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I want to revive an old Lenovo laptop with an AMD A6 2.6GHz and 4GB ram, what would be the best option for a DE?

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[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 30 points 4 months ago

PSA no matter how light your distro, any modern app or webpage will use all that power

[–] Trent@lemmy.ml 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I usually go with Xfce.

[–] eugenia@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 months ago (3 children)

That's fast enough to run the latest Linux Mint with Cinnamon. I have two laptops with the exact same cpu speed (passmark score) and 4 GB of ram. With 2 GB swap file you will be in business.

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[–] Zier@fedia.io 12 points 4 months ago

I'm running Kubuntu on less than that on a desktop and it works just fine.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you are still using X, get Fluxbox, very lightweight, requires some config, but that is fairly easy.

[–] Pacmanlives@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

+1 for Fluxbox!

It’s such an underrated WM

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[–] azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 months ago

LXQt, XFCE Or a window manager, they’re all lightweight.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Technically not a DE, but I like plain openbox.

[–] CarlCook@feddit.de 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wasn‘t there a crunchbang project putting this nicely together with debian? I remember it fondly, but that is centuries ago…

[–] MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] OopsAllTwix@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

There's also Mabox, Archcraft, and Arco.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you don’t need a full desktop environment, check-out IceWM.

I recently checked-out Trinity ( essentially KDE 3 modernized ) and was surprised how decent it was. I used it in Q4OS but it may be available in your distro.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

I use IceWM on antiX. Seems to be a good mix of low resource usage and aesthetics.

[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 months ago (5 children)
  • the big guns: Gnome or Plasma
  • the middle tier: Xfce or LXQt
  • the lightweights: tiling window managers (and there’s a LOT to choose from)
  • the alternative crowd: Mate, Cinnamon, Regolith
[–] Crying4625@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I think gnome and KDE Plasma are just too heavy. And I would use a WM if it was for me, in fact that what I use in my daily driver but it is for someone not that tech savvy. I may check one from the alternative crowd tho. Thanks for the answer

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 months ago

plasma is surprisingly performant

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago

I seem to remember hearing about Plasma having similar memory usage to XFCE. Don’t quote me on that lol

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Try KDE Plasma, you can strip out a ton of it, for example XOrg entirely, baloo, animations, etc.

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[–] RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

OP asked for desktop env, and tiling window managers are... Well only window managers and not desktop environments...

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago

Its fairly difficult to find "up-to-date" performance / RAM comparisons of Linux Desktop environments, but here's a decent one from 2019 comparing memory usage of different Ubuntu flavors.

The most surprising thing is that despite KDE Plasma's reputation as being more ram-hungry, it actually used less ram than XFCE, meaning its developers have been making performance a focus.

[–] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

KDE plasma. From my experience it uses less resources than lxqt and xfce and works out of the box while lxqt and xfce required extra work to get wifi, screen brightness controls and audio working. I can have 10+ tabs in a chromium based browser open without lag on an old laptop with 2GB ram and 1.33 - 1.83GHz 4 core intel atom from 10 years ago.

[–] gi1242@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

s/chromium/Firefox/g

[–] Sina@beehaw.org 5 points 4 months ago

A window manager like i3 or Openbox. If you are curious what that's like, then try out Bunsenlab Linux. (XFWM4 is also a great choice, but it requires some know how to properly rip out the rest of Xfce, like the relatively heavy desktop and the panel)

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago

I would go mx linux fluxbox

[–] poinck@lemm.ee 4 points 4 months ago

You could try Niri. I have tested it with a ~10 year old notebook with a 1st gen Core i5 cpu.

But, even newest Gnome runs smooth on this machine.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Xfce, LXQt or just install JWM and enjoy the 30 Mb idle RAM usage

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 months ago

LXQt, XFCE, Maté, TDE. Any of them will do. Which you choose depends on personal preference and how large an ecosystem you want—LXQt has only a few basic applications, TDE has pretty much everything that was in KDE3, the others are somewhere in between.

[–] dasenboy@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Probably lxqt. https://lxqt-project.org/ Very lightweight yet a full-on DE (minus bells and whistles). Found on most Linux distros repositories.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Does Xfce count as light? It's got plenty of features. Should fit in 4gb well enough though.

[–] RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

If xfce doesnt count as light I don't know what would

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[–] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

There are many options, but I'd say on those specs anything will run more or less fine with some tweaks/settings.

Personally I would go with KDE Plasma, because I feel most comfortable with it. It can be pretty light on system ressources when configured properly. Disable all the visual stuff (animations, blur, anti aliasing) and some of it's background modules (baloo and some other stuff that you personally don't need).

But you should take the one you are familiar with and find out how you can tweak it to be more light. Cheers

[–] Crying4625@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I have tested KDE plasma in my main pc for a few weeks now and the ram consumption seems pretty high and have too many options. I'm looking for something light and easy to use (not many options) since the pc is going to be used by someone not very tech savvy.

[–] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Measuring RAM usage is extremely tricky, because programs will use more than they need, if there is lots of unused RAM available. Check out https://www.linuxatemyram.com if you want to learn more.

For me KDE Plasma uses over a gig on my main PC after a fresh boot. But it also ran perfectly fine on a 512MB ancient laptop.

[–] schwim@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I love OB with tint2 and conky , no de needed.

[–] Crying4625@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

If it was for me I could use something like that. But I don't think the person I'll give the pc to would be able to lol

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[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Your biggest problem is going to be the 4 GB of RAM. Saving a few hundred megs on the DE will help but not much. If you run a web browser ( and I cannot imagine using a computer without one ) that RAM is going to fill up fast.

Honestly, I would use a 32 bit distro on that hardware.

Q4OS with Trinity, Antix, Adelie, and DSL are all pretty decent options.

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[–] jaypatelani@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Moksha Desktop environment Bodhi Linux

[–] jaypatelani@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

Or Fedora Budgie Edition

[–] robber@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

Does not answer your question, and someone already mentioned it in a thread, but don't forget zram when only 4GBs are available.

[–] b0rlax@beehaw.org 3 points 4 months ago
[–] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

For something with that little memory, I would use a minimal window manager; you'll want every megabyte of memory if you want to have any chance at running something like a javascript-capable browser without constantly hammering swap. fvwm, cwm, jwm, and ratpoison are all small window managers I enjoy; but do your own research into what window manager is the best for you.

[–] gi1242@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

honestly they are all pretty good at this point. start with the default ur distro supports. if that isn't to your taste try kde/plasma, gnome or lxde

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Is the A6 from 2017/18? Should be fine with anything. My wife's laptop is from 2010/11. I tried all the DEs because of the lightness claims, I found GNOME worked the best, and it is super peppy running NixOS.

I asked online why GNOME would perform better than what is assumed a lighter DE, and a comouter dude says GNOME goes and gets everything it needs and caches it when you launch something so retrieval is faster in the app, KDE loads stuff on demand as it is asked for so a alow CPU and HDD hinderes KDE for me.

if you can afford it, by 4 more gigs of RAM

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Get an SSD as it will make your life way better

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[–] 737@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 months ago

river or sway

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