I'm looking for a suitable Linux distribution for my ALLDOCUBE i1506s laptop, which has a 1.7 GHz Intel N95 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB HDD. I tried Windows 11 but found it way too slow and switched to Linux Mint XFCE, but it hasn't been a great experience due to various issues, missing packages, and outdated versions from the Ubuntu base. I'm interested in exploring a non-Ubuntu based Linux distro with a desktop environment that works well on this hardware. I'm not very experienced with Linux yet, so distros like Arch or Gentoo are not suitable for me. I primarily use the laptop for web browsing, watching YouTube, browsing Reddit, some light student work, text editing, and a bit of extremely light gaming. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
5 Answers
You could also look into openSUSE Tumbleweed. It's rolling release and should work well with your hardware. Just make sure to choose a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE.
MX Linux AHS is another good option. It's lightweight and offers XFCE or KDE versions, making it a great fit for your laptop.
I'd recommend trying Fedora with the KDE desktop environment. It's pretty smooth and has good performance. You might want to check out the 'Fedora 42 post-install guide' on GitHub for some helpful tweaks after installation!
How about Manjaro? It's user-friendly, and comes with XFCE by default which should run nicely on your setup. Just remember to set up Timeshift for backups!
Pop!_OS is a solid option too, especially since they're releasing a new fast and stable desktop environment called Cosmic soon. I know you mentioned avoiding Ubuntu, but this distro is popular for a reason!

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