on continent if not. Suppliers bound in their home country by laws which could threaten the data sovereignty of their customers should be excluded from government contracts (so all US based companies).
You also use the portal helper from another DE though.
For example, the Niri Wayland compositor, written in Rust with Smithay, uses xdg-desktop-portal-gnome (which I imagine is written in C).
That is 64 bit. Literally any modern distro should run on it.