Recently I’ve gave up Windows for Linux and installed Ubuntu with KDE Plasma desktop on my pc and laptop from 2007. It’s an i7 Intel processor with 8gb ddr ram so I thought it would be fine, but it seems quite sluggish. What distro could I use that would be faster and still fully functional? Thanks for your help in advance.
I’d try Xubuntu or Lubuntu, but honestly KDE should run fine on those specs.
I suspect it has an HDD: you’ll get a much more noticeable boost from upgrading to a $35 SSD than any distro choice will give you.
Can confirm. I had a 2007 laptop (Compal FL90) with far worse specs. Core 2 Duo T7100 (I upgraded it to T7500, small difference), Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT, 4GB DDR2 RAM (previously 3GB). Then I replaced the original 80GB Fujitsu HDD made in September 2006 for a cheap SSD. Damn. I started using that laptop most of the time. It felt way faster than my main laptop (with SMR HDD).
I got extra 2 years out of it before it died. I really miss that laptop.
Edit: I ran Linux Mint Cinnamon and Windows 11 on it. Yes, 11.
I upgrade the device that needs the upgrade the most. Old, slow drive getting old enough that I need to consider reliability? Obvious upgrade. Old machine is lower capacity then I would like? High value upgrade. Which machine is going to see the most dramatic improvement? Let’s upgrade the old one first.
Makes sense to me.
As a side note, I have found using older laptops has given me a lot of peace of mind in truly using them “on the go”. I used to live in fear of my laptop getting forgotten at the pub when I grab a drink after work, stolen from the car, dropped as I dry to open a door with full hands, left in the sun on the seat next to me on the restaurant patio, having a drink spilled on it, getting fried plugging in to a sketchy plug in the customer’s warehouse, water damage in the rent while camping, and the like. I mean, who wants to risk $2000 to any of those scenarios. But having an old work horse, or a $200 steal I found online, or even the MacBook that I found at the recycle depot that only needed a $50 battery? Well, I am not nearly as worried about putting those machines at risk. As a result, intake and I use them everywhere. Oh, and I have them everywhere ( I often leave one in the car and have it when I find myself somewhere longer than expected. I have a laptop that sits in my young son’s room that I pull out while I sit with him at night sometimes. Super handy.
As a result, guess which machines I spend the most time on? It is the old ones. So upgrading the old machines actually has a bigger overall impact on my life.
My experience has been that, with Linux, old machines work surprisingly well for most of what I need them to do.
- I was taking it to school. I didn’t really have to worry much about this laptop. I got it for free, it wasn’t worth too much, and it was an indestructible brick.
- Storage size. I needed more storage in my main laptop while 128GB was enough for this one.
- Reliability. This was SSD from AliExpress (XrayDisk). Not reliable enough for a main machine. And indeed, 2 years later and it has corrupted sectors.
- Ease of replacement. This old laptop only required unscrewing 1 screw to replace the HDD. Originally it would be 4, but they were missing along with HDD caddy. Meanwhile checking video on how to open my main laptop… I’d probably tear some wires, break the plastic and also destroy the rubber feet which are somehow quite expensive.
Debian XFCE
Zorin OS Lite, or Xubuntu. Both are based on XFCE and should be a lot lighter than stock Ubuntu.
If you want something even lighter (still based on XFCE), Puppy Linux (QuickPup) might be a good option. One of the things that makes Puppy so fast is that it run entirely from RAM, so it doesn’t need to touch the HDD to access files. It saves all disk changes to an overlay filesystem which runs in the RAM, and when you’re done with your session, you get an option to save it do your HDD (there’s also an option to periodically save your session). Puppy can be a bit quirky but it really makes a big difference on an old system, so it’s definitely worth checking out IMO.
Ubuntu uses snaps, which I’ve found sluggish on older ide hard drives. To be honest, even flatpaks are very slow for these in my experience.
I think you might be better off with opensuse tumbleweed.
Novelty recommendation besides tumbleweed: antix.
While I haven’t used antix except out of curiosity in a virtual machine, they are lightweight, but they have a hard stance against systemd.
Thanks, I have installed tumbleweed today and I like it. It is much faster too. I’m unsure about learning two different sets of commands just when I’m switching. I guess I have time to decide until my ssd arrives.
Very cool.
Interesting timing that opensuse recently announced slowroll, which has a slower cadence for updates (updates with monthly frequency, rather than daily, while security updates are still ASAP.
Depending on whether frequent updates is you thing or you prefer slightly delayed cycles… you can easily convert your install to slowroll
To be honest, I don’t really care that much. Once upon a time I got excited about updates and new features, now I just want things to work. I enjoy exploring Linux and how it’s different, I like seeing the updates come in and it makes me feel safer, but at the end of the day, I’m just a normal user who needs much less than the OS offers.
I’ve used a lot of distributions over the years, and I don’t think you have to worry about a different set of commands across most distributions. It’s some variation of distropkgmgr followed by command, where command, where command is generally one of install upgrade refresh/update remove search to name the most common. If you use a software frontend like gnome-software or discover, you don’t even need to worry about command line differences.
The only exception to that is nixos, which I wouldn’t recommend to someone just switching. It is very cool, just needs more experience.
The shell commands are the same one installed for the most part.
Out of curiosity, are you planning to use a different os when your ssd arrives? I switched from Ubuntu to endeavouros (Arch) to Opensuse tumbleweed on my primary laptop (i9 processor), no complaints 😁!
I’ll keep the desktop with ubuntu and kde plasma and I’ve installed openSuse tumbleweed on the laptop. The ssd made a huge difference. I’ve made it dual boot with win7, which I’ve reinstalled on the laptop and they’re both blazing fast. It’s a steep learning curve, but I like the freedom of Linux versus the big brother approach of Windows.
