Which linux distro should I use on this laptop:

[miloskrsikapa]

N4020 Celeron 2.8ghz 2Cores 2threads

8gb ram

UHD 600 graphics

I have tried bodhi linux, elementary OS but I wasn't sattisfied enough . Should I go with Arch?

[da na]

Welcome to the forums!

I'd recommend Debian or an older Ubuntu. 

[KaitouX]

16 minutes ago, miloskrsikapa said:

I have tried bodhi linux, elementary OS but I wasn't sattisfied enough .

With what?

[GameRetro]

I was just messing with a home server installation the other day on a ThinkCentre M93p with a 4th gen i5 and 4 GB of ram. Had Windows 10 on it and with HDD it was unbearable.

 

In a CLI environment though it didn't matter that much, but still switching to an SSD was a day and night difference.

 

So my question would be - does it have an SSD? What will it be used for?

 

If you want a desktop environment I presume it's more important what kind of a desktop environment you go with. From what I checked you could try:

 

LXQt (https://lxqt-project.org/) or LXDE (http://www.lxde.org/)

 

I would also second the Debian and Ubuntu recommendations since they are well covered by guides, so much so that even a Linux newb like me had a good time installing some complex stuff.

 

EDIT: If you want an all in one package then probably LUBUNTU since it's being presented as a lightweight and less resource intensive distro:

 

https://lubuntu.me/

[RollyShed]

On 3/7/2022 at 12:04 PM, miloskrsikapa said:

I have tried bodhi linux, elementary OS but I wasn't sattisfied enough . Should I go with Arch?

Satisfied with what?

I recommend Linux Mint Cinnamon. Easy to use, comes with everything needed by default. Everything unless you are trying to do something else....????

[TorC]

IMO, start with antiX -- possibly the best all-around distro for older/resource-challenged PCs.

Celeron, even 2-core, is the bottleneck, it wouild seem.  Are you looking for performance or looks.  I go with the former.

[Wild Penquin]

It really boils down to what you were not satisfied with. What are you going to do with it?

 

Any distribution can be thinned down (shut down unnecessary services), but it really doesn't matter that much. While 8GB of RAM might be a bit little these days, the background services don't consume that much resources or CPU cycles after all.

 

Arch is good in that it doesn't install anything extra but only the stuff you want. This also means it will be more difficult; it will assume the user needs nothing and you will need to install and configure a lot of stuff which might be there per default on some other distribution. As such Arch will also require you to be able to read it's documentation (having a general feel how a Linux system works, with GNU tools and the command line helps). It's really nothing too special in terms of resource usage.

 

Assuming you had problems with the DE? For a desktop user, what matters more is the choice of DE than the distribution.

 

If it was lack of RAM, then the mentioned LxQt and lxde are not nearly as lightweight as they used (relatively speaking) to mainstream DEs; for example KDE had Plasma some major reworking with the recent versions to reduce RAM use.

 

If you need something really lightweight, try a tiling window manager (instead of a full-blown DE) such as i3 - it won't get much lighter than that (even by running bare X.org), but be prepared to have a  keyboard cheat sheet ready for it's shortcuts, hand-edit the configuration files and shift your mindset to a tiling window manager.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Wild Penquin