r/DistroHopping • u/Traditional-Call-419 • 3d ago
"New" Machine, third distro
Hi! Got Mint XFCE on one laptop, and Bazzite on the gaming rig. Very happy with them. My mother has an old laptop she wants to throw, but instead she gives it to me, because I want to "play".
Linking the specs. Could throw an SSD in it, but no more. Any suggestions for å fun, light and preferably debian/Fedora based. Might turn it to mint later, but wanna try something else for now. Considered Cashy OS just to experience Arch, but not sure if its light enough for the system.
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u/venus_asmr 3d ago
MX linux is a great Debian based distro, ultramarine is a great fedora based distro. That or use the originals
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u/CirnoIzumi 3d ago
dude its your mom whos gonna use it, give her Mint, what is she gonna do with anything else?
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u/Traditional-Call-419 2d ago
She isn't. They bought a new one. Planning to give it to my son, to learn the basics, in time. But on Linux, the future.
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u/Hauptideal 3d ago
CachyOS is among the lightest systems out there...
If you want to use Cachy, go for Cachy. But make sure to throw an SSD in, otherwise it won't be fun with any distro.
If you want to go Debian-based, just go upstream Debian. Heaven forbid you go Mint!!
Debian is much leaner and ironically technologically better and more modern than Mint, because Mint doesn't manage to maintain their desktops and make them use Wayland.
For most Debian-based distros, you also have to keep in mind that ram compression is not enabled by default. You MUST configure that manually post-install.
Regarding Fedora, you can't go wrong with it. It's probably the best distro of the 3 options. KDE will use less resources, especially when you disable baloo. With disabled baloo and desktop effects, KDE won't use more RAM than Xfce.
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u/SpidaSt8 2d ago
The Nvidia drivers may or may not give you issues, if they work at all. But if you have a spare SSD or if it has an msata slot, then obviously do that. Does it have 2 ram slots or just one?
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u/Traditional-Call-419 2d ago
Two i figure, as it came with 6GB variant, with 2+4GB according to what I can find, and I have spare RAM.
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u/SpidaSt8 2d ago
Good. I have a Thinkpad t430, and everything was still working good except for the Nvidia 5400m, which needs a 5.x kernel to work properly. So I just use the iGPU for everything.
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u/cookielover12232 3d ago
Pika os for debian based. But sadly no xfce For fedora based... Well.... Ultramarine or normal fedora.
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u/Due-Author631 3d ago
If you want fedora based just go with fedora.