This is why I use Debian 12 with minimal backports on my main college laptop. (I just have backports kernel and firmware for the Wi-Fi card as well as backports smartctl due to a bugfix).

It isn’t an OS. It’s a set of DLLs to allow Unix applications to be compiled and run on Windows.

In addition to the good suggestions for others in this thread (like setting it up as a portable gaming device or a server of sorts), it could also be set up as a low-distraction productivity machine. I don’t know how well something like LibreOffice would run on it, but I imagine you could probably use a simpler word processor or even a plain text editor.

Worst comes to worst, I wonder what hardware support for this thing is in something like ReactOS or FreeDOS.

Like, why the heck is Oracle still on this Earth? The only thing I can think of is MySQL, to which my response is, “Just use MariaDB.”

To be fair to Phoronix, I hardly think they’re the worst offender in Linux space; I find their Linux coverage to be the least terrible online. They cover new kernel and software developments pretty well.

Other Linux-focused sites seem to mostly consist of clickbait “Ditch Windows 11 headlines”, fleeting Linux apps, explaining something that there are already vast amounts of quality articles for, and/or thinly-veiled advertisements.

That is not to say Phoronix is perfect; I don’t necessarily enjoy having to run my ad blocker there. However, it’s not like it’s different on other sites. Comparatively, I find Phoronix to be a decent quality Linux outlet.

To be fair, it would be weird for Google NOT to support Linux, as I believe they use Debian Testing internally.

Personally, I find Debian pretty good these days. I used to default to Testing, but I’ve gravitated towards stable.

Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and Steam, almost any distro works.

Thunderbird’s not bad, but I usually use web stuff.

I have an existing iCloud e-mail that I haven’t had the time to switch off of. I then use G-Mail for school stuff - since I’ve signed away my soul to Google anyway, might as well use what they have to offer.

Maybe one day, I’ll start my own personal e-mail utopia, nut that day is not today.

I checked and it already exists in the Fastfatch codebase. Apparently, they event already has a Windows 95 logo.