from Sucuk@kbin.social to linux@lemmy.ml on 23 Aug 2023 13:06
https://kbin.social/m/linux@lemmy.ml/t/372477
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.)
threaded - newest
Go with Pop!_OS you will love it :)
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 should work fine, maybe with a bit of tweaking?
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.
Another good option
There’s a fork of infinity for Lemmy, called Eternity. Not sure if it’s usable now though.
eternity is amazing and works really well, I’ve had no issues so far
Good to know! I will also check it out soon. Infinity was my only reason to use reddit actually.
I’m using Eternity too and its fsntastic
I doubt they need the latest kernel, their machine is ancient…
FIFY
True
Thanks, somehow messed it up.
I have to try mint, so many people recommend it and its hard to believe something can be easier than popos
Mint is great, my brother used it as his first distro and had no issues whatsoever while I suffered with Fedora.
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No, I don't really need it.
I thought about that too. If that doesn't work out, Xfce/LXDE/LXQT it is.
Cool. Good luck on your linux journey!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Fedora is even slower though. In my experience Fedora on hdd loads as slow as win10. MX is great though, as well as antiX
i’ve taken to running apt inside
eatmydata, makes it run way faster since it doesn’t call fsync constantly. granted, you could end up in an invalid state if the power goes out, but that’s what UPSs, laptop batteries and backups are for :)Well uhhhhhhh, when my "laptop"s plug is pulled out or the power goes out, it's dead :D. might need a battery change or an ups...
Definitely get a battery change. Lithium batteries that old can become dangerous and even explode.
Linux Mint with XFCE is what I’d go with
Kubuntu if you want KDE. Your hardware should run it fine. Mint XFCE or Xubuntu if you want to optimize for speed.
Just adding on that if you do go Kubuntu, OP, get the LTS 22.04 version. Since you’ve got older hardware there’s really not much point in using newer kernels. Ubuntu LTS (and therefore Mint, since it’s based on it) is just rock solid in the “just works” category as long as your hardware isn’t super new.
VanillaOS check it out
I love Vanilla too, but if he’s concerned Gnome is to heavy for his laptop…
I’ve overlooked that by accident, hopefully with there 2.0v coming soon they release more flavors
They’re talking about a possible KDE spin, but last I saw it was a low priority. Since all the custom GUI tools ate being made in GTK4. In order to do up KDE the way they’re doing Gnome and keeping the desktop as “vanilla” as possible, it would be a pretty big job converting all that stuff to QT I would think.
Yea that’s true, gtk4 is exciting as well as android containers
I’m looking forward to playing with a Nix container. I honestly can’t think of a single Android app I want to run on my desktop… But it’s gonna be fun for you!
I completely forgot about the NIX one
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.
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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!
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.
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
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.
These are basically system requirements for Firefox (well, except for disk space, obviously). It doesn’t matter much how lightweight your system is when you launch a modern web browser.
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
I like puppy Linux. It can be a bit quirky but it is very very fast.
@PuppyOSAndCoffee @Sucuk lmao
Here is an oddball solution, the lightest way to have GNU/Linux and be able to use GUI applications like Firefox is to simply start a bare bones os install X-Server and something like dmenu, That’s it. Suckless.org, there is a lightweight dwm, a desktop window manager that you can use to tile windows and move them around and more. dmenu will be used to just launch the application. dwm is what manages the windows. Anything past that is based on what you need. It can be a fun challenge to make the most lightweight Firefox browser launcher.
For now, stick with what others have suggested. bare bones installations are usually meant for helping you single out a task and usually offer poor multitasking features until you put a lot of effort into installing and configuring more packages to a satisfying ease of use level.
That’s a horrible recommendation!
Seriously. Do not go for suckless unless you are an advanced user. It is not reasonable to change from a GUI OS to beyond CLI to literally “code it in config.h”. suckless is great but not for beginners.
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.
Was it edited in now? I see it as his third choice.
Oh I meant comments supporting Pop. Don’t see anyone really mention it.
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.
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Mint it is, rock-solid for beginners
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?
I think you will have to use legacy nvidia driver as the latest one wouldn’t work. At least such option exists for Arch Linux, no idea what’s like with other distros.
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.
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
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! :)
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.
Debian Stable (or testing) with the MATE desktop… I mean, if you wanna use AND learn a little bit of Linux!!! Debian is aways your friend, and it is super rock-solid! Avoid distros with poor documentation, and avoid Ubuntu at all costs… Ubuntu has weird bugs, just like Windows. If you don’t like Debian, I’d say: pick OpenSUSE or ArchLinux…
Debian 12 with KDE and call it a day.
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.