MadModder

Yeah I'll probably test EasyOs at some point. But as the media is in .img format, running it in Virtualbox or Qemu isn't that straightforward.

Some gripes about Mate:

First hiccup - In both Debian and Mint versions, there's an old Gnome 2 bug:

When app shortcuts are placed to panel, their order changes after reboot, even if they are locked. Same can happen with system tray elements (volume indicator, network and clock/date). One possible solution is to place the app icons to the left end of the panel. After a few reboots, the icons are where I put them.

Another is that I've not been able to completely disable power management features. The screen still goes off after 10 minutes, if there's no activity.
Only setting screensaver timing to max (2 hours) seems to postpone that.

General things about Linux:

Distros that I've tested so far, if there's on one desktop environment (DE) (in this case Xfce) an app such as file manager (PcmanFm which requires something like catfish to be installed to search files), that one would like to replace with other like Caja, it's next to impossible to set that preferred file manager as a default. That's one of the reasons why I hopped to Mate.

And when considering installing other 'system' apps, they may well drag whole DE with them, so it's worth looking at what kind of dependencies they may have, if one attempts to make a light weight installation for an old hardware.

Some pros and cons of what I've discovered, when using minimal Debian Mate install:

+ light on resources
+ it's possible to choose a simple, or 'retro' style interface, instead of overly polished or 'modern' ones
+ as it's based on a server distro, out of the box there are much less apps that one might never use anyway
+ some Mate versions have task (or whatever) bar on both top and bottom sides - what a waste of space, but it's easy to just delete one of them. The way I've done it is to remove bottom one, and move top one which has systray items to bottom.  More details perhaps later.   

- Mate may not be as frequently maintained as more popular DE's
- without having fancy software center, installing certain apps like Wine requires extra, distro specific steps. Also, when trying to install apps from .deb packages, there will likely be errors - I haven't looked yet what are the prerequisites to avoid such errors
- certainly not very newbie friendly - one has to go 'under the hood', and get used to searching information about whatever tasks one wants to perform

Mint Mate, on the other hand, has more GUI tools already in it, making it somewhat easier option to get familiar with Mate. 

I feel your pain....

Andrew:

If you haven't already discovered it, when you're putting an insert into a blind hole you need to make the hole a couple mm deeper than the insert.  The hot insert will push molten plastic ahead of it as it is inserted and if you don't leave a place for that to go, it WILL fill the insert's threads - DAMHIK. 

If you're setting the inserts by hand, a trick I picked up from Clough42 is to take the heat away while the insert is still a little proud of the surface.  Then quickly flip the part over and press it down on a flat surface.  The insert will retain heat for a while and pressing it on a flat surface does 2 things, it sets the insert flush with the surface and it also wicks some of the heat out of the insert. 

When I was installing the inserts for the track drive motor plates into the frame for my Terramac RT7R I discovered that the idiot who put the 6 heat-set inserts between the frame rails never considered how it would be possible to fit over 150mm of soldering iron into an 80mm gap.  What I finally did was to set the insert into the hole, I used the soldering iron to get the insert hot - but not try to seat it in the hole, then I used a piece of flat bar to seat the insert flush with the surface.  The flat bar I used was a 6" piece of 1//4" x 3/4" HRS, I set the 6 inserts in less than 5 minutes and it barely got warm.

Don

Presently using EasyOS, Barry Kauler's latest, based on Devuan Excalibur. Very happy with it.

If you want to try it, Barry has a simple installer called EasyDD which will write an image file of EasyOS to a USB thumbdrive. That will be a fully operational live build, not requiring installation to HD. Runs fine that way.

Of course a quality thumbdrive will start up noticeably faster and better than a bargain basement one. Actually, during the initial write installation it will tell you just how fast your usb drive is, comparatively.

EasyOS has containers so you can run stuff in sandboxes if you want. And it encrypts your data files and any customizations or applications you add. It does come with a large number of apps already, but is only about 1 gig in size. It runs in RAM so is very fast. It has an easy upgrade button, and also takes snapshots of your system, if desired so you can return to an earlier state.

Frankly, the best Linux OS I've tried re. small size and efficiency for a DIY type. I like it anyway.

Linux and NVIDIA have a strange relationship. I'm not sure why but there always seems to be issues with NVIDIA chip-sets and Linux installs .  The popular distros like Ubuntu seem to handle it a bit better than the others

I'm currently using kubuntu with an  AMD saffire GPU that at least works with most things . My previous NVIDIA card have some strange behavior with Wayland .

I have win11 on another drive and hate having to use it . Microsoft have really F'ed it up and I cant see it recovering - kids these days don't seem to be able to write solid working software and concentrate on wizz-bang  animation rather than operability .  And don't get me started about phones.......