A distro and desktop environment recommendation for an old laptop
(Read all of it, please.)
A distro and desktop environment recommendation for an old laptop (Read all of it, please.)
'sup? So, I am a beginner that has an old Samsung laptop from 2013 with an i3 4005U, a GeForce 710M, 500GB HDD (I will probably upgrade it to an SSD, but not for now.), 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM (the same for the HDD, will probably upgrade to 8GB some time.). It currently has Windows 10 Home but Linux is probably lighter (right?) so thats why I want to use it (+customization). I plan on dual booting the two since i might still need Windows for some cases. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
(Note: I'm planning on using Linux Mint [which version should I use?] or Pop!_OS, but might look at Zorin OS Elementary OS, Deepin and maaaaaybe Ubuntu and it's flavors. I don't really have an idea on desktop environments. need suggestions.)
(repost because wrong language)
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Linux can definitely make that thing fly, although the biggest limitation will be RAM - not from the desktop environment you choose, but from the web, depending on how many and what kinds of websites you rely on (for example I regularly use 20-30GB of my 64 through figma, pitch, Google docs, notion, ClickUp, and sites I develop that tend to be video and image heavy). Were I you, I would prioritize the 8Gb ram upgrade.
Aside from that, which distro you choose won’t make a huge difference. Some claim desktop environments like gnome and kde plasma are too heavy (I assume they mean in graphics processing and ram usage) and will insist on something like xfce or sway. Those are invariably very fiddly to set up, so if you’re a beginner, I would recommend sticking with gnome or kde despite. These will be the default on the distros you mentioned. Mint MATE edition would be your best bet for a classic desktop environment that might tick the “lighter” check mark if you really must.