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not prone to randomly break (problems: high OOTB storage usage, RAM consumption seems a little too high, kind of outdated packages, not on Wayland yet)
- Fedora: Secure, the main DEs use Wayland (problems: similar to above except for the outdated packages; also hard to install and maintain, from what I have heard)
- antiX Linux (problems: outdated packages, no Wayland)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
I personally recommend Mint, but ultimately others will have different opinions and you decide what you want.
As a complete newbie with those specs, I’d try Mint Xfce edition.
XFCE is probably a good, lightweight DE. Many distros will support it. I believe Linux Mint has an XFCE version by default. I’m sure they will get to Wayland eventually, but it sounds many of the features will not matter to you beyond just a working desktop.
I have never tried it myself, but maybe Debian with XFCE might be more lightweight than Mint? Probably more involved to set up, though, so I would research that a bit more before taking the advice of a rando who has never done that specific distro/DE combination.
Lol i see these over and over and the conclusion is always the same. They really are looking for Debian but they never mention it as an option.
I did do some research, and there is a YouTube channel called “Old PC Gunk and Stuff”, that tried out a laptop (that has very similar specs to mine (same model, too), but mine has twice the storage and RAM), with multiple Linux Distros and Windows 11 LTSC.
Apparently, Mokha (Bodhi uses it and he tested it out, altho Chromium outperforms Firefox) and IceWM (AntiX uses it, and AntiX uses Firefox and yet outperformed all other than Mokha by twice the performance).
One downside though is that both Mokha and IceWM are X11-bases, albeit I’m not aware of how bad that is, security-wise.
I’ve literally never heard of Bodhi Linux, but apparently it is a fork of Ubuntu LTS, which will have very outdated packages if that is a concern for you.
AntiX is likewise a fork of Debian Stable, so I suspect it will have the same issue. It also does not use the more standard systemd init system, so finding support could be an issue.
I don’t think that it make sense to start off on such obscure distros. The advantage of a widely-used distro is that there will be forum threads and a much larger network of support to help you learn and debug issues.
I can’t really speak to the security aspects of either X11 or Wayland.
I’ve had Fedora updates screw up so many times and spent way too many hours fixing mutually conflicting updates that I have really come to loath the OS. I keep a Fedora server running for my customers who are Redrat enthusiasts but Ubuntu is so much better behaved.
LMDE. And this is as someone who has used a ton of distro over the years and now just rolls that whenever asked. I prefer the Debian Edition; Mint feels hacky in comparison, almost like snaps and stuff have been ripped out to make the distro something it is not…
Mint is often the most recommended distro, because whatever you may need to do in it, it tends to be easy-ish to figure out.
But these days I would strongly recommend in favor of some immutable distro like Bluefin/Aurora or Silverblue/kinoite. Instead of being easy to figure out how to do things on them, they make it so you won’t need to, ever.
It’s a complete paradigm shift and it might not be for everyone, but in the decades I’ve been using Linux for, I had never had such a smooth experience with any distro. Everything just works and you don’t need to think about the OS anymore.
However it won’t easily fit with some of the requirements you listed.
Is one of the requirements you’re talking about the storage usage? If so, then yeah, that is a problem for me.
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.
Thanks for this kind answer! I might game a bit on it (I am probably going to be the last person to stop playing Minecraft 1.8.9), but I don’t know how much better Wayland is. I can tinker a bit of the settings, but not too much. I also have another laptop that has half the specs (but a better CPU, for some reason) that I might use as a lab rat.
The main problems with gaming on x11 are:
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Screen tearing. You can check YouTube for how it looks.
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Latency in x11 is significantly higher.
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HDR support. X11 does not support HDR. But I doubt you laptop supports it either.
I do not believe that problems 1 and 2 affect minecraft that much. They are mostly prominent in games like first-person-shooter and alike.
Also, note that Minecraft itself does not support wayland. This means that it would run under x11 that would run under wayland (with both x11 and Wayland problems combined).
I do play Minecraft 1.8.9 competitively, but would using Wayland help with that?
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What use cases are you planning for it? I mean, antiX would totally rock on that machine. However having Wayland, being lightweight and easy to maintain is kinda tough to find. Lose Wayland part, it’s antiX. Lose lightweight part, it’s Pop OS, openSUSE Leap, etc. Lose easy to maintain part (for a newbie), it’s Arch (mostly derivatives that come with a GUI installer).
Though if I was preparing that device for someone else, I would probably go with LMDE.
Web browsing, writing, playing Minecraft, and maybe some more things.
I see. In that case I see no reason not to use antiX. It’s so lightweight it can run well on a 20 year old laptop. You don’t need latest drivers to play Minecraft (you can install them if you want like on any Debian base but there is no need for that). antiX is also easy on hard drive space since it’s smaller than most distros.
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.
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.
If your laptop can run w10 at all, it will run mint cinnamon very well
You should probably go for Linux Mint. I love the Gnome Desktop environment, but you’d need to install it afterwards. Probably go for the XFCE version of Linux mint.
Fedora+Xfce is probably what you want.
Try Fedora LXQT too, it ll default to wayland in the next fedora release (~4th april i think). Its very lightweight.
Wayland? I will be sure to keep that one on my notes! What are the storage requirements, though? Another thing is that my laptop might be using Legacy BIOS, so systemd isn’t compatible with it. If that’s so, does Fedora use GRUB as a fallback? I just want to be sure that I do not mess up my laptop - it is the only one I have, and I can’t afford to buy another one.
Another thing is that my laptop might be using Legacy BIOS, so systemd isn’t compatible with it.
Oh sorry, then Fedora isnt a good idea. They have deprecated support for Legacy BIOS.
Anything with LXQT 2.1 available should give the same experience however right now it seems only rolling distros ship with 2.1. Lubuntu 25.04 will ship (in ~April) with LXQT 2.1 but it wont default to wayland so you might have to do some manual config. Its also not an lts release.
storage requirements
shouldn’t be a big problem. lxqt is super lightweight. If you go with lubuntu, I recommend turning off snap to save some space.
Linux Mint MATE or XFCE are really good if you dont necessarily want wayland support.
Another option is the Raspberry Pi OS. Debian based, should be very lightweight and runs wayland. I haven’t personally tried it though.
What do you prefer? Linux allows multiple desktops to be installed. I use Mate primarily but I also have lxde installed as a backup in case something breaks.
I prefer something that has the same functional layout as Windows, but is as lightweight and minimal as possible (a Windows XP-like Start Menu is fine, I just need something that is configurable enough and doesn’t blow up my laptop).
I would not say Fedora is hard to install and maintain. The biggest issue by far is a setup hurdle for getting “non-free packages” enabled – Fedora (and a few other distros) is a “FOSS-only” distribution, meaning they don’t include anything by default that is not “free, open-source software.” That means media codecs for playing popular audio and video file formats, web browsers like Chrome (I would recommend migrating away from this platform if you’re using it) and anything else that’s “proprietary software.”
There are ways to enable access to this software, but it requires configuring your software package repositories to point to them. It’s not hard, just something to keep in mind.
Linux Mint is a great choice for newcomers to the space – it includes access to non-free software OOTB, has sane default applications on all of its “flavors” with their separate desktop environments, provides decent utilities for configuring your system graphically without blocking you from learning how to do so by config file or terminal should you want to learn. It stays decently up-to-date with packages, you won’t be on the bleeding edge but that’s not a bad thing. If you aren’t doing intense activities (gaming, video editing, etc) having the absolute latest packages won’t really matter to you. It still gets security updates, so you’re good there. It’s a well documented distro with a friendly community and forum if you run into trouble with anything. All around a really solid choice, and would be my first recommendation for someone not looking to do any heavy gaming or other specialized work on their PC.
XFCE is my desktop environment of choice. Not only is it lightweight, it also comes with some of the better desktop environment defaults, in my opinion. Linux Mint will theme it nicely upon install, but it’s a long-standing DE that has a huge backlog of support for customization and “beautifying” your install however you like. Lots of themes and cursor options for those who care, all without pushing your resources. It’s a traditional desktop paradigm, so it won’t try and force you to interact with your PC in new and unusual ways (looking at you, GNOME, you weirdo). It just… Gets out of your way and lets you use your PC the way you’re used to.
Linux Mint + XFCE is my recommendation, for sure.
Thank you for answering! I am adding Linux Mint XFCE to my list for sure, but I have a question: is it possible to add cutting edge repositories, for Mint? Also, non-libre software is not a concern; I wouldn’t use any, other than drivers and blobs.
Honest answer: I’ve never had need of cutting edge repositories in Linux Mint, so I’ve never looked or tried. I would doubt that adding cutting edge repositories to Mint would be a good idea for system stability – there’s a reason “bleeding edge” distributions have a reputation for being a tinkerer’s playground. Look at the stability reputation of, say, ArchLinux as an example.
I love Arch, and have used it extensively over the last decade or so, but I would not recommend it or nearly any other rolling release to a newcomer to the space; if you aren’t comfortable getting your hands dirty in the terminal, it’s only a matter of time before you end up with an unstable system that may or may not boot without the confidence to fix it.
My one exception to the rule above, if you aren’t afraid of configuring some repositories for non-free software: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was a wicked stable rolling release last time I tried it due to the way the organization behind it runs it. It tends to be a little heavier than what you’re asking for, but as far as graphical options for system configuration you can’t really beat OpenSUSE, IMO. YaST (their system configuration platform) has a tool to configure… Well, damn near everything, honestly. Even if the UI/UX feels a bit “dated”, everything you need is there.
Depending on how mission-critical your PC setup is, I might recommend doing a little “distro-hopping.” Back up your data, wipe your drive, install a distro and trial it for about a week or so. If one feels like it “fits,” just stay there.
I would recommend slackware or devuan with xfce or lxde
