Hello there. I’m a beginner so keep that in mind. I have an old laptop (something like 10 yo). It has an HDD, 4 gigs of DDR3, an i3 4th gen 1.7
GHz and an NVidia Geforce 710M (Windows Game Ready Driver 391.35 WHQL which I think doesn’t support Wayland). It also has CSM BIOS so yeah. It has the option of UEFI but the GeForce (I think) doesn’t support it.
Currently, it has Windows 10 on it, but it has been veeeeery sluggish. I’m planning to upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs and upgrade to an SSD, but (even if I upgrade those parts) I don’t want to use Windows anymore, at all.
So, I have a few options. (kinda in order)
Linux Mint
Fedora, though idk if the 2 GHz requirement is a big problem
Pop!_OS
MX Linux
Debian
Ubuntu and its flavors
Zorin OS
and maybe Solus? though the same problem with fedora.
Yeah yeah ik, all of these except Fedora and Solus are Debian/Ubuntu based.
DE options: (again, also kinda in order)
KDE Plasma (love the looks of it, though is my hardware enough?)
Cinnamon
XFCE - LXDE - LXQT (because of “lightweightness” :D)
Budgie
5. GNOME too heavy
These are some options for me. If you have any more suggestions, let me know. Also, are there any compatibility issues with my system for the distros/DEs?
Thanks for the replies in advance.
(Note: this was also posted in the m/linux@kbin.social magazine and the r/linux4noobs subreddit. don’t ask why im still on reddit, it’s because of Infinity for reddit.)
(Another note: If you saw this post before, it’s because of /kbin’s issues. I reposted it because no one saw it before.)
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eternity is amazing and works really well, I’ve had no issues so far
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I’m using Eternity too and its fsntastic
Linux Mint is the easiest one from the list
I have to try mint, so many people recommend it and its hard to believe something can be easier than popos
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if you want latest kernel.
I doubt they need the latest kernel, their machine is ancient…
FIFY
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Linux Mint is the easiest one from the list, but all of them except Solus are fine. I personally recommend Mint or Debian, Debian Sid if you want latest kernel.
No, I don’t really need it.
KDE should work fine, maybe with a bit of tweaking?
I thought about that too. If that doesn’t work out, Xfce/LXDE/LXQT it is.
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Try Mint Cinnamon, if that’s slow try disabling animations. If it’s still slow, go to XFCE.
Mint really rocks at not requiring you to use the terminal almost ever. For sure the best choice in the “just works” category.
Side note: Gnome is not as heavy as it once was. Running on a Chromebook with 2GB or RAM and haven’t had any issues.
As a complete Linux noob coming from Windows, I’d say Mint is the way to go. If you’re worried about Cinnamon being too heavy, Mate is much lighter and a lot of fun. I’m especially fond of their file browser Caja.
Your second choice, Fedora, is my go to system, and I’ll cheerfully sing it’s praises. If you want to go that way, check out the KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, or LXDE spins, but I will say it’s a bit less beginner friendly. Make sure you enable the non-free repositories when you log in for the first time!
Mint has an XFCE version as well, last I checked. So if Mate is too much then XFCE is there on Mint as well.
That’s exactly the kind of hardware that’d get a big a boost in performance by switching to Linux. Go for it! I have so many old machines that have essentially gained a second life when I installed Linux on them. You can’t go wrong with either an Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora-based distro. I am not sure what 2Ghz requirement you’re talking about, but I’ve run Fedora on potato class hardware so I think it will be fine.
If you start getting used to Linux after a while, I’d actually suggest Arch because of how slim of a system you can achieve with it and how fast in general it usually is. Of course, if this is your first time using Linux definitely try out some of the friendlier distros first!
Well, uhh, these requirements. But idk.
Yeah I’ve heard Arch is lightweight, but that might happen in like 5 years :D
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To be honest, I think those are more guidelines than anything else. Most distros are largely the same in terms of overall performance. Perhaps some might have a bigger memory footprint due to more applications installed out of the box, but that’s about it.
XFCE is a great option. I consider it middle ground as low resource needs, but also has most of the features you want in a DE. Things like IceWM or OpenBox are even lighter, but less featureful
Just try few of these from live usb and pick what you like.
You can use Ventoy and just drag all your ISO images to it but creating few USBs is easiest option for beginners.
There is nothing bad about Debian/Debian based distros and I think that it is great option I started on Mint, tryed Manjaro and get back to Mint.
You’re having way too many thoughts about this. I’ll give you a simple choice: It’s either Xubuntu or Linux Mint.
Simply choose by which one looks better to you. Done.
In a year you can look back at your post and decide again if there is anything you want to change or you’re in dire need of a Linux hobby and Gentoo is all you’ve ever been looking for.
Linux Mint okay, but Xubuntu?
Isn’t the design gonna throw off any new users?
Mint it is, rock-solid for beginners
Some other people said you’re thinking too hard. They’re right.
Back up all your shit, install Debian. Try out kde and see if it’s too much. If it is, install cinnamon or something.
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Mint/Cinnamon is easy and a good transitional experience. Whatever you choose, don’t forget to donate whatever you can afford and think is appropriate. That helps keep these things available. GL
Prepare for the Nvidia card to be a pain in the ass, if so, maybe running the official driver on a LTS version of Ubuntu is the best option here.
Go with Pop!_OS you will love it :)
I strongly recommend XFCE if you can’t upgrade. It’s the snappiest of the easy DEs, and on a 10yo laptop, I suspect you’ll notice. LXQT is half a tier more difficult, depending on how much you want to tweak the work flow.
If for some reason XFCE is still too heavy and slow, you can go lighter than LXQT without giving yourself a headache, but the only true beginner openbox distro I know of is Mabox, and you seem to prefer point release distros.
Edit: You know what though? Try KDE first; if it’s fast enough for you, great!
I might look into getting a refurbished ThinkPad or something before buying new hardware for this laptop, you’ll probably get a lot more performance out of this than upgrading that old laptop
