Recently I’ve gave up Windows for Linux and installed Ubuntu with KDE Plasma desktop on my pc and laptop from 2007. It’s an i7 Intel processor with 8gb ddr ram so I thought it would be fine, but it seems quite sluggish. What distro could I use that would be faster and still fully functional? Thanks for your help in advance.
I’d try Xubuntu or Lubuntu, but honestly KDE should run fine on those specs.
I suspect it has an HDD: you’ll get a much more noticeable boost from upgrading to a $35 SSD than any distro choice will give you.
You’ve convinced me. I’ve just ordered ssd. We’ll see how it goes.
Yeah, laptop HDDs are shitty usually.
Seriously, I put an SSD in a Netbook(remember those?) for a friend and the performance increased noticeably, even with it running Windows 10. I bet it would’ve been even better if it was using something less bloated than Windows, but that’s what my friend wanted.
Ubuntu uses snaps, which I’ve found sluggish on older ide hard drives. To be honest, even flatpaks are very slow for these in my experience.
I think you might be better off with
opensuse tumbleweed.Novelty recommendation besides tumbleweed:
antix.While I haven’t used
antixexcept out of curiosity in a virtual machine, they are lightweight, but they have a hard stance against systemd.Thanks, I have installed tumbleweed today and I like it. It is much faster too. I’m unsure about learning two different sets of commands just when I’m switching. I guess I have time to decide until my ssd arrives.
Very cool.
Interesting timing that opensuse recently announced slowroll, which has a slower cadence for updates (updates with monthly frequency, rather than daily, while security updates are still ASAP.
Depending on whether frequent updates is you thing or you prefer slightly delayed cycles… you can easily convert your install to
slowroll
To be honest, I don’t really care that much. Once upon a time I got excited about updates and new features, now I just want things to work. I enjoy exploring Linux and how it’s different, I like seeing the updates come in and it makes me feel safer, but at the end of the day, I’m just a normal user who needs much less than the OS offers.
I’ve used a lot of distributions over the years, and I don’t think you have to worry about a different set of commands across most distributions. It’s some variation of
distropkgmgrfollowed by command, where command, where command is generally one ofinstallupgraderefresh/updateremovesearchto name the most common. If you use a software frontend likegnome-softwareordiscover, you don’t even need to worry about command line differences.The only exception to that is
nixos, which I wouldn’t recommend to someone just switching. It is very cool, just needs more experience.The shell commands are the same one installed for the most part.
Out of curiosity, are you planning to use a different os when your ssd arrives? I switched from Ubuntu to endeavouros (Arch) to Opensuse tumbleweed on my primary laptop (i9 processor), no complaints 😁!
I’ll keep the desktop with ubuntu and kde plasma and I’ve installed openSuse tumbleweed on the laptop. The ssd made a huge difference. I’ve made it dual boot with win7, which I’ve reinstalled on the laptop and they’re both blazing fast. It’s a steep learning curve, but I like the freedom of Linux versus the big brother approach of Windows.
Debian XFCE
Linuxmint with xfce, perfect.
or just linux mint cinnamon it still low resource and beatiful
It is, no doubt. xfce is lower though. In my 10 yo system xfce uses less ram than cinnamon.
true, but he still has 8g of ram
I use both in my mint machine. I love both. However you see it, xfce is lighter in resources.
If you’re married to Ubuntu, I’d suggest Xubuntu. It’s Ubuntu using the XFCE desktop environment. XFCE can be a little… hard on the eyes by default, but it’s super lightweight, very stable, and very customizable. It can be a very aesthetically pleasing DE with a little theming and an icon pack.
Outside of Ubuntu, Id suggest Linux Mint with XFCE. I know, I know, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu so why bother? Well, it’s not Canonical. They’ve done some great things over the years, but recently… I just tend to stay away.
Personally, I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Love it, I’ll never leave it. It’s amazing. But without knowing your personal preferences or use cases, and with the info in your post, I have to recommend Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE. Also I agree with the other commenter, you’d benefit a lot from an upgrade to an SSD.
Well, I’ve ordered ssd and installed openSuse tumbleweed. I like it and it’s much snappier too, but the command line is different to ubuntu and I don’t think i want to learn two sets of commands. I guess I’ll have to decide which way I want to go.
You won’t go wrong no matter which you end up choosing. I am personally a huge fan of the way OpenSUSE runs their ship, and some of the tools there are incredible.
YaST, for example, is a system management tool that provides the most extensive GUI for managing your system settings I’ve seen on a Linux distro period. Yes, all the settings can be managed from a terminal, but it’s nice to have a graphical option sometimes.
Just play around with it since you’ve already got it installed, and see how you like it. There’s a strong and friendly community surrounding the distro, so reach out if you’ve got any questions! You’re also welcome to ask me. I may not have all the answers, but I’m pretty certain I can find someone who can help lol.
I’ve tried a few distos, but as for you, opensuse is the way to go for me. I got a new ssd to replace my old hdd and it’s super fast. The new OS is like a shiny new toy that will keep me entertained for awhile. In the end, I’m just a normal person and won’t need most of the features, but it’s nice to have them.
If you haven’t yet, I would run the following commands:
sudo zypper install opiopi codecsThis will enable the Packman repositories (repos will commonly used non-free software, like multimedia codecs) and install multimedia codecs for watching videos and playing music and the like.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re enjoying OpenSUSE! It’s a delightful distro and community.
I think Zorin Lite OS will be good distro for a old laptop becuase I also install this distro on my very old computer(16 Years Old and have 2gb ram and Pentium Processor) and It work fine.
MX Linux, it is using Debian Xfce, it should run ok
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If you are an advanced user voidlinux is very good for laptops, in my experience without systemd you have faster boot timings.
+1 Void Linux revived my old ThinkPad very well.
Use the image with XFCE and glibc for the easiest time.
Try running the same distro on a live USB drive. If it runs faster on USB then it’s likely your HD that’s the problem. As many have said, XFCE is very light weight, if you can’t get KDE running smoothly. As an experiment you could try installing Fedora. The way the installer works is that it boots a live version, which you can use. In the live version you have an icon to install to your system. Use the live version a while, then install and run the installed version. Normally the installed version should be noticably faster.
but it seems quite sluggish.
For some odd reason I will ask did you check your scaling governor?
It’s an i7 Intel processor with 8gb
Whoa nelly! I have old i5 and had 8gb, now 16.
I use gentoo across many of my devices, even on ARM SBCs, but it’s notwhat everyone would like. For SBCs I compile binary packages with my configs.
Do laptop and pc have same processor?
Also what is your GPU?
My apologies, it’s only 4gb ram and I did overestimated the age as well. It’s i7-2630m processor, video is nvidia gt 540m.
Based on another commenter’s advice I installed openSuse tumbleweed and it is quite snappy and I like it, but I’ve noticed that working terminal is different and since I’m transitioning from Windows and learning Linux I don’t want to learn two sets of commands. Decisions, decisions…
It’s i7-2630m processor
I have sandybridge too)
video is nvidia gt 540m.
Maybe it will be useful to read on nouveau reclocking
Based on another commenter’s advice I installed openSuse tumbleweed and it is quite snappy and I like it
Yes, good stuff. I used it, worked well.
Linux I don’t want to learn two sets of commands.
Across POSIX-compatible systems commands are same, except system-specific like packet manager
In that case I’ll most likely stick with opensuse on the laptop.
I ran Mint with Maté until recently on a core2duo with 4GB of RAM and it ran quite well.
I only really retired that machine because I bought a new daily driver… It still works fine actually (except for the battery)
Is it a Core i7 or a Core 2 series processor? 2007 would suggest the latter, and I would absolutely argue for either that you really should prefer something with Xfce or a similar lightweight desktop (maybe Cinnamon or MATE).
I’d probably recommend Linux Mint as a lightweight user-friendly distro, and I’d suggest any of the three available variants based on what you like the most aesthetically.
Additionally, if you haven’t opened them up for a while, pick up an inexpensive SSD for both of them if they don’t have them already. Modern OSes really expect an SSD over a spinning disk as the boot drive.
I misremembered the specs it’s actually i7-2630m, which indicates that I thought I got the laptop later than I thought. I’ve ordered a ssd so hopefully that will improve the speed.
LXLE is best for this. https://lxle.net/
Or lxqt if you you don’t like gtk
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