Hello there. I'm a beginner so keep that in mind. I have an old laptop (something like 10 yo). It has an HDD, 4 gigs of DDR3, an i3 4th gen 1.7
GHz and an NVidia Geforce 710M (Windows Game Ready Driver 391.35 WHQL which I think doesn't support Wayland). It also has CSM BIOS so yeah. It has the option of UEFI but the GeForce (I think) doesn't support it.
Currently, it has Windows 10 on it, but it has been veeeeery sluggish. I'm planning to upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs and upgrade to an SSD, but (even if I upgrade those parts) I don't want to use Windows anymore, at all.
So, I have a few options. (kinda in order)
Linux Mint
Fedora, though idk if the 2 GHz requirement is a big problem
Pop!_OS
MX Linux
Debian
Ubuntu and its flavors
Zorin OS
and maybe Solus? though the same problem with fedora.
Yeah yeah ik, all of these except Fedora and Solus are Debian/Ubuntu based.
DE options: (again, also kinda in order)
KDE Plasma (love the looks of it, though is my hardware enough?)
Cinnamon
XFCE - LXDE - LXQT (because of "lightweightness" :D)
Budgie
5. GNOME too heavy
These are some options for me. If you have any more suggestions, let me know. Also, are there any compatibility issues with my system for the distros/DEs?
Thanks for the replies in advance.
(Note: this was also posted in the m/linux@kbin.social magazine and the r/linux4noobs subreddit. don't ask why im still on reddit, it's because of Infinity for reddit.)
(Another note: If you saw this post before, it's because of /kbin's issues. I reposted it because no one saw it before.)
Cinnamon is a little heavier on the hardware but especially with Linux Mint it's a great choice to get into Linux and a Debian base is a great choice, you won't utelize any new features on that hardware and it's really stable! About KDE, that's actually very light weight too so you shouldn't have any issues in that regard if you decide to use it especially in comparison to Cinnamon, I would just recommend Mint Cinnamon more for a new user! :)