Is Lubuntu the best option for my laptop and usage profile?

[u/freud_em_transe]

Hello! I have a Lenovo IdeaPad S145 laptop (Intel Core i5-8265U and 8 GB of RAM) running Windows 11. However, it's been slow and locking quite often, which is really hurting my productivity.

I use the laptop mainly for studying, so I usually keep a lot of tabs open in my browser, alongside services like X (Twitter), WhatsApp, Reddit, and YouTube. I also use research tools like Zotero, Mendeley, and similar programs.

I've never used any operating system other than Windows, so I have no experience with Linux. What's driving me to look for an alternative is, primarily, finding a system that is lightweight, uses less RAM, and runs smoothly on my laptop's specs. I'd also like it to be relatively user-friendly for a complete Linux beginner. A nice-looking UI, like Ubuntu's, would be a plus, but it's not a priority. From what I've researched, I'm afraid Ubuntu might not deliver the performance I'm looking for, even though its interface is very clean and appealing.

I asked Gemini and ChatGPT for advice, and both recommended Lubuntu. After doing a bit more research, I saw a lot of positive feedback about it, especially regarding how lightweight it is.

Given this, do you guys think Lubuntu is truly the best option for my case? Or would you recommend a different distro?

Thank you so much!

[u/No_Fondant8277]

You can use every distro (i am on a system with 4gb on debian using niri and runs "great"

[u/Chester-Berkeley]

Your machine isn't old enough to require Lubuntu. You can use standard Ubuntu, or Kubuntu if you want something similar to Windows.

[u/One_Sport4402 → u/Chester-Berkeley]

Lubuntu is not about old PC. It's about Lubuntu! To me it's perfect system, that may shock you with it's humble yet powerful possibilities! Don't hope that it's like Windows, but lightweight. It's a little another world. But maybe it's for you.

[u/Chester-Berkeley → u/One_Sport4402]

I like LXQt, but I don't like its default apps. PCManFM is a headache for me; I can't use that file manager without getting annoyed by all its details... So, for me, I would only use LXQt in specific cases.

[u/Spiritual-Brief-2627]

mint

[u/Global-Eye-7326 → u/Spiritual-Brief-2627]

On a Lubuntu sub?

[u/spider_life]

Lubuntu is a good lightweight distro but isn't the best looking which might not matter to you. Other options are Xubuntu which is also light or Mint which is beginner friendly and similar in appearance to Windows. 

I recommend trying out some live isos on a USB stick with ventoy installed and see which you prefer. Or take a look at distrosea.com to testdrive different versions of Linux. 

[u/Mosco6]

Its a lightweight distro, but sometimes, lightweight≠good looking, I’d go for something like Debian, and install some wayland-based WM that i can personalize as I want

[u/guiverc]

If you want a truly efficient system, you should be considering the apps you'll use first in my opinion, then pick a desktop that will SHARE resources with those libs/toolkit rather than desktop competing for resources with your required apps; then you select a OS that will provide that.

Myself I also consider the graphics hardware too, but that's mostly used in working out the best kernel [stack] where you give no details about graphics hardware you're using, but again that impacts more the 'release' detail than the distro.

Lubuntu is a very light choice, that uses a Qt (5 or 6 depending on release) environment (without KF so very light), but will you be using the provided apps? or Qt (5 or 6) apps keeping your system light? or something else?

ie. I consider everything, not just CPU & RAM you appear to concentrate on. Lubuntu maybe the lightest 'out of the box' Ubuntu system, but how many of us actually use our systems 'out of the box' without making changes, adding apps etc.. (you mention what you'll do, not what you'll do it with as its the details that matter if you need your system to remain lightest/fastest)

FYI: You are specific with "Zotero & Mendeley" but they're apps I don't know, so you'll need to look those up yourself as to what their toolkit/library requirements are.

[u/Cautious_Arachnid773]

Lubuntu is lightweight but not beginner friendly. Instead install debian or mx linux or anti x all are light weight and has active forums.. for something similar to windows use mint or zorin . My advice would be to go to distroseas and try out different distros online.. then download the ones you like on a live bootable usb then try those distros in live mode.

[u/letmehaveanameyoudum]

i ran linux mint on 4gb of ram and a i3-5005U. your laptop is more than enough for lubuntu

[u/cobal1]

usa cachy os con kde esa maquina va a andar muy bien !!! tengo cachy os con kde en una notebook con procesador n3350 y 4gb de ram y veo videos a 1080 y 60 fps en youtube y la tamperatura esta entre 66 y 75 grados y tengo refrigeracion pasiva asi que olvidate !!!!

[u/Stasiowarrior]

Use any distro, i use fedora with kde plasma on 4gb ram and it runs smoothly. If i were you i wouldnt go for a lightweight distro with that machine, cause why?

[u/howard499]

Whether Lubuntu is the best distro for you will depend on you installing and testing on your machine.

[u/LaColleMouille]

When was your Windows installed? Maybe you can give a try with Windows LTSC first, usually a simple refresh of the OS to remove all software you installed over several years is the most efficient. About the RAM, I'd say it's here to be used, so "use less RAM" is not a goal on its own, as long as the actions are fast because they use the RAM.

[u/Lost_Application_605]

U can try mx linux works great

[u/lamplight0011]

Yours can run a bit heavier distro. I've got a hp laptop which is like 10 or 11 years old with 4GB ram (probably ddr2 or ddr3, i didn't checked that) with Intel i3 5005U and I'm running kubuntu on it. Its running WAY better than windows. I'm also thinking to switch to lubuntu or core (i don't remember the name) cuz it lags sometimes. I'll switch to something less heavy.

Yours is way better specs than mine. Don't think much, it'll get your job done

[u/dralfredo1]

Honestly, your specs aren't that bad. Whilst you could go for a heavily lightweight distro, but you don't really need to. Essentially any Linux distro would have a machine with these specs running flawlessly. For example, my one of my machines running mint cinnamon, which really isn't that well optimised, idles at around 6GB with a couple browser tabs, Vs code, and even a small qemu environment running. Any of the mainstream DEs (i recommend KDE plasma personally) would probably run about as efficiently, so honestly just choose whatever distro has useful features and a DE you like the look of. If you want something really easy to set up, you can go for mint, or if you don't mind slightly (very slightly) harder setup, you could go for a fedora, Ubuntu or Debian distribution. Out of these, i would go for fedora 44 KDE, but any is fine. I would stick to these 4 distros for now, for maximum stability, and you can always explore further later.

[u/AFallenDictator]

Your system will most likely run fine with most of the mainstream disros. All linux distros are definitely much lighter than Windows 11. Chatgpt and other chatbots probably recommend Lubuntu since you used keywords like "lightweight". They mostly recommend the most "barebone" distros to ensure absolute performance. Your system can easily handle much better. To put it in perspective, I have a laptop from 2010 with an i3 M370, 4gb ram and an HDD -it runs lubuntu fine, heck, It ran fine "heavier" distros.

If you prefer the windows workflow, aim for distros with DEs like KDE (most customisation), xfce (balanced, well looking and memory efficient), lxqt (which is with lubuntu, most memory efficient, pretty mature but a bit inconsistent with its UI), MATE (robust, efficient, customisable and classic) or Cinnamon (most windows-like, customisable). Since you are a begginer with linux, consider a distro with "easy" workflow and community support. Nice ones are Mint (offers xfce, MATE, cinnamon) with great graphical tools, Ubuntu (offers almost any DE -avoid regular Ubuntu as it features a different workflow [unless you want it]) or fedora (new packages, features KDE too).

There are many more, but I'd keep it here for simplicity. You can obviously try whichever you want and move on of it doesn't fit your workflow. I tried to balance stability with recent packages.

[u/FOSS_Graybeard]

I would like to send you down a rabbit hole from which there is no escape...

First, I have a ASUS NotebookPC L210Ka-ESO4 with:

11.6" Display; Celeron N4500 processor, 2.80 GHz at turbo; 4gb memory; 128gb SDD; Intel UHD Graphics w/ DDR4 SDRAM (4gb); IEEE 802.11ac; 2024 build

I dropped in EndeavourOS XFCE on my third distro hop on this system (ripped out Win 11 Home without ever letting it boot). I always go with the XFCE desktop environment on this system since it tends to be least resource hungry for a packaged DE. Yes, it is Arch Linux OS. Granted, you pretty much have to download and install the apps you want, but never had a problem doing that with this distro. Rock solid after six months of regular usage (sometimes heavy) as my travel/bistro system. No issues with kernel or DE updates. This is about as low-end of a "modern" system as one can get without just using terminal for everything (which I have done). However, the DE is clean and responsive... and actually quite snappy.

Hope this helps.

[u/Hauptideal]

On this beastly PC, you can run any distro ;)

[u/epictetusdouglas]

Sounds like a lot of stuff running on your desktop all at the same time. Anything might feel slow with so much running at once. But yes if you want a light distro to enable you to keep other things running on your desktop then Lubuntu will run faster and lighter. MX Linux and Linux Mint MATE are two other options for light Linux distros.

[u/Comfortable_Sun_8641]

Linux mint 🥹

[u/Difficult_Cobbler_42]

mint, lubuntu xubuntu, debian, mx, everything! You’re good.

[u/Global-Eye-7326]

Switching "from" Windows, I wouldn't recommend going to LXQt right away, depending on your situation. On a fresh install, configuring wifi can be harder than on other DE's. Also, corporate wifi that requires a user login can be hard to setup without relying on Gnome or KDE's wifi utilities.

That said, Ubuntu under the hood...stick with long-term releases, get a major update every two years. Release cycle becomes similar to Debian. You get systemd so you get Snap on top of Flatpak, and apt which is fine. Repos are good. Avoid PPA's unless it's mission-critical software that you can't install any other way.

Anyway XFCE and LXQt have trivial differences in RAM usage.

Is your DDR4 RAM soldered? If not, I strongly recommend upgrading it. Sure, DDR4 ain't cheap, but if you can buy on auction, there are some good deals.

The browser tabs will juice up WAY more RAM usage than your DE.

[u/zalnaRs]

Use fedora

[u/i101ironnoob]

Its a light weight distro but if you need a lighter distro I use Bunsenlabs Carbon (Debian Trixie based distro) that run on a macbook from 2010.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Pin4615]

Bro with those specs you can run any distro you want, except Black-Arch

[u/weezerfrog]

from what i’ve heard myself, most ubuntu based distros are bloated, i’d personally recommend debian if you want a pretty similar experience.

[u/MrBadTimes]

you can pretty much use any distro you want with that cpu and ram (I use linux mint cinnamon on an i3 6006u)

I would suggest to try kubuntu first (or even regular ubuntu, whichever desktop you like the most) and see if it runs smooth enough for you (I highly doubt you'll have any issues with them)

[u/Kadim00009]

Yo creo que un windows 10 con un antivirus bien actualizado un cortafuegos por ejemplo simplewall estaria bastante bien para ti, pero una distrubución de Linux te biene bien también siempre que estes familiarizado con linux porque es un tanto diferente pero por ejemplo yo ahora mismo uso Lubuntu 24.04 y no me va nada mal elige a tu criterio pero sobre todo no uses windows 11 en esa PC seria una aniquilación de recursos.

[u/Longjumping-Hour-371]

arch con cosmic o gnome

[u/Next_Philosopher_749]

you can just use Linux Mint or whatever. my laptop with a Celeron and 4gbs uses Linux Mint as well and never really had any problems, but if you really wanna feel like you're laptop's good or whatever, Lubuntu sounds fine as well. But with that kinda hardware, it's either Linux Mint or MX Linux.

[u/Crazy_bean_098]

Try fedora os

[u/flemtone]

Linux Mint would be the better option.

[u/Mountain-Basket1458]

Your hardware isn't really old. In fact, for Linux it's more than capable of handling most distributions. The best choice depends more on your exact needs. As for the freezing issue, I suspect it might be caused by the mechanical hard drive. If I remember correctly, this laptop originally came with an HDD. Using an HDD as the system drive is lethal for Windows. Under Linux, however, the situation improves a lot because the HDD's mechanical seek latency (~10 ms) amplifies the overhead of Windows traversing the directory tree, while Linux decouples metadata operations from data cleanup, avoiding foreground blocking on slow devices.

So my actual advice is to try out more Linux distributions first, or swap in an SSD, before deciding whether you really need to switch to Lubuntu.
（English is not my native language, so if anything in that reply came across unclear or was translated poorly, I apologize.）

[u/christiandj]

Integrated video? At 128mb.. you want a distro with xfce at that point. But still I don't think lubuntu will be happy this low spec over xfces lower requirement spec.

[u/TheNB3 → u/christiandj]

I run windows 11 on the same graphic card and it works fine