Which DE for my parent's laptop (old Lenovo IdeaPad)? Wayland or X11?

I chose Debian 12 as a solid and stable base. Which of these shipped DEs is the best for this particular laptop series and Windows 10 like user experience?

GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18

Don’t know the exact laptop model and year, but here are some specs: IdeaPad, only HDD, DVD drive, shipped with Win 8 or 10 (I think), unbearably slow on Win 10 currently

Use case: office, web, movies (not streaming), things for non-tech-savvy users

Personally, I’m using Arch btw with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, so I would prefer this over other DEs, but Debian still ships version 5. Has anyone experience with performance on an old Lenovo laptop with any of the listed environments?

eugenia,
@eugenia@lemmy.ml avatar

I’d go with XFce. I have it installed on many old laptops that I have given away to my cousins, nieces, and mom. Works like old Windows if you modify the panels (remove the bottom dock, bring the main panel down), and then you put some sane defaults, like setting up sleep (NOTE: you will need to edit a file to make xfce go to sleep unattended), enabling natural scrolling, enabling the login manager to show username so they don’t have to type it every time, etc etc). But after all that is setup once, xfce is the best case for an old laptop.

Communist,
@Communist@lemmy.ml avatar

I highly recommend fedora kinoite for people who don’t want to do maintenance or don’t know how.

It being immutable makes updates incredibly easy, and makes it much harder to break the system, and kde is best for people who are familiar with windows.

isVeryLoud,

I can’t recommend KDE for people who aren’t comfortable with computers as there are so many settings they can get into without knowing how to get it back the way it was.

GNOME with Dash to Panel is usually good enough for those used to Windows’ layout, and you can set them up with Silverblue to get the same immutability.

Communist,
@Communist@lemmy.ml avatar

Gnome addons break nearly every version upgrade, so, I wouldn’t recommend dash to panel, and the problem of settings they can get into is actually mitigated by kinoites snapshotting.

TheGrandNagus, (edited )

Dash to panel gets updated long before Gnome typically hits stable. Especially on Debian like OP mentions.

Pantherina,

No KDE settings are all done in the homedir, there is nothing snapshotted here

bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240862

afterthoughts,

Err, KDE at least gives people the option to configure their system how they want.

GNOME takes those options away, so if you don’t like what they have then you’re stuck.

GNOME with Dash to Panel

Yeah, it also requires a lot of 3rd party addons to achieve basic functionality. Laymen shouldn’t have to search for these, and they also shouldn’t have to deal with them when they inevitably break.

Gnome hasn’t been for normal users since Gnome2. That’s when they started doing things “the gnome way” instead of just what’s pragmatic.

Berny23,
@Berny23@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Whoa, that’s a lot of comments. Thanks for your suggestions, guys. I will think about this.

TheAnonymouseJoker,

If anyone is telling you to avoid GNOME, avoid them.

Pick GNOME and both your parents and you as tech support will enjoy life and enjoy using the computer. Wayland is pretty solid on Debian/Ubuntu, but it still is not as “easy” as X11, as X11 behaves normally like Windows for drag/cut/copy mouse operations.

Whatever you like will not necessarily work for them. So avoid pushing any of your own choices on them.

You can enable the Applications menu and put Dash To Panel extension to make things great. Also, there is nothing must have about the Start paradigm from Windows. GNOME’s workflow with the fusion of tiling and snapping windows in GNOME 45 is very close to the future of computing.

monsterpiece42,

As other have said, please do an SSD swap.

If it’s “unbearably slow” that is an indication of drive failure especially on old boot drives. Linux will not fix this.

After that, Cinnamon if they like windows. Gnome if they don’t or don’t care.

Pop os is a great “fire and forget” OS for normal users. I work in a computer shop and have seen tons of not-knowledgable people run it without issues.

jaypatelani,
@jaypatelani@lemmy.ml avatar

Fedora Budgie desktop edition and keep automatic updates on

leadore,
@leadore@kbin.social avatar

I think MATE is the best balance between lighter weight and ease of use.

Pantherina,

Mate doesnt bundle in a ton of dependencies like KDE or even GNOME, but RAM usage between KDE, XFCE, MATE, Budgie etc. is pretty similar

Pantherina, (edited )

Disclaimer I am on Fedora Kinoite with soon Plasma 6 too.

Staying in an older Fedora Kinoite version will spare you from the breaking changes. Like currently 38 instead of 39. I would use ublue kinoite-main. You can disable animations, baloo etc. and have a very minimal experience. (Kinoite is way lighter than Fedora KDE and doesnt even include Gwenview, Okular or Kate)

Have a look at EndlessOS. Easy Desktop, immutable Debian base afaik. VanillaOS also has a Debian variant.

Immutable stable Distros are really needed. But I think Fedoras rpm-ostree is currently better, because it uses a git-like approach. I also think it is overcomplex and moves too slowly, so I imagine something may surpass it.

Automatic upgrades like traditional distros are not enough (they only annoy users but dont really apply them), you need really automatic ones.

Ublue has ublue-update on some editions, which is really nice. Fedora wants to implement some half baked solution I guess. If your Grandparents are always at home and on power that is no problem though (metered networks, low battery, AC connected).

Pantherina,

Edit: EndlessOS is the immutable Debian distro, not ElementaryOS.

drhoopoe,

Linux Mint Debian Edition. Very windows-like + automatic updates = ideal for people who don’t really want to have to learn anything new (assuming your parents are like mine in that respect).

Pantherina,

Linux mint doesnt update automatically, does it? It warns about them, but you need to press “okay”.

n2burns,

You can setup unattended-updates to handle most of those.

Pantherina,

Yes that would do it. But I wonder if that would silence Mints update notices. These would be redundant and should be disabled/removed.

drhoopoe,

You have to enable it, but once you do it can do them automatically.

zkrzsz,

Mint Cinnamon. I would choose Zorin Lite (XFCE) as it has nice theme already.

Cwilliams,

Gnome won’t break. If you don’t want them calling you up in the middle of a work day saying, “why did the bar at the bottom of the screen disappear!?” or “Berny, my screen turned black!”, install Gnome

Pantherina,

Yes but on GNOME you dont even have a bar at the bottom. GNOME Classic may suit here, or using Dash-to-panel which is very well maintained but may break.

DaTingGoBrrr,

The Plasma desktop is well supported and is pretty close to a Windows experience.

I hate Gnome with passion because it’s nothing like Windows. I tested Ubuntu 2009 and the Gnome DE is what made me not like Linux. I did not know at the time that KDE Plasma also existed

cyberpunk007,

In 2009 gnome was still windows-like IMO. It’s gnome shell that flipped the script.

DaTingGoBrrr, (edited )

The wierd app drawer was still a thing and a few other things I really didn’t like. Canonical was giving away copies to try at Dreamhack Summer. I remember it very well

jack,

Debian is old and full of bugs. “Stable” means you are stuck with faulty, but known-state software. To have a carefree distro where you don’t need to assist at all I recommend Bazzite (it’s not just for gamers). Tested updates are applied automatically

HumanPerson,

You are simply wrong about Debian. You can say that old packages are annoying sometimes, that is fair, but they aren’t any buggier than other distros. Debian updates include security patches and bugfixes, just not feature updates.

composer5145,

Misinformed.

jack,

At least when I used Mint, PopOS, PureOS and Ubuntu Server (all Debian based) I always ran into package issues which were already fixed by the devs months or even years ago. I just couldn’t be on that newer version

Shareni,

Check out MX. It’s Debian, but with tools to make desktop use easier. It defaults xfce, and looks quite familiar to windows users.

If the laptop’s really old and low on ram, you’ll probably need to use lxde/lxqt as they’re a lot lighter.

I’d suggest installing something like discovery or software centre. It’s really nice for casual users because it unites apt and flatpak updates.

pixxelkick,

For casual users I typically recommend using Cinnamon Desktop, it’s the most Windows-esque UI and will be the easiest for them to pick up and use.

I roll with Cinnamon on Ubuntu and it’s been extremely painless, very simple to get stuff do and shit just works.

pH3ra,
@pH3ra@lemmy.ml avatar

I was going to recommend the same: what I love about Cinnamon is the fact that has less theming and customization features (compared to other DEs).
While this might seem bad for experienced users, it is perfect for new people: I don’t want my dad to call me on a saturday morning because he accidentally erased the menu button or things like that

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