I chose Debian 12 as a solid and stable base. Which of these shipped DEs is the best for this particular laptop series and Windows 10 like user experience?

GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18

Don’t know the exact laptop model and year, but here are some specs: IdeaPad, only HDD, DVD drive, shipped with Win 8 or 10 (I think), unbearably slow on Win 10 currently

Use case: office, web, movies (not streaming), things for non-tech-savvy users

Personally, I’m using Arch btw with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, so I would prefer this over other DEs, but Debian still ships version 5. Has anyone experience with performance on an old Lenovo laptop with any of the listed environments?

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    2·
    8 months ago

    Check out MX. It’s Debian, but with tools to make desktop use easier. It defaults xfce, and looks quite familiar to windows users.

    If the laptop’s really old and low on ram, you’ll probably need to use lxde/lxqt as they’re a lot lighter.

    I’d suggest installing something like discovery or software centre. It’s really nice for casual users because it unites apt and flatpak updates.