Here's a quick tip for anyone who has recently breathed life into an old laptop using Linux such as myself, (running Ubuntu 20.04 on a Macbook air mid-2012). I have enjoyed the experience of running Ubuntu on this Mac, as I haven't used it since 16.04 (c. 2017?). It has sped this machine up immensely in contrast to the ever growing MacOS installation that was on this machine previously.

One thing that I did want to install was Discord as I use it to communicate with friends and people with whom I work on projects.

The Problem

I started by installing the snap package of discord. This worked fine and I was able to do everything with it out of the box, but the problem was that it was very slow and slowed down the laptop a lot.

The Solution

Google Chrome has a feature where you can make pseudo-apps that run as websites in their own process frame. To create one, just navigate to the website that you want to create an app of, and click the three dots in the top right hand corner, select More tools > Create Shortcut. Be sure to tick the 'Open as window' Box, and voila! You have a lightweight pseudo-app that loads the online Discord version!

The Fine Print

You may not be able to screen share or use your webcam easily by this method. In my case, I only use my laptop on the go, so this is not a big factor in my decision. It works very well and I thought I'd share.

Have you figured out any neat tricks with anything lately? Please tell me about it in the comments :)