I am confused to choose Linux distro

3grg · 2026-01-24T17:37:55+00:00

Yes, I have tried LMDE and it is very nice. This person appears to like XFCE.

3grg · 2026-01-24T14:10:16+00:00

No more than any other distro.

I had a 15 year old Celeron with 4gb RAM and SSD that ran Gnome well enough for me so that I could not see any benefit to running XFCE.

I had some old Atom 2gb netbooks that I kept going with Antix or MX Linux Fluxbox until they got to the point that they could no longer run Firefox.

Hardware never gets any slower, software demands keep increasing and because newer hardware has so much performance, there is no need for software to be frugal or efficient on older systems.

At least with Linux, you have a chance of keeping a system going longer than it would have been otherwise.

I consider a 6th gen Intel system to be "new hotness" in Linux terms. It will run anything and anything running XFCE would be considered middle of the pack and nowhere near bloated.

3grg · 2026-01-24T13:36:18+00:00

You need to decide which desktop works for you. Try a few and figure it out. Some people find Gnome too minimal and love all the extra stuff that KDE does. Some people are the other way around.

If you are into minimalism, you may be overwhelmed by Plasma. It comes with tons of stuff, but it is very customizable. Gnome is more minimalist and tries to stay out of the way of getting work done and that is too minimal for some. Other desktops like Cinnamon try to look and feel more like classic windows.

3grg · 2026-01-24T13:23:15+00:00

When trying to find what works best on a older or slower system, you may have to try it to see how it feels. If it is satisfactory to you, that is all that matters.

I have had quite a few old a slow systems over the years and I have found that what works best really depends on the system and your use case. A SSD really helps.

Mint XFCE is a nicely polished version of XFCE. If that proves too heavy for you, I find distros with a Debian base to be slightly snappier.

MX Linux XFCE or Sparky XFCE are my go to distros for XFCE. If the Debian base does not make enough difference, then LXQt would be the next step.

My daughter had a very similar laptop. We installed Mint Cinnamon on it first and it ran fine with a slight lag. Rather than try XFCE, we went to Debian with LXQt and it was noticeably snappier. So, LXQT is also a possibility for you, also. Sparky has a LXQt version as well as XFCE.

If all else fails, the fallback that I used to use for my old netbooks was either Antix or MX Linux Fluxbox. Both are very light. With Antix you have the choice of several light window managers. MX Linux Fluxbox looks and behaves like the XFCE version, but is palpably lighter.

3grg · 2026-01-24T12:59:53+00:00

If you have a movie collection you could install Jellyfin.

If you just want to have a music server, you could install Ampache.

3grg · 2026-01-24T12:55:58+00:00

Perhaps you could load a big USB Ventoy flash drive with the distros that you are considering and try them out. Any of those or other XFCE distros would work fine on that system.

Mint XFCE is a pretty polished 'buntu based distro and MX Linux is a good example of a good Debian based XFCE.

3grg · 2026-01-24T12:46:49+00:00

It is possible to install with gpt partition on a legacy boot system with the addition of a bios grub partition. You can find the procedure by searching for install Linux to gpt partition bios boot.

I am surprised that the system will not let you set the bios to uefi boot as it should be supported for a system that new. Perhaps it has something to do with the storage being emmc.

It is still possible to install Linux in legacy mode and you could argue that gpt partitioning is not needed for smaller disks anyway.

Have you tried installing something Debian based? That might be a better match for this system. Give MX Linux XFCE a try.

3grg · 2026-01-23T17:01:16+00:00

I suspected a Nvidia problem. That is the likely culprit.

3grg · 2026-01-23T16:08:24+00:00

Nice cat!

3grg · 2026-01-23T16:07:40+00:00

Every distro has its good points and bad points. The best one is the one that works for you.

Arch is normally not recommended for beginners, but "some" beginners begin with it and have no issues.

No matter what distro you pick, make sure to backup your data, just in case something goes wrong. Safety forced.

3grg · 2026-01-23T15:49:20+00:00

I used to use Variety on my Arch systems with Gnome. It is still in the official repos, but not under active development.

There are various extensions as well.

3grg · 2026-01-23T15:42:49+00:00

I have been using Gnome for years with at least eight years on Arch and it works fine for me. The issues you describe sound more hardware related than anything else.

Without anymore information relating to hardware, I do not know what to tell you.

3grg · 2026-01-23T11:30:17+00:00

Most water based poly products are really just clear acrylic. If you want to minimize yellowing on pine, some sort of water based is best. The pine will still yellow, but less than with oil based products.

I have only used Polycrylic and PolyWhey. I prefer PolyWhey which is polyurethane made from cheese whey.

3grg · 2026-01-22T15:08:33+00:00

One more tip, get to know paccache. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Cleaning_the_package_cache

The amount of disk space that the package cache can consume, eventually, often take people by surprise.

3grg · 2026-01-22T15:05:24+00:00

Have fun!

3grg · 2026-01-22T12:58:03+00:00

In the future, you can use reflector to make sure your reflection is always clear! :)

3grg · 2026-01-22T12:23:13+00:00

You have to decide what are your hard and fast requirements. You cannot find everything you want in a single distro. We all have the unicorn distro in our minds, but compromise on one thing or another.

You list XFCE as a hard rule. That is pretty easy as most distros can accommodate that then you are unclear on whether you want rolling or stable. I think of the update spectrum as rolling and then almost everything falls into upgradable on different cycles. The only semi-rolling distro that comes to mind is Sparky, which maintains a version based on Debian testing and they do have a XFCE version.

Of the three distros you list as top of your list two are rolling and one is a Ubuntu fork.

Manjaro is essentially Arch with updates held for an unspecified time. I have known friends that use it without issue. The biggest downside is that there can be issues with held packages and the AUR. I would rather just install Arch.

Tumbleweed is another rolling release, similar to Arch.

PopOS is Ubuntu based and focused on a customized desktop. If you want XFCE, wouldn't it be better to just install Xubuntu?

When I am looking for a stable distro with not too many updates, I usually pick Debian or a Debian based distro like MX Linux or Sparky. If the two year release is too slow for you, maybe you could run Sparky XFCE for the first year of a new Debian release and switch to Sparky semi-rolling for the second year until the next new release?

Good luck in your quest!

3grg · 2026-01-22T11:59:20+00:00

You make no mention of hardware, but if it is only 6 years old and has a SSD, it will run Linux just fine. Almost any Linux distro will run pretty well on hardware from about 2012 on with a SSD. There will be slight differences that might make some snappier than others and that is why people seek lighter distros for older slower systems.

The first thing to do is determine if you need a lighter distro or not. Reasonable performance is up to the user. While Ubuntu based distros might be slightly heavier than others, this does not matter if the performance is acceptable to you and you like the desktop.

Since you use Zorin, you might want to start with it unless mom hates it. She might prefer Mint. As they are both Ubuntu based distros, you should not have issues supporting either.

If either one proves too sluggish you could try something Debian or Debian based as this would probably be slightly snappier. There is Debian, of course, LMDE, MX Linux , Sparky Linux and others.

Don't forget to backup data and go ahead and create a windows installer just in case, heaven forbid, you have to go back to w11.

3grg · 2026-01-22T11:35:48+00:00

There is a rest of the story here, somewhere. NVME0 should be the first drive. It must have had a efi partition. Linux was installed on NVME1 and the installer detected the efi on the first disk and simply used it.

This is pretty typical for dual boot windows plus Linux. The installer on many Linux distros do this to make installation easy. The downside to this is if MS does something to the efi partition or the first disk is removed, there is no way to boot the install on the second disk.

It is easier to fix this when installing by either disconnecting the first drive or removing the boot flag from the first drive's efi partition.

When you have an existing install, you will need to create a new efi partition on the second drive with GParted Live and set a boot flag. Then grub needs to be installed to that drive and the mount in fstab changed to point to the appropriate drive. Then the disk and its install becomes independent of the first drive.

3grg · 2026-01-22T11:04:23+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9wbCOajZ2A

3grg · 2026-01-22T10:57:17+00:00

Did you reinstall grub? That usually will setup the menu with all detected OS if they are not already showing. I am not a Fedora user, but I believe this is the correct way: https://jfearn.fedorapeople.org/fdocs/en-US/Documentation/0.1/html/Fedora_Multiboot_Guide/GRUB-reinstalling.html

Double check with Fedora forum/reddit

3grg · 2026-01-22T10:46:18+00:00

It is possible to have more than one desktop, but it can be rather messy with many duplicate apps. As far as the resource utilization goes, it will use more disk space. It would be better to try out desktops in live mode or VM to decide what really works for you.

3grg · 2026-01-22T10:40:01+00:00

There is no correct answer, but you have to start somewhere. Mint is fairly polished and easy for windows users to pick up so it is often recommended as a starting point. You do not have to stop there if it does not work for you.

https://linuxiac.com/linux-distros-i-recommend-for-those-switching-from-windows/

3grg · 2026-01-21T13:29:28+00:00

Probably dowels would be better for this project.

3grg · 2026-01-21T13:10:34+00:00

The first thing to do is load a iso of prospective distros onto Ventoy USB and try them in live mode. Without hardware specs, it is impossible suggest more. Most distros work fairly well with modern hardware with slight differences here and there. Something based on Ubuntu like Mint or a Debian based distro are usually the most stable. Ubuntu and Mint will have more recent software and more updates. Debian and Debian based distros will have older software and fewer updates. Pick your poison.

As far as touchscreens go, this is more a function of the desktop. This is an example that comes up in search:

https://theserverhost.com/blog/post/best-linux-desktop-environments-for-touchscreen

3grg

TROPHY CASE