> Does this line up with others’ experience?

Not really, no. What did you install that slowed things down?

> If yes, what actually works long-term?

Plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, running on an ancient Thinkpad T430 with a whopping 8GB of RAM and an SSD (which is failing, but that's not Linux's fault, it's been on its way out for about a year and I should probably stop compiling Haiku nightlies on it).

Can you give an example of which desktop apps are "dragging in daemons"?

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rvnx 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Edited: My bad, I misread, started ranting about Gimp, how terrible this software was

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neoCrimeLabs 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Gimp is not typically used as background process. It's primary use is as an interactive tool with a UI, therefore it's not typically a daemon. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)

	▲	rvnx 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for the kind and actually helpful answer, especially in the face of a rant. I will pay more attention next time.

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stryan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

GIMP is definitely not a daemon; I don't think it even has a run in the background mode. Maybe something with snaps?

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rvnx 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No no, just misread, my fault, sorry. Mixed "dragging up demons" and then it reminded me of my traumas with GIMP, PulseAudio, CUDA, etc

	▲	stryan 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, fair and understandable :)

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ErroneousBosh an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not the greatest, for sure, but it's a complex tool for a complex task.

If you think Gimp is terrible you'll hate something like DaVinci Resolve.