Mint system requirements

[TheGlenlivet]

I recently picked up a super cheap core2 duo laptop for couch-side browsing and youtube content, that will have 4 GB of RAM and a u7300 (2 cores). In the past I've installed Mint/Cinnamon on VMs with 2 cores and about the same RAM, but never tried it on bare metal.  Would i be better off using Lubuntu/Linux Lite/ Xubuntu etc. or will Mint be ok on this system?  Would XFCE or another desktop work better than Cinnamon?

 

Thanks!

[Nettly_]

Mint should do more than fine, I tested it with similar specs. I would however keep a backup plan of Lubuntu, that is a general rule of Linux. Always have a backup plan. General rule of life to be honest.

[TheGlenlivet]

2 minutes ago, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

Mint should do more than fine, I tested it with similar specs. I would however keep a backup plan of Lubuntu, that is a general rule of Linux. Always have a backup plan. General rule of life to be honest.

I got backups for backups.  I hear ya.

This machine should never have anything important on it, so files aren't the issue.  It's more the peppiness of the system I'm worried about running all the Cinnamon bling.

Actually, as I wrote that I just realized - I could install Mint, like it and keep it or delete it and install something else if I want.  It's a $20 machine.  No risk.

[Lenovo1984]

I would personally go with Mint and the MATE desktop. It works well for me on specs like that. 

[Nettly_]

11 minutes ago, Lenovo1984 said:

I would personally go with Mint and the MATE desktop. It works well for me on specs like that. 

Cinnamon isn't bad. Mint with the MATE desktop is yes a good option, but Cinnamon still works

[vorticalbox]

On 7/4/2019 at 8:53 PM, Lenovo1984 said:

I would personally go with Mint and the MATE desktop. It works well for me on specs like that. 

 

On 7/4/2019 at 9:05 PM, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

Cinnamon isn't bad. Mint with the MATE desktop is yes a good option, but Cinnamon still works

 

So the real quests is which desktop environment will run best on the hardware  

I would start on MATE you can always change it if you like.

[TheGlenlivet]

On 7/4/2019 at 12:53 PM, Lenovo1984 said:

I would personally go with Mint and the MATE desktop. It works well for me on specs like that. 

 

On 7/4/2019 at 1:05 PM, SafyreLyons-5LT said:

Cinnamon isn't bad. Mint with the MATE desktop is yes a good option, but Cinnamon still works

 

5 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

 

 

So the real quests is which desktop environment will run best on the hardware  

I would start on MATE you can always change it if you like.

Started out on Mint Cinnamon, but there was some lag going from window to window in browsers, file explorer etc. so I changed it up to Linuxlite.  So far so good.  Seems to use about 500MB less ram in the same tasks.  A little uglier, but its a 1366x786 screen, I'm not really missing much.

 

Thanks all for the suggestions.