Background: I am a lifelong Windows user who is planning to move to Linux in October, once Microsoft drops support for Windows 10. I use a particularly bad laptop (Intel Celeron N3060, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 64 GB eMMC storage).
I do have some degree of terminal experience in Windows, but I would not count on it. If there are defaults that are sensible enough, I’d appreciate it. I can also configure through mouse-based text editors, as long as there is reliable, concise documentation on that app.
So, here’s what I want in a distro and desktop environment:
- Easy to install, maintain (graphical installation and, preferably, package management too + auto-updating for non-critical applications)
- Lightwight and snappy (around 800 MB idle RAM usage, 10-16 GB storage usage in a base install)
- Secure (using Wayland, granular GUI-based permission control)
I have narrowed down the distributions and desktop environments that seem promising, but want y’all’s opinions on them.
Distributions:
- Linux Mint Xfce: Easy to install, not prone to randomly break (problems: high OOTB storage usage, RAM consumption seems a little too high, kind of outdated packages, not on Wayland yet)
- Fedora: Secure, the main DEs use Wayland (problems: similar to above except for the outdated packages; also hard to install and maintain, from what I have heard)
- antiX Linux (problems: outdated packages, no Wayland)
Desktop Environments:
- Xfce: Lightweight, fast, seems like it’d work how I want (problems: not on Wayland yet, that’s it)
- labwc + other Wayland stuff: Lightweight, fast, secure (problems: likely harder to install, especially since I have no Linux terminal experience, cannot configure through a GUI)
In advance, I thank you all for helping me!
I appreciate any help, especially in things like:
- Neofetch screenshots, to showcase idle RAM usage on some DEs
- Experiences with some distributions
My advice is don’t take any advice. Just download the ones you are most interested in and then flash and try one by one until you feel at home.
My advice: try them all, then decide. They are all free. Most offer live systems. It will only cost you time, which will be well spent learning.
tl;dr: Break things and have fun.
Why do people recommend mint xfce over cinnamon? Is not the cinnamon version better for a newbie?
I think because: 1: I have a tiny bit of technical experience, although none with a Linux system. That’s enough to use something more advanced 2: Cinnamon is basically on par with KDE, in terms of performance, which is not good at all, since my laptop’s specifications are particularly sub-par.
If your laptop can run w10 at all, it will run mint cinnamon very well
Okay, I do not have enough knowledge about the current version of XFCE. I only know that the look of XFCE was super outdated if you do not tweak it. I cannot say if it is solved or not today.
Yeah, it does feel like Windows XP, but that’s also the beauty of it - I can customize it using the graphical editors, since the UI is not confusing, just outdated.
I think XFCE Mint is a good experience. That said, depending on how W10 has been running for you, Cinnamon won’t be worse than that.
Not that bad - the start menu opens in about 2 seconds, but some apps can take much longer (highly depends, but up to 6-10 seconds). I can easily work with a minimal, Windows 9x layout, if that means I will get a significant performance boost.
I think your assessment of Linux Mint with XFCE is a really good first choice. Cinnamon could be worth a try though as the UI is a bit more modern looking. I’m biased towards XFCE because it looks fine and runs extremely well on old laptops. I’ve got a laptop from 2008 running it (it’s my only computer that still has a disc drive) and it’s honestly a usable machine again.
I am not sure that using Wayland is your best choice here. Based on laptop specs it is not like you are going to game on it. And for web and office tasks x11 still offers a better experience. On Wayland you would have problems with things like scaling, screen capturing etc. They are (to some extend) solvable, but are tricky to fix, especially with your lack of terminal experience.
Also I would not care that much for cutting-edge repositories. They are usually required for support of the new hardware (which of cause is not the case here).
Also, almost all modern DE are somewhat the same in terms of resource consumption. Some are a bit heavy (for example Cinnamon is heavier than xfce) but the difference if almost negligible. The majority of resources would be consumed by a browser, not DE. If you still wish to have the lightest DE possible, than you are limited to LXQT. XFCE nowadays is not as light as it used to be. You can have a very good performance with window managers like openbox and alike. For panel you can use polybar, tint or whatever. But that would require some configuration from you. Such setup is available in MX Linux. I suggest you to take a look at that distro, it is kinda good for old laptops. Of cause, standalone Wayland compositors (sway, hyprland, labwc, wayfire etc.) are very good, but they would require you to do a lot configuration work to set everything working. Even distros that ship them preinstalled (like Fedora Sway spin, for example) have somewhat broken defaults.
