[carlmr]

>Like.. my $500 linux laptop feels smoother and faster (GUI wise)

Which Linux do you use? We've had fast enough machines for fast and smooth GUI rendering for decades now. It's just that most software isn't optimized any farther than a few years back.

Linux tends to be quite good on resource consumption. I can still run smooth and fast Linux on my 15 year old laptop. I can't do the same with Windows.

[BirAdam]

IME, Intel’s Clear Linux is unbelievably good. Most people never give it a chance, but it runs great on core i3 from 2017 with just 8GB of RAM… and this is an OS that uses containers for almost everything. Just wonderful work by Intel’s team and contributors.