Slowly, they will do. Every new one that does and gets media attention pulls others to do the same

I assumed a x64. Debian (the distro mx linux is based on) offers multiarch support, so i just had to enable it by running:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 
sudo apt update

Then, to install 32-bit firefox, I first uninstalled it and then installed the 32-bit version:

sudo apt remove firefox-esr  
sudo apt install firefox-esr:i386

With the standard 64 bit version, the browser would struggle with just 2 or 3 tabs, and with the 32 bit version, she can use like 10 tabs without problems

Or I could recycle it

Could you really? E-waste recycling is a great lie made so that people don’t get remorse over throwing away their devices. Electronics are too complex, diverse and full of toxic stiff to be property recycled.

If anyone wants to dive more into this, there has been some projects where people from higher income countries put tracking devices inside e-waste before sending to “recycling”, to find out where they end up. Spoiler: in poorer countries, to either be scattered around, thrown into a landfill, or be scavenged by underpaid people without any protection equipment.

Uber has a pwa available. Would it help you? At least it would minimize privacy invasion.

disable CPU hogs and file indexing etc.

Do you have some tips for that?

There are plenty of distros for very low end pcs, but they tend to require more tech skills to use. I have experience with a friend in a similar situation. I installed with mx linux for her and she is liking it. The performance is pretty reasonable and it comes with various tools that make it easier for people with less tech skills. The only extra thing I did was install the 32 bit version of firefox, because it makes a huge difference in low ram devices.

That’s exactly why statistics are needed, because our personal perception is flawed. People like to say sensationalist phrases like “the desktop platform is dying”, but data from sites like statista shows the desktop marketshare around a bit more than 1/3, and that’s a lot of devices, very far from being a dead or irrelevant platform. It’s logical that smartphones, that are personal devices turned on all the time will have more traffic and marketshare, but that doesn’t mean the desktop is dying. Actually, the pc sales keep growing, although at a slower rate (that can be due to several factors, like older pcs lasting longer), and that means that the mobile platform has grown in a faster rate, not necessarily that people are stopping using pcs, but that specific data we don’t have available, unfortunately.

Another thing I keep seeing people say on the internet without any proof (that’s one interesting thing abut those sensationalist statements: they never provide any proof, just a personal perception, but we need proof to counterargument) is that younger people are stopping using pcs and that desktops are becoming an “habit of older people”. I don’t know of any gobal research on that, but at least here in Brazil, we have an annual survey from cetic.br that shows that desktop usage doesn’t have significant differences among age groups. I don’t know if the same stands for the entire world, but I’ve seen a lot of people saying that phrase around here too. Also, that’s not only a sensationalist thing people say, but seems to me to have some degree of ageism.

It’s not like both worlds are antagonists. Free software is more of an ecosystem, and every part that grows helps each other. People who run foss on a device are more likely to run foss in others.

Linux on mobile struggles not because of a lack of interested developers, but because most phones are locked to prevent us from running modified oses, and the apps available for all the services needed require an android os.

Besides, to discredit the desktop platform as fi not important is an exaggeration.

Indeed, the data isn’t transparent and probably not very reliable, but it’s all we have, so I believe it’s still worth mentioning. Also, the trends tend to be more reliable than the absolute values, if their methodology is consistent, so any change in usage may be somewhat relevant.

They run a script in the user browsers for collecting the data, so I believe any privacy-enhanced browser, like librewolf blocks it, but so do windows users using ublock or similar, and they all fall into the unknown category.

Never underestimate the network effect and how reluctant people are to move to another social network. The masses just follow the crowd, so every big account moving out from there helps take more users away.

Unfortunately, a lot of people. Probably not so many here on Lemmy but a lot of people. And I even know a couple of them irl :(

And libreoffice, and stop using copilot or game pass or any of their services

Thank you for the suggestion

I already used my proton email as contact method on some published stuff that I can’t modify. Do you have some tips for that situation, or am I stuck now?

It’s interesting that you mentioned the term minority, because I find it so ironic that companies invest a lot in marketing how they care about minorities, but then any userbase that isn’t the biggest one is abandoned with a fuck you and a middle finger.

If companies really designed sites and apps thinking on the majority of people they would make their software as lightweight as possible, so that they could run fine on cheaper hardware

Thanks for the tip, but my phone still uses micro usb lol

I won’t deny, it’s refreshing to see posts like these, and I’ve seen a few of them around the web. Perhaps we’re really going to slowly see some positive change in the tech world.

Good luck, @bpt11@sh.itjust.works and welcome to the community!

I used to, but when someone finally got interested, the usb media was so outdated, that I had to download and write a new iso :D

When running from a live USB, any changes are lost, unless the usb is written with the persistence mode. A live media is mostly to install the os and fix errors.