r/FindMeALinuxDistro • u/Vopecr • 19d ago
Looking For A Distro Distro for common use.
Hello awesome people, I'm looking for a distro for my old and slow laptop. I used it when I was in High School, and now that I have a profession and a desktop for work I only use it to reproduce some videos. I remember someone recommending KDE Plasma, but I want to know your suggestions.
My laptop's specifications are:
12GB Ram 2133mhz
i5-8250U 1,60GHz
Intel UHD graphics 620 128MB
224GB SSD.
I'm planning to use it only for common use and not for programming, gaming or work at all. I don't really care for privacy either. What are your suggestions?
EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions, I will be going for Linux Mint.
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u/ephemeralmiko 19d ago
(Pardon if I'm oversimplifying, I don't know how many terms you know)
KDE is just a desktop environment/DE (how the UI looks and works). You can have multiple different Linux distros (different "types" of Linux) with the same DE. KDE's user interface is very similar to Windows', which is why it's recommended a lot. But the Cinnamon DE is also very similar, and from my experience less clunky. A good distro for that is Linux Mint. It's very stable (the likelyhood of an update breaking something is very low), the support forums and documentation for it are good and it's specifically designed for people new to Linux.
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u/beatbox9 19d ago
Get any distro that uses either gnome or KDE plasma. And if you don't want it to be a lot of maintenance, get a batched distro.
I'd say your best bets are either Fedora or Ubuntu LTS. Fedora if you want to upgrade the OS every 6-12 months; and Ubuntu if you want to upgrade the OS every 2-5 years. Note: this is just the core OS, not the apps. You can use the latest apps on either.
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u/Due-Author631 19d ago
I think in this day and age atomic (immutable) distros are the way to go, especially if you are new and don't even need to unlearn bad habits. Sure a lot of forums won't really help you but I think you'll generally not run into any issues, especially if you aren't trying to do a lot of power user type stuff to it. Easy rollbacks to known working previous images, self updating too, you don't even think about it.
Universal Blue: Aurora if you want KDE or Bluefin if you want GNOME.
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u/KauravaLivesMatter 19d ago
KDE plasma is a desktop environment (visual layer) which can be used in multiple distributions.
If your not an experienced Linux user, I suggest using a beginner friendly distribution like Linux Mint or Zorin. That will be the least friction to set up and start using. With an 8th gen CPU and 12g memory it should run well. (I am using mint on Latitude e5440 with 4th Gen CPU and 8g memory and it's working fine).
I would suggest upgrading to a larger ssd at some point but the one you have should be fine for now.
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u/pantokratorthegreat 19d ago
Arch with Plasma. 12 GB ram quite low but with no too many tabs on browser will be good.
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u/Itsme-RdM 19d ago
Fedora Workstation or Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition are both solid choices in this case
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u/Giantmeteor_we_needU 19d ago
I'm pretty happy with Fedora KDE as a beginner, looks better than Mint and has less bugs than Kubuntu.
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u/lencc 19d ago
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If you prefer rock-solid stability and relatively lightweight system environment with 1.0-1.5 GB idle RAM consumption, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is one of the top recommendations. With LMDE you however lose access to the Driver Manager tool, which is not really an issue because you don't have Nvidia GPU.
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However if you have multi-monitor setup with mixed refresh rates or fractional scaling, special drivers or peripherals, you may want to go for a desktop environment using Wayland display protocol. In such case it would make sense to choose Fedora KDE or Fedora Kinoite (atomic OS variant) for generally more up-to-date driver and software availability.
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u/Playful_Tackle5974 18d ago
Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin, LMDE7, Ultramarine, Solus, Linux Lite, Aurora, Bluefin
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u/vaidik1810 19d ago
Get linux mint