I'm helping my friend with his Asus Vivobook 17 (which has 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD) as he plans to switch it from Windows to Linux. He mainly needs it for everyday tasks like browsing and messaging, along with video editing and playing a specific game. It's important that he finds a stable and beginner-friendly distro that won't break easily, especially since he's not very tech-savvy. Any suggestions for something lightweight that mimics a Windows experience?
2 Answers
You can't go wrong with Linux Mint! It's super user-friendly, especially for someone new to Linux. I'd recommend the Xfce desktop environment since it runs great on 8GB of RAM. It's stable and pretty similar to Windows, which should help your friend transition smoothly.
Just a heads-up, what game is your friend playing? Some games might not be available on Linux, especially popular ones like League of Legends. For video editing, most distros should handle it fine as long as he picks the right software. I'd generally steer clear of Arch-based distros if he wants something reliable; Ubuntu or Mint is definitely the way to go!
That's a solid pick! I personally love the Cinnamon desktop as well; it runs really well on machines with that much RAM. But you're right, Xfce is definitely a lightweight option to maximize performance.