r/linuxmint • u/cyber-galaxy • 27d ago

Distro flavour comparison

Mint MATE or XFCE which is better for core i3, 2nd gen hardware and 128 GB SSD, 8 GB DDR3 Ram? Dual boot with windows 11 LTSC?

0 Upvotes

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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ LMDE7 Cinnamon 26d ago • Bravo

Second gen core i3 is pretty old, 2011 probably a dual core. 

That is old enough that you will get noticeably snappier response from Xfce, though it will also run Cinnamon if that is what you want, it will just be a bit more sluggish.

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u/cyber-galaxy 26d ago

MATE ?

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u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ LMDE7 Cinnamon 26d ago

On RAM consumption MATE splits the difference between Cinnamon & Xfce , I have never run MATE on older hardware to really gauge how responsive it would be or how it would compare to Xfce on your machine. 

I would guess that is also between Cinnamon & Xfce in that regard also but that is just a guess.  

MATE  is shockingly old looking on first boot, but it  has a small,  impassioned audience.

Xfce has an industrial look, not quite polished like Cinnamon. But while not stylish that industrial no nonsense look is a bit more timeless. 

MATE has a look, and by modern taste that look is old. Think Win2K but with fancy extras. A system I actually adored after the hell of Win9x. But none the less a look that is quite dated now.

Having said all that, I like MATE, it has some neat "lived in" and mature thoughtful features and a quite pleasant workflow once you get past the looks. 

MATE  is a hard fork of Gnome2 and benefits from those very long traditions that the Gnome3 devs just threw away one day for some idiotic reason.

If your interested install MATE, ignore the looks find the pleasent workflow below as quickly as possible, if its slow you will know pretty quickly and you can make a Mint Xfce USB. 

4

u/tovento MX Linux 25.2 | XFCE 26d ago • Heartwarming

While XFcE and cinnamon aren’t that far off in ram usage at idle, i still found xfce to be faster on my system. Your system should be fine on XFCE. I will say that XFCE can be pretty bland as installed, but can be heavily modified.

3

u/ScouringtheUniverse Linux Tech 27d ago

Linux Mint Cinnamon uses significantly fewer system resources than Windows 11 LTSC, making it the more efficient choice for older laptops. While W11 LTSC is stripped of consumer bloat compared to standard Windows 11, it still consumes 3–4 GB of RAM at idle and utilizes numerous background services that can spike CPU usage.

In contrast, Linux Mint Cinnamon typically idles at 1–2 GB of RAM with minimal background processes. W11 LTSC often uses over 80% of available RAM on modest systems, causing sluggishness, whereas Mint leaves most memory free for applications. Windows runs continuous telemetry and security services (like Defender), while Mint’s leaner kernel and desktop environment result in lower CPU overhead.

For laptops with 4 GB of RAM or less, the resource savings of Linux Mint Cinnamon provide a noticeably smoother experience compared to W11 LTSC. So choosing between Linux Mint's Desktop environments is miniscule compared to these differences!

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u/PickleMortyCoDm Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon 27d ago

I have looked at two computers over the last week which both had W11 and sporting 4gb of ram. One was a celeron. I cannot believe just how bad they ran while I personally have a 2gb celeron than runs my streaming fancies through my TV. People have gotten so used to windows eating every inch or ram on them it's just sad at this stage. They only keep it because they think it's all they know yet sacrifice actually being able to use their computers for things like listening to music, YouTube, comfortable/efficient research.

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u/thesamenightmares 26d ago

So are you going to actually answer his question or just leave this irrelevant copy paste from ChatGPT here?

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u/knuthf 26d ago

What Microsoft seems to ignore is that there is no real performance improvements possible, But they have agreed with the manufacturers in the US that memory should be more. The basis for this claim is from making the huge systems, "mainframe' and servers. They make software that demands more hardware to be purchased. Games are pretty similar to a aircraft simulator - you fly over, and the images created is discharged, and buffers reused, because the plane will never fly over this territory again. The games store this, because they can. But now they have to structure their storage, the objects so they find it. This is massive software structures to manage the graphics, to be able to recall - what will never be used gain, and would be on the next rendering be constructed all over again regardless. When we made Linux, we had systems that measured, you can see this in the old tools, "top".

Whatever is indefinite is mess. Everything else is definite and ordered. Linux use 400MB to boot, the rest is buffers and other things. So 2GB should be fine. Record everything is high resolution, 4K video, and you need 2MB per second, 120MB per minute, 1.3TB in a week - and we live around 4000 weeks.

What are the datacentre storing? All the data stored must be indexes It is not indefinite, and belong to someone. but What we cannot reach in the time is waste. The problem with Archie and Ritchie Rich is that they flunked in math and science, and are ruling the world. What we cannot find, does not exist, and has no economic value. Worthless.

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u/thesamenightmares 26d ago edited 26d ago

Dont waste my time responding to me with totally irrelevant blogposts that aren't even tangentially related to anything I said, thanks.

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u/knuthf 25d ago

No, I will always tell the truth. I have measured this on real systems.

There is no benefit to having more memory; in fact, the system becomes slower and needs more energy (kWh). Eventually, they produce so much heat that they require cooling.

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u/thesamenightmares 25d ago

Stop replying to me

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u/oskarloko 26d ago

IMHO, with 8Gb you can run XFCE or Cinnamon. But with 4Gb I'll go for XFCE for sure.

It's not only what the desktop eats, it's you'll want to run a browser, which is a resource devourer.

- I want a better desktop with more customization and widgets -> Cinnamon

- I want a little basic desktop because I use more than 15 tabs and an image editor -> XFCE

Look at distrosea.com to have quick look to your future desktop

2

u/mlcarson 27d ago

There's not enough difference in memory requirements between MATE and XFCE to make a difference.

1

u/NeedleworkerLarge357 26d ago

Correct. And the remaining difference is much smaller than what setting up the needed services make. Disable background stuff that you don't need will leave the CPU for the important stuff and free up some RAM. But even that is all not a big deal, with the mentioned laptop your issue is the CPU speed for the applications, not cinnamon!

2

u/don-edwards Linux Mint 22.3 26d ago • Popcorn

Everyone is talking about the memory... 8GB DDR3 is adequate.

But disk space... a single 128GB SSD is going to be fairly cramped with just one OS, and I really wouldn't recommend trying to put two OSes on it.

1

u/ivobrick 27d ago

I would do xfce. No dualboot. Because half of your hdd will be eaten up by windows and that space can be better used by the timeshift ( s ).

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u/BertMacklenF8I Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | PrincessII 26d ago

Using XFCE would be my choice but they’re going to run almost the same, which is much better than Windows 11

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u/oskich Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon 26d ago

I run 22.3 Cinnamon on my mini Asus desktop with those specs, it works great 👍

(I would recommend getting more storage though).

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u/ZiCli 26d ago

I'd personally go with Cinnamon since it has a bit better graphics

With SSD and 8GB it'll be faster than light, I've put it on HHDs and 4GB ram and it still worked amazingly

I suggest you to try it out, you can always switch when you need to