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.)

  •  oo1   ( @oo1@kbin.social ) 
    2•1 year ago

    i don’t think my preferences line up with what you’re after, so maybe ignore this. . . .
    i’d recommend explaining computers youtube and website for beginners - he’ll give you much better advice than me
    https://yewtu.be/channel/UCbiGcwDWZjz05njNPrJU7jA

    but FWIW i reckon mint+xfce. will give you “easy” and “decent performance on old hardware”

    you can try out the more flashy d.e s on a usb boot drive see if you think the features are worth it on your setup.

    always remember it’s easy and cheap to experiment.

    get yourself a system for backing up your “home” directory, - a couple usb drives is easy enough.

    and i’d also recommend starting a text file list of all programs/packages you like to install.
    you can make it into a bash "sudo apt get " script (for debian based) if you’re feeling super lazy.
    , or just run through it manually whenever you switch.

    also do the SSD upgrade as soon as you can afford it, it’ll make everything a lot better