For those who don’t know what I mean:

target hardware for LMDE is an 8 year old nuked mac notebook with an intel chip.

I’ve always used xfce because it’s easy on the hardware and I don’t care that much about looks, but functionality.

I’ve never used cinnamon and I don’t know if it’s going to slow the notebook much.

Neither do I know if I can install LMDE and then change the DE to xfce.

Is LMDE being updated like the other mints? LMDE is version 6, whereas the other DE are version 21.3

  • pbjamm ( pbjamm@beehaw.org ) English
    4·
    2 years ago

    I suggest trying Cinnamon and see how it feels. Unless your old notebook has less than 2GB RAM then you will probably be aok. I have run it on some pretty weak machines before and never found XFCE to be noticeably snappier.

  • n2burns ( n2burns@lemmy.ca ) 
    3·
    2 years ago

    I wouldn’t recommend installing a distro just to install a different DE. IMHO, you should be fine with cinnamon. I’m using Linux Mint 21.3 with cinnamon on an x201 (Thinkpad released in 2010), though I did up the RAM to the 8GB max. However, if you want XFCE, is there a reason you don’t want to use Linux Mint 21.3 with XFCE? If that’s no good for you, I’d recommend finding a distro that fits most of your needs right out of the box, maybe Peppermint Linux or MX Linux?

      • n2burns ( n2burns@lemmy.ca ) 
        6·
        2 years ago

        this is a notebook with an Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60GHz (2 cores, 4 threads) with 8 GB RAM and installing and upgrading on xubuntu 23.10 was already really, painfully slow.

        Have you put an SSD in there, or are you still running on spinning rust? In my experience, even a cheap SSD will make a huge difference.

      • lemmyvore ( lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) English
        3·
        2 years ago

        That’s weird, I have a laptop that probably even weaker (Pentium 2020M with 4 GB of RAM) that used to run Ubuntu fairly ok until about 4 years ago (but it has a SSD).

        It’s now running Manjaro pretty well, just can’t compile some Rust-based apps because it runs out of RAM. 😄 But I get them from Flatpak instead.

        If Ubuntu went off the rails during these last few years it’s a pity. Anyway, it should not be indicative of how well Linux runs on such a machine, just try another distro.

      • poki ( poki@discuss.online ) 
        1·
        2 years ago

        Several posters have argued that LMDE, like debian, is barebones, whereas LM is ideal for an end user with not much idea about linux

        I believe I’m the only one in the previous post that used the term. But, I believe a misunderstanding has occurred. Debian, plain old Debian, is (relatively) bare-bones. And with this, I mean that extra tooling and what not is absent. Sure, these extra tooling etc come at the cost of what some might regard as bloat. But, ultimately, its absence should not affect performance in any significant way (so not positively, nor negatively). Thus, LMDE and Linux Mint are actually pretty close to one another. LMDE is basically just Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) but with a Debian base instead of being based on Ubuntu.

        I also want to future proof it as much as possible, which would mean using the OS/DE that uses less resources.

        Excellent OP. Thank you for providing this insight on what’s important for you. With this information we’ll be able to offer better help. So, as you’ve excellently noticed already, Xfce is pretty good if you want a very functional machine that doesn’t suck a lot of resources. So, I totally support your decision for Xfce over Cinnamon as Xfce is simply less resource intensive. However, 8 GB of RAM should be pretty fine. Even GNOME should run wonderfully on 8 GB of RAM, so Cinnamon should not cause any troubles. But, if you’ve still got concerns and if you’re already on an SSD, then continue using Xfce as it’s otherwise one of the better DEs out there. But, if you’re not on an SSD yet, then consider slipping one inside; it will matter a lot.

        Regarding your actual query, installing Xfce in retrospect to LMDE should work, but you might get yourself into more trouble than it’s worth. Therefore, I’d advice you to simply get Linux Mint Xfce Edition and call it a day. Going for the Edge ISO (which by default comes with Cinnamon) for the latest (and greatest) kernel and retroactively trying to setup Xfce should (once again) cause you more troubles than it’s worth it. So, in the end, I’d like to recommend you either Linux Mint Xfce Edition or MX Linux (which is based on Debian Stable (so not Ubuntu) and actually defaults to Xfce). Honestly, they’re mostly two flavors/interpretations that try to accomplish very similar goals. So, you should be fine with either one of the two.