this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Alright, you know what? I'll be switching. (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Sucuk@kbin.social to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

So, I have a few options. (kinda in order)

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.

KDE Plasma (love the looks of it, though is my hardware enough?)

KDE should work fine, maybe with a bit of tweaking?

XFCE - LXDE - LXQT (because of “lightweightness”)

I daily drive Xfce and even on a beefy PC this DE is really great. It may not look cool by default, but it's very customizable and powerful. And Thunar (xfce file manager) is really good now.

Cinnamon

Another good option

it’s because of Infinity for reddit.

There's a fork of infinity for Lemmy, called Eternity. Not sure if it's usable now though.

[–] SaveComengs@lemmy.federa.net 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

eternity is amazing and works really well, I've had no issues so far

[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 5 points 1 year ago

Good to know! I will also check it out soon. Infinity was my only reason to use reddit actually.

[–] baconicsynergy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I'm using Eternity too and its fsntastic

[–] rambos@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 2 points 1 year ago

Mint is great, my brother used it as his first distro and had no issues whatsoever while I suffered with Fedora.

[–] Sucuk@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 1 points 1 year ago

Cool. Good luck on your linux journey!

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

if you want latest kernel.

I doubt they need the latest kernel, their machine is ancient...

Eternity

FIFY

[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 2 points 1 year ago

I doubt they need the latest kernel, their machine is ancient…

True

FIFY

Thanks, somehow messed it up.

[–] art@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] s20@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[–] Contort3860@links.hackliberty.org 3 points 1 year ago

Mint has an XFCE version as well, last I checked. So if Mate is too much then XFCE is there on Mint as well.

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

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

[–] FuzzChef@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BautAufWasEuchAufbaut@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Linux Mint okay, but Xubuntu?
Isn't the design gonna throw off any new users?

[–] plactagonic@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] LovePoson@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Mint it is, rock-solid for beginners

[–] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Cpo@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] WeAreAllOne@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Debian 12 with KDE and call it a day.

[–] Madiator2011@lm.madiator.cloud 3 points 1 year ago

Go with Pop!_OS you will love it :)

[–] Ashen@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why is it that in such posts I don't see PopOS mentioned anywhere? I've been using it on my 8 year old laptop and it works really well! It had Win 10 on it previously and would crash if I opened more than 2 tabs on Firefox.

[–] nestEggParrot@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Was it edited in now? I see it as his third choice.

[–] Ashen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh I meant comments supporting Pop. Don't see anyone really mention it.

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

Gnome is probably usable but definitely not ideal on old low end hardware, Pop is a great Distro and I love Gnome but I wouldn't recommend it in this case, maybe that's why.

[–] Presi300@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ubuntu is SLOW on a HDD (has to do with the packaging format they use), I'd personally recommend trying fedora 1st and if that's also too slow, MXLinux is great. Solus recently got revived, but it's still got issues so I can't really recommend it for a 1st distro... And finally, if even MX doesn't run perfectly, try AntiX, the best Linux distro for really low-end PCs imo.

[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 3 points 1 year ago

I’d personally recommend trying fedora 1st

Fedora is even slower though. In my experience Fedora on hdd loads as slow as win10. MX is great though, as well as antiX

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I'd personally recommend Linux Mint with XFCE or Cinnamon. XFCE with the Suse style is light and has a built-in search on the start menu, which I consider a must-have.

Mint in general should offer the least amount of resistance for getting everything up and running, including the graphic driver.

[–] Nicbudd@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Linux Mint with XFCE is what I'd go with

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Kubuntu if you want KDE. Your hardware should run it fine. Mint XFCE or Xubuntu if you want to optimize for speed.

[–] CaptainJack42@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

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

[–] valentino@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lets fucking go. Definitely try the three OG desktops Gnome, KDE and Xfce. The first two are the biggest ones with tons of features and a big development team. Also KDE has a memory print thats as low as Xfce which is the lightest.

[–] PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like puppy Linux. It can be a bit quirky but it is very very fast.

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

Cinnamon is a little heavier on the hardware but especially with Linux Mint it's a great choice to get into Linux and a Debian base is a great choice, you won't utelize any new features on that hardware and it's really stable! About KDE, that's actually very light weight too so you shouldn't have any issues in that regard if you decide to use it especially in comparison to Cinnamon, I would just recommend Mint Cinnamon more for a new user! :)

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

With regards to performance, the distro matters but the Desktop Environment matters more.

For older hardware, XFCE is going to perform a bit better than GNOME. KDE is a middle-ground. Choose what DE you want first and then go for a distro that runs that well.

[–] Marduk73@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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