I know it. I'm literally typing this on a Raspberry Pi. I used to run Arch Linux on it, but Arch Linux on ARM has severe issues. It'll literally go months with no package updates.

One day I'll get brave and switch it to Gentoo. Just need to put together a build server first.

I want to quit my day job so I can focus on ARM power mode support in Linux

ARM is kinda lacking the hardware to motivate developers, I think. Raspberry Pi generally has good support for server stuff, but I don't think you could really justify desktop use before maybe 2019 (release of rpi 4 with much faster CPU and more RAM), and Android devices are generally really locked down.

Same... All the flash drive stuff and program incompatibility had scared me for too long... But now I'm not afraid to, like, even go to estate sales and try to find a dirt-cheap, old machine to slap Linux on and run it down into the ground until the next one lol. I can live without Cyberpunk 2077.

I kept my Win 7 lappy, also a Lenovo, going until the backlight started dying.

You sound like you're talking about application run performance. That shouldn't be noticeably different. Startup and application load time tend to be where the gains are.

Ya, I recently got into computer building and essentially came to that conclusion.

Every config is a low end config on an infinite time scale, haha.

Gamers think everything without a dedicated GPU is low end. I play games on Intel HD from 2018. Most work tolerably. I'm not switching until my laptop falls apart or it becomes fully obsolete (to slow to do my productivity tasks).

It has a hyperthreaded quad-core. While it has less than half of the benchmark scores of modern PCs, it's still better than any used laptops you could get under 300€ (looking at you EU used hardware taxes (also, the taxes conveniently avoid the US ... How did that happen)).

Yup, i have a mid 2012 mbp with linux mint xfce and it runs great. My biggest complaint is the hardware support. Had to add a usb wifi dongle because broadcom chip was constantly dropping and the sleep wake takes forever and sometimes it wont sleep. But otherwise runs like a champ. I do kinda wish it would die so i could get a laptop without the sleep/wake issues.

Even without the SSD the things only really slow down when you're booting or loading up an application for the first time. Linux's RAM caching is really nice.