I'm looking for recommendations on a lightweight Linux distro that runs well on an older machine. My laptop has a Core i7 2670QM processor, a 500GB HDD (which is pretty slow), and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I'm not interested in dual booting much. Ideally, I need a stable distro that can cover about 30–40GB of space. I'm considering MX Linux with XFCE or KDE, or Debian with XFCE or KDE, but I'd appreciate any better suggestions since I'm not keen on Arch-based distros due to the potential for bugs and frequent fixes.
6 Answers
MX Linux with XFCE is an excellent choice!
Debian XFCE or Mint XFCE could be great for your situation. Also, if you can, I'd strongly suggest upgrading that HDD to a SATA SSD for a significant speed boost. And consider using zram to enhance your performance a bit.
Given your 4GB RAM, I would advise sticking with lighter Desktop Environments like XFCE or LXQT. I'm running Debian with LXQT on a pretty old laptop (with just 3GB RAM), and it works well. I find Chromium to be better than Firefox in these scenarios. I recommend disabling swap for better performance, and MX Linux is a solid choice, especially if you have an older Nvidia card since its installer is very reliable.
If you're up for a challenge, Alpine Linux could be worth a shot! It’s very lightweight but requires a command line installation. The documentation is pretty comprehensive too, so that should help you get started.
Lubuntu 25.04 could work well, as it's Ubuntu with LXQt 2.x, which is modern yet resource-efficient and fast. Consider using your HDD for backup and think about getting a cheap SSD to replace it.
Definitely go for XFCE or LXQT! Linux Mint XFCE or Lubuntu are both solid options. If you're willing to explore a bit more, you could try a window manager for even lighter performance.
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