I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 5 with a 10th-generation Intel i3 and 4GB of soldered RAM, so upgrading memory is not an option. Windows uses nearly all of the available RAM just opening a browser, so I switched to Linux.
I tried Linux Mint with the MATE desktop. It idles around 1GB of RAM, but I'm dealing with severe screen tearing when moving windows around. Playing 4K YouTube videos in Brave also makes the entire browser lag badly. Firefox handles the video much better, although I would prefer to use a Chromium-based browser. Disabling hardware acceleration in Brave did not help, and the system reports that its drivers are up to date.
Is this mainly a Mint or desktop-environment issue, or is it something I should expect from Linux on integrated Intel graphics? Which lightweight distributions or desktop environments would you recommend for a relatively modern laptop limited to 4GB of RAM?
3 Answers
The screen tearing may be related to Mint’s X11 session rather than the amount of RAM. Try a current distribution that offers Wayland, such as Fedora KDE, and compare it from a live USB. KDE can be fairly light if you turn off desktop effects, file indexing, unnecessary widgets, and other background services. For video playback, keep browser hardware acceleration enabled; without it, the CPU may struggle even if the system has plenty of free RAM.
The desktop environment probably matters more than the distribution itself. Mint Xfce, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Debian with Xfce, or a lightweight LXQt setup are all reasonable options. Xfce and LXQt should keep background memory use low while still being fairly easy to use. Since the laptop has a 10th-generation Intel chip, you don’t need a distribution aimed specifically at ancient hardware.
Changing distributions may improve the experience, but it won’t make 4K browser video inexpensive. Chromium-based browsers can be demanding, and the important thing is whether video decoding is actually using the Intel GPU. Check the browser’s GPU status and make sure the correct acceleration features are active. Also consider enabling zram, which compresses memory and helps prevent the system from becoming sluggish when RAM usage rises. Lubuntu, Fedora with Xfce or KDE, MX Linux, and Bodhi Linux are worth testing from a USB before installing.
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