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?

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.

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.

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.

Kualk, (edited )

Gnome is simple. Gnome is native for GTK apps, which are majority. You can turn on classic taskbar, turn off virtual spaces, add minimize button and it is now a classic user experience.

I don’t understand this obsession with Wayland vs X11.

On Arch I choose Gnome and the underlying technology is picked for me based on hardware of the machine.

I recall having X11, because I had nVidia card. I bought AMD video card and it started to run Wayland without any effort on my side. It was a while ago.

Arch would require you to make more decisions, which may lead you into the woods. Use Manjaro, which made Arch tech decisions for you like choice of network management stack.

I tried Manjaro last week on laptop. It has a polished user experience. Pick to use non-free drivers. Use Libre Office instead of free office. Install Firefox and chromium. Done.

Gnome just added full search and it is included in Arch and shall be in Manjaro in less than 2 weeks.

The advantage with rolling release for your parents is that you will never run install again. You will never need to upgrade version of Debian or Ubuntu. Just update OS every time you visit them, no more frequent than once every few months, not less than twice a year.

Manjaro has polished software installation experience at graphical user interface level.

Communist,
@Communist@lemmy.ml avatar

Manjaro is amongst the worst distros for advanced users, giving it to beginners is a complete mistake, they shipped an update that uninstalled the DE

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.

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.

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.

Aradia, (edited )
@Aradia@lemmy.ml avatar

If I’m not wrong, Fedora as stable release too will ship Plasma 6 in next month, they’re doing tests now.

Para_lyzed,

The Fedora 40 KDE spin and Fedora Atomic KDE will be shipping with KDE Plasma 6 in April, not KDE Plasma 5. Plasma 5 was released 10 years ago, and Debian won’t be shipping Plasma 6 until at least Debian 13, which is probably sometime in 2025.

Aradia,
@Aradia@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah, I heard Debian users says they will need to wait a full year, and it’s obvious I put 5 instead of a 6, was a typo… But thanks to let me know that Plasma 5 was released 10 years ago.

lemmyvore,

Whatever you choose, make sure you’re familiar with it since you’ll be the one that has to fix everything that’s wrong. 🙂

I suggest not giving their user sudo rights and having your own user with sudo rights for installing apps, doing upgrades and so on.

It will be very useful to have SSH installed if you need to assist them remotely.

If you want to help remotely I also recommend Tailscale, it creates a “mesh VPN” private network where your PC and their laptop can see each other over an encrypted connection that can also break out of ISP NAT (no port forwards needed). Since it’s encrypted it’s ok to use simple unencrypted VNC to view their desktop to help when needed.

I can give some pointers if you have a home server and want them to be able to use web apps on it over Tailscale. One very useful example is Syncthing, which can sync files between a folder on the laptop and your server, where you can back it up further incrementally with Borg Backup or whatever you use. You can sync their entire home directory if you want or you can just have a ~/Sync dir where they put only what they want.

Last but not least, if you can swap the HDD consider putting in a SSD instead, the difference will be night and day.

Pantherina,

I suggest not giving their user sudo rights and having your own user with sudo rights for installing apps, doing upgrades and so on.

Yes but upgrades should be automatic and not require any privilege escalation. There is nothing privileged about keeping your system up to date. Same for flatpaks.

With a –user repo (in the flathub install command) you can let them install and uninstall their apps without any privileges, only to their user. Otherwise with a system repo they need to be in the flatpak group.

It will be very useful to have SSH installed if you need to assist them remotely.

That didnt age well ;D

and yes complex stuff like Tailscale is needed as the only good VNC apps for Wayland dont have builtin servers for connecting without an IP (like RealVNC, TeamViewer or RustDesk have).

Using NoIP could be an easy solution too though.

Syncthing has versioning, I wouldnt even put servers in the game. Just backup their home to one of your machines (if that is okay for them).

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.

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

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

jaypatelani,
@jaypatelani@lemmy.ml avatar

Fedora Budgie desktop edition and keep automatic updates on

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

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