Not nearly as low in memory usage. Xubuntu requires 1.1 GB of RAM on a clean boot for example. Lubuntu close to 700 I think.

No, that thing is unusable. It has no niceties to help a user do basic things. The best OS I’ve found that has enough GUI tools to do stuff, is Q4OS. Uses 350 MB of RAM, but it has enough stuff to get you going. I looked more into FunOS btw, and it requires quite some terminal work to even get tap-to-click to work. It’s missing some GUI tools for basic things. It doesn’t even save screen resolution changes without editing X11 files. If they get these things implemented, then sure. Same goes for all the other lite OSes, like AntiX, DSL, etc. Lightweight, yes. But not really usable by an ordinary user. They are missing GUI tools, of if they have them (like in the case of antix and puppy), they are a complete and utter MESS. I’ve used all of them, and they have left me very, very underwhelmed. Until then, Q4OS is the best of the lightweight distros. It’s well put together.

If it’s true that it uses only 250 MB of RAM as it claims, then it had advantages on old computers over Mint which uses 950 MB (htop). My mom’s computer only has 2 GB of RAM for example (an old, converted-to-linux Chromebook), so we need a distro that really doesn’t use much ram. Thankfully she only uses 1 tab at a time on the browser (she doesn’t know how to open more), so that makes it just enough with something heavy like YT or FB, so she doesn’t hit the swap and slow things down.

Some .deb files do include repo information (e.g. Chrome), but most don’t.

If this happens to Windows as well, it’s unlikely that it’s Fedora’s fault. Something else is at play.

You need to start with Linux mint. The errors you are mentioning are common in ubuntu, crashes happen and popup all the time on my ubuntu installations too. But never on Mint. Mint is based on the stable version of ubuntu, that it has long term support and it’s regularly getting updates to make it even more stable and secure. So please start with Mint, or Debian 12 (although Mint is better for new users).

If you prefer non-kde apps, then consider Vala. It’s a young-ish language and it’s well suited for Gtk apps.

Just use Linux Mint, cinnamon edition, and then edit the startup app list to not load some of the stuff that take too much ram, like the reports, nvidia, etc. Also remove fwupd if you updated your laptop’s firmware already via windows. I personally also stop bt (frees overall 30 mb of ram). Make sure during installation that you create a 4 GB swap partition too. At the end, I have a system that starts up at 750 MB of RAM (htop reading, 980 MB with gnome-system-monitor). As long as I use only 2-3 Chrome tabs, I’m ok to not swap. Firefox uses more ram i’m afraid, especially with youtube.

I have 4 laptops here run linux mint with 4 gb of ram. They run fine, my husband even does development in one of these.

The n3060 cpu is slow at 660 PassMark points, just enough for Mint to function. XFce is a tad faster indeed, and uses about 60 MB less RAM, however, it’s missing some desktop options that I find useful (e.g. disabling tap and drag).

Yes, this is known. They do the same for Chromium. If you want a browser from ubuntu, it’s going to be a snap.

Server for various open source games that don’t require much cpu or ram. E.g. freeciv, battle for wesnoth.

Your biggest problem is the amount of RAM, not the cpu. Some Linux distros would fit nicely on 2gb with a few native apps open, but the moment you’d want to browse the web, all hell will break loose, as each tab will take hundreds of megs each (youtube takes between 600 and 1200 mb of ram). FYI, even if chrome/ium is hated in these parts, it uses less ram than firefox (there’s also a setting to use even less ram).

I’d suggest you use either Alpine Linux with xfce (240 MB of RAM on a cold boot), or even better, Q4OS with the Trinity Desktop (fork of KDE), 350 MB of RAM. The advantage of Q4OS is that it’s a debian, so it can run lots of .deb files made for debian. Alpine is cool and all, but it has bugs on the desktop (some of its package management has dependency problems).

A tip: to save ram, don’t use background images, only a single color. You can save up to 50 MB of RAM that way, depending on the image you’d be using.

1. You’re not the first person to not be able to make nvidia work on Mint. Here’s another one I found earlier today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl6OBIQl_MI

2. Use gparted to assign label names to your partitions/drives, and you might need to edit /etc/fstab. More info here, and there are more such forum posts to read through: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=344652

Overall, I’d say that Mint is the best distro to start with, but if you stumble on the few bugs they have, start looking elsewhere. I’d suggest you start by trying ubuntu 24.10 instead of mint.

They’re trying to kill counterculture. Pixelfed is also banned at meta’s servers.

Under Linux, the recommended route is KVM/Qemu, with Virt-Manager as the GUI front-end for them. You will need to follow tutorials to install it correctly, as it requires special steps, e.g. adding them to specific usergroups. But once it works, it works well.

Buy a supported usb bt dongle, they’re tiny. Better than fighting with models that don’t work well.

I leave Firefox installed, but I download and use Chrome. Chrome is much faster than Firefox in many websites I use (not only youtube where Google might be using a secret sauce, but also Photopea and other js-heavy websites). Also, Chrome is using way less RAM than Firefox. I have a bunch of older laptops with 4 GB of RAM, so these “small” differences in speed between the two browsers is VERY evident on these older computers (not so easily seen on very fast PCs). Many people don’t like me writing all that, and often downvote me for having written that in the past, but it’s god’s honest truth. I looked into installing a totally degoogled chromium, but it’s not updated asap for security updates, so it’s a no-go for me.

I also prefer VLC for videos, and OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice (better MS compatibility). Also, because it’s Linux Mint and comes preinstalled with warpinator, I prefer LocalSend instead of Warpinator. Easier to use.

Edit: just as predicted, downvotes. People seem to prefer a live in a lie. Do your own tests guys before you press the trigger!

That’s why I don’t use rolling releases (except debian-testing, which is actually stable). Because these kinds of things are bound to happen 1-5 times a year.

Wayland is not as advanced as android’s system, so i don’t see why not use android’s. The license for it is fine.

Unlike what people reply here out of ignorance, your thinking is correct, meaning, that Google has already done the hard work to create a TRULY modern OS, with proper usability, security, and yes, a way better compositor than wayland (in fact, android has the best compositor in the world, compared to ANY OS). A properly modified desktop OS based on it (better than Samsung’s DeX for example), that is also able to run normal Linux apps, would be a huge winner.

I’m using Cinnamon, I find it better when using a customized Cinnamenu applet (instead of the default app launcher).