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)

  1. Linux Mint
  2. Fedora, though idk if the 2 GHz requirement is a big problem
  3. Pop!_OS
  4. MX Linux
  5. Debian
  6. Ubuntu and its flavors
  7. 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)

  1. KDE Plasma (love the looks of it, though is my hardware enough?)
  2. Cinnamon
  3. XFCE - LXDE - LXQT (because of “lightweightness” :D)
  4. 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 c/linux@lemmy.ml and the r/linux4noobs subreddit. don’t ask why im still on reddit, it’s because of Infinity for reddit.)

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
    3·
    1 year ago

    For such an old system, your DE matters more than anything. I’d recommend XFCE, or even LXQT. Definitely upgrade your RAM though, that’ll give it a nice boost - DDR3 should be pretty cheap now. Any cheap SSD should be a big improvement as well.

    I’ve got Zorin installed on my mum’s PC (which is just as old as yours), and it works really well, even on a regular HDD.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      You don’t need to think about your DE choice w.r.t. performance on their class of hardware. It can run the heaviest DEs just fine.

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
        1·
        1 year ago

        I disagree, try running KDE on a 4th Gen i3 and compare it vs a modern system, the performance difference is pretty night-and-day. It’s not exactly unusable or anything, but it just doesn’t feel snappy and responsive, when compared to a lightweight DE on the same hardware.