I’m resetting windows 10 on my Thinkpad T580 for work but would like to create a partition for linux. It’s an older laptop and really chugs through games like Minecraft or RuneScape but I enjoy playing relaxing games while I listen to audiobooks at night. I grew up using windows which is why I’ve mostly used Ubuntu and ZorinOS in the past but I’d like to expand my horizons to something like kubuntu. I value good UI/UX design and something lightweight for my old potato. Any recommendations on Linux distros?
** Thanks for all the input! I tried Fedora first but it felt kind of clunky to me. Then I tried out Mint xfce and it’s right up my alley! I can run a separate Firefox profile right off the task bar that runs outside of my VPN which is perfect for Netflix and other sites that have issues. So far loving how customizable it is. Minecraft runs ok off GDLauncher, and lutris is really cool. I forgot I had a boat load of old GOG games that are perfect for this laptop. I really fucking love Linux 😆
Stick to the main distros unless you have a specific reason to use a novel one. Despite its drawbacks, KUbuntu is great and I definitely recommend it. Once you find a thing or two you don’t like about it, you can swap to a distro that does those things differently and you’re off to the races :)
PS Linux can breathe new life into a laptop, but if apps are too intense for your hardware it won’t magically give you more RAM… With the exception of Minecraft Prism Launcher + Fabulously Optimized, then your Linuxtop turns into a NASA supercomputer
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If you want to shake things up with an arch derivative you can try EndeavourOS, there are a lot of different DEs you can choose straight from the installer
+1 for EOS
KDE is surprisingly lightweight these days. Maybe try the Fedora KDE spin. Or if you need it even more light weight: the LXQt spin is also not bad.
One of the Fedora spins, or if you are feeling brave Fedora Silverblue or Fedora Kinoite.
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To any user that reads this comment, only install Debian if you can understand this quote, else, you may want to consider otherwise!
Since I began exploring Linux again for the first time in 20 years, I’ve tried a handful of distros. I’m… semi competent working in the command line, and here are my experiences.
Pop!_OS: comes with proprietary drivers for Nvidia cards! Neat! Some minor compositor issues with Nvidia and multi monitor support, but I hammered them out. Eventually the general glitchyness of the desktop environment and software center turned me off.
Fedora KDE: getting my laptop to handle multi monitor support, while still allowing high refresh gaming on the external monitor was a no go. I managed to install drivers from the command line, but Optimus, used to select power profiles and allow one monitor to have hardware acceleration while the laptop screen itself runs off the processor, would not function no matter what I did.
Nobara: hmmm. Fedora, but the aforementioned driver issues are solved out of the box, neat. But I hated the gnome based custom DE. they have other DE spins like KDE but I didn’t try them.
Manjaro: Arch, but easier? It was pretty smooth, but too complicated for my tastes.
Linux Mint Cinnamon: Mint just fucking works. A graphical driver manager that automatically detects my GPU and lets me click what driver I want to use with no bullshit? Multi monitor support was easy. Gaming is easy. The software center is clean and smooth. No glitchyness anywhere. Cinnamon is beautiful and easy enough to customize if you want to rice it out. Mint isn’t as sexy or interesting as some other distros, in fact it works so well for someone with slightly lower than intermediate Linux chops, that it’s almost boring.
My vote is, try a few. But in the end, mint seems like where I’ll come home to whenever the distro hop itch strikes again.
IMO one should never recommend manjaro. To suggest an easy arch endeavouros should be the way to go, why? Because the manjaro devs make way too many mistakes and a mistake or two can happen to anyone, but when it happens often it becomes a pattern, one where I wouldn’t want someone to deal with if it can be avoided.
Yeah, I had seen some of the criticism but figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a whirl. I haven’t tried endeavor yet, maybe I should.
Definitely try it. I started Linux with Mint since it’s the closest to Windows I could find. Later on I wanted to try bleeding edge but vanilla Arch was too complicated for a noob like me. Until I found EOS. The transition was smooth and painless. I learned more about Linux in a few months with EOS than years on Mint, but that’s a me problem. Now I have vanilla Arch on my VM and EOS on my laptop bare metal. It’s pretty stable, and that one-time Grub issue was the only hiccup I ever experienced that was not due to my stupidity. Lol.
Now I want to try Gentoo, but man it’s even more complicated.
Thanks for the encouragement! I’ve been reading up and thinking about making it my project for the weekend. The question still lingers, do I need sexy Linux, when regular boring functional Linux does everything I need it to very smoothly? I game browse the web on it. I don’t code or make content, and my day job keeps me so busy that I want my shit to just work when I feel like booting up a game my steamdeck or switch can’t handle. Is the feeling of running it successfully worth it?
I’d say give a few Arch-based distros a try, or just straight up Arch if you’re feeling adventurous. Arch distros are just slim and speedy, which could be good for your old laptop. The new official archinstall tool makes it relatively easy compared to installing Arch the manual way, but if you’re looking for more ease of use EndeavourOS is a great option.
2nd this! EndeavourOS ftw :)
MX Linux.
Imagine Linux Mint Debian edition, but it isn’t green and there are a lot of useful GUI tools. It’s also so near to actually being Debian that you can just install things meant for Debian on it. It also runs a backported kernel for modern graphics driver and chipset support so you get your stability and your performance all in one.
I’m a Linux vet who’s been around the block. I’ve tried all the major distros, used Gentoo for a few years, Arch the same, and a bunch of smaller distros.
Nowadays, I just want my computer to start up and run my programs with as little fuss as humanly possible. I’m far too lazy to rice or optimize anything, and I have little patience to troubleshoot the next big awesome thing.
Consequently, I use Kubuntu with Wayland. It chugs along and does everything I need it to.
Basically the same thing here, but with Fedora Workstation. I had my fun, now I just want to work in peace without having to fiddle with something every few weeks.
Same but with mint. I used arch when it didn’t have an install script, now I’m far too lazy for it. I’m not as experienced as other arch users or gentoo users but I could set my arch up no problems. Now I just don’t see the point, it’s not like my pc can’t handle some bloat.
Resources not being used are wasted resources so… may as well use them for quality of life.
If your laptop is on the potato side I would personally avoid kde, it’s much lighter now than it used to be but still heavier than other options. Mint looks good in my personal opinion and, again in my opinion, is a better alternative if compared to ubuntu, it’s based on it but with some improvements. The default flavor comes with cinnamon, but if your laptop struggles it’s also available with xfce, which even older machines should be able to handle.
@raccoon @Triage8420@lemmy.ml @linux_gaming
I put xfce on a garbage laptop for my parents (who are used to much older windows) and they loved it, the laptop ended up breaking eventually but that was a hardware issue and they regularly ask me when I’ll be able to replace it
Check out Fedora Silverblue.
I really think having a stateless root is the future of computing. Silverblue has a big focus on using Flatpak and containers to cover most use cases.
The only issue is the default Gnome would probably be too heavy for your hardware but (as others have mentioned) you can overlay KDE and use that instead.
Edit: as others have said below check out Kinoite for a Silverblue spin with KDE by default.
Or rather go on with Fedora Kinoite (Silverblue but KDE)
I think plain, vanilla, mutable Fedora is still a more solid choice for newcomers, it’s just easier to find help with a “regular” distro.
I’ve been trying uBlue on my daily driver laptop, and so far, the immutability of the system has not really hindered me, but I still think it’s not ready for primetime yet.
Probably true, but I find that new users tend to try to solve problems by installing random RPMs they find online and tainting their systems.
Pushing an immutable OS puts up a barrier that may be annoying, but forces them to do things in a more reasonable way (or they can overlay those random RPMs, with the advantage that they are easier to track since
rpm-ostree statuswill always show a list of manually overlayed packages)
Can you explain what is meant by “stateless root”? I can’t find a decent answer online.
The root filesystem is read only so neither you or applications can write to it. If you wanna find better results it’s probably more often referred to as “immutable” since calling it stateless is maybe a bit loaded on my part.
Flatpak apps are a PITA for interoperability and modifications though, so I’ll stick to traditional RPMs thanks. I prefer the ease and flexibility of tinkering with my system more than anything else.
I actually disagree. I use Flatpak and also maintain a Flatpak myself and I think nowadays they’re mostly af parity with regular applications.
They also solve dependency issues in neat ways which is nice. For example the application I use makes use of a Wine extension that tracks an older Wine, which is something that is particular annoying to deal with outside of the Flatpak environment IMO.
Then let’s agree to disagree, in my experience they’ve been more of a hassle to deal with. Eg trying to fix the weird DPI/tiny cursor issue in the flatpak version of Steam was a pain, same with trying to pass custom flags to flatpak Edge. It’s just one hassle after another. I can deal with a couple of apps here and there, but I can’t imagine having the entire system depend on Flatpak as a crutch.
As for your Wine example, I’m not sure which application you’re referring to, but Wine is basically portable and doesn’t need installing, eg for Wine-GE, you just need to download and extract the tarball and set the correct WINEPREFIX/path, so you can easily have multiple versions of Wine on your system without Flatpak or anything complicated.
I switched to silverblue a few months ago and then again a few weeks ago kinoite. I think the immutability and revert updates super easily is great. I think ostree is the future and I’m looking forward too seeing how it matures.
I’m not sure how lightweight Fedora is, but it’s currently my favourite distro. The harder choice for me is the desktop environment, I’m currently using KDE, however Gnome looks more modern.
@Fenix @Triage8420
+1 on Fedora with KDE
You can’t go wrong with KDE neon. Highly recommend it. You get all the latest KDE features with the stability of Ubuntu. Lots of Kubuntu users have all migrated already.
My vote goes to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s a beautiful system, and the most stable rolling release I’ve ever had the pleasure of running. I’ve tried so many different distros, and I always end up coming back to OpenSUSE.
Fedora is a good choice. It is stable while being fairly up to date. The only issue is that (I think) proprietary drivers aren’t included by default.
This is true but I’ve only had issues with Nvidia drivers, which wouldn’t impact OP.
But definitely worth a word of caution for anyone else new to Fedora following this thread.
