Been using Linux Since I got a hand-me-down Cyrix 6x86, 256 megs ram, and a hand-me-down copy of Red Hat 4.0 (Colgate), May 1999 was when I first installed Linux: that distro on that system.
Was tired of renting my OS from a slave master who demanded I get a newer PC at their whim and fancy. I recall getting very irritated at a Staples store, I went to get a copy of Win 3.11 because I only had a 386DX, and the store had 3 versions of Windows: 3.11, 95, and 98, and they all cost within $8 of one another, each one mandating escalating minimum hardware.
Went to Slackware, then went through many other distros. Predominantly, I return to Debian derived distros, but some recent installs leave me hanging on a system that has had MANY successful (and mostly functional) installations. Modern distros are starting to lose skills on my hardware, and that just might be a good thing, all in all.
I have minimal requirements for a desktop PC: I could care less about almost ALL media, especially Flash based stuff, because Flash hasn’t shown much love towards anything but Windows. I tend to purchase music online, and play it off line, so I store my music archives external to the PC. Updating my resume, reading email, applying for work, and maybe I’ll be able to get my VHS home movie collection digitized.
I have chosen Mate, primarily, and feel that Ubuntu is probably a good backer for this desktop environment. I used to like and use Kubuntu, but when Plasma 5 wrecked all the KDE graphics into widely spaced monochromic … (be nice) … I just couldn’t stand the pain. Mate hass pretty much what I need, though I do miss Dolphin and its KIO slaves.
Moving forward, on my 2nd day with it, I need to make some adjustments somewhere in Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3 for AMD64.