this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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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/[email protected] 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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[–] art 16 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.

[–] Molecular0079 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Well, uhh, these requirements. But idk.

Yeah I've heard Arch is lightweight, but that might happen in like 5 years :D

[–] Molecular0079 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 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!

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] LovePoson 9 points 1 year ago

Mint it is, rock-solid for beginners

[–] ZephyrXero 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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Go with Pop!_OS you will love it :)

[–] [email protected] 4 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

[–] Presi300 4 points 1 year ago (4 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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Debian 12 with KDE and call it a day.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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...

[–] [email protected] 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! :)