I'm looking to revive an old Intel i3 NUC that's been collecting dust. It was really sluggish when I ran Windows on it, so I'm hoping to find a lightweight Linux distribution that can make it more usable. I previously used Peppermint on a laptop but I'm not too familiar with the latest options. The NUC has had a RAM upgrade and includes an mSATA drive. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
I recommend trying out a distro with a lightweight desktop environment like Xfce or LXDE. Gnome and KDE can be a bit heavy for older hardware. Q4OS uses the Trinity desktop and works really well on older machines.
You might consider turning it into a small Nextcloud server! Debian with the Xfce desktop would be perfect for that setup. It's efficient and should run smoothly on your hardware.
I'm currently running plain Debian and it works great on my NUC. If you're looking for something user-friendly, Linux Mint could be a solid choice as well since it's generally easy to navigate.
It would be helpful to know how much RAM you have in your NUC. That's a big factor in deciding which distro to go with!
Just upgraded to 32GB; should be good enough for several options!