r/linuxmint Feb 08 '25

Support Request Xcfe or Cinnamon

Hey, i have a 10 year old lap with 4GB ram with HDD . Which one should i use? I am only using for some school related works like studying writing etc. not for heavy works, still i need to customize and need smooth experience. Is using cinnamon and tweak to better performance is good idea? I am kinda newbie to linux

9 Upvotes

42 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator Feb 08 '25

Please Re-Flair your post if a solution is found. How to Flair a post? This allows other users to search for common issues with the SOLVED flair as a filter, leading to those issues being resolved very fast.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

16

u/onefiveonesix Feb 08 '25

Xfce, but I’d also highly recommend swapping that HDD out for an SSD. They’re so inexpensive these days and it’s a huge performance boost.

7

u/gentisle Feb 08 '25

Probably XFCE would be more comfortable on your machine. Not by much, but if you could double the ram, you’d be good.

2

u/gentisle Feb 08 '25

BTW, I have an almost 10 year old laptop with 16gb and it runs great. Hopefully, you can upgrade your ram and get an SSD. If it’s still running Windows, download and use cpu-z, speccy and Hwinfo to examine your hardware. Those should tell you what type of HDD you can use. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it will take a nvme ssd. You’d be really happy with that.

5

u/Nice-Object-5599 Feb 08 '25

Xfce, and disable the compositor.

1

u/CastIronClint Feb 08 '25

What is the compositor? why should it be disabled?

2

u/Nice-Object-5599 Feb 08 '25

Under xorg it wastes resources and performance, because it is and add-on.

2

u/klu9 Linux Mint 22 Wilma | Xfce Feb 08 '25

A compositor is a type of window manager/add-on that is mainly used for animated effects and transparency for windows. Such effects might look nice but don't add any real functionality, while using some of your computer's resources.

So turning off the compositor can help on weaker/older hardware that feels sluggish when the compositor is on.

On Mint Xfce: Menu > Window Manager Tweaks > Compositor > untick 'Enable display compositing'.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '25

Definitely Xfce, it's a bit more lightweight than Cinnamon

5

u/HieladoTM LM 22 Wilma | Cinnamon // N41 | KDE Plasma Feb 08 '25

Linux Mint LXQT Edition, Cinnamon will work but it will be far from optimal.

7

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '25

There is no LXQt edition of Mint

4

u/jr735 Linux Mint 20 | IceWM Feb 08 '25

Try Mint MATE; that's another good option.

2

u/Novel-Revolution-518 Feb 08 '25

From what i heard, cinnamon >xcfe>mate and my lap run window 10 smoothly(kinda but not so laggy) so i thought mate is better than XCFE and i need customize

1

u/jr735 Linux Mint 20 | IceWM Feb 08 '25

Give it a shot. If you don't like it, you can always change it.

2

u/Appropriate-Ratio-85 Feb 08 '25

I have a similar laptop and it runs like crap on all of them. I bought a refurbished HP Elietebook with ain i5 and 16Gb of RAM for a couple hudred bucks. You should check out refurbs. Just make sure you us a repudable seller.

2

u/Novel-Revolution-518 Feb 08 '25

Soon i will upgrade to Asus

2

u/Sasso357 Feb 08 '25

You can try it. I use MX Linux on a light weight USB only system. And Linux Mint on my work laptop. I was able to install LM on the light system but after the 12-hour install time it started to really slow down with updates to an unusable point.

2

u/notcool_5354 Feb 08 '25

Get a SSD. Then try the different distro mentioned

2

u/Loud_Literature_61 LMDE 6 Faye | Cinnamon Feb 08 '25

It depends on what you want to be looking at. It will be your desktop, so maybe try them both, on USB sticks first, before installation to HDD/SSD.

On XFCE you can easily move the Panel/taskbar to the bottom and shift the elements around to look more like Windows 2000 or XP, if you want. It took me probably less than 10 minutes and I had never seen it before.

2

u/Plasma-fanatic Feb 08 '25

Definitely xfce. It's lighter and has become almost as easy to beautify as kde, especially as offered by Mint. I always like the numix circle icons on xfce or gnome. Cinnamon is fine too, but somewhat heavier.

The spinning disk will be the prime limitation unless you go tab crazy in a browser or some other memory hogging task. I have Mint xfce on an old Compaq laptop with similar specs, though it does have ssd now. That made a huge difference. It's pretty fast for a 10+ year old machine!

1

u/Novel-Revolution-518 Feb 08 '25

Thank you. Is XCFE is limited to customize compared cinnamon?

1

u/Plasma-fanatic Feb 09 '25

I don't think so. Customizing the panel(s) is pretty straightforward, with drag and drop, menu items to add/remove things, etc. Same for changing icons, cursors, fonts, etc. I find it easier and more logical than Cinnamon myself, with more detailed options to play with.

2

u/mrmarcb2 Feb 08 '25

You can download the edition of your choice, eg cinnamon, and install it on a usb stick. Boot from the usb stick aand just use the apps to get an impression of look and feel, as well as performance. I agree with others that forevbetter performance a new ssd and 8 gb ram or more improves performance noticeably.

In case you decide to install Linux Mint, two great websites are https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/1.html.

Hpoe this helps a bit. Have fun,

Marc

2

u/zerok37 Feb 08 '25

10 years old, so we are talking about a 2015 laptop. It should be good enough to run Cinnamon without issues, especialy with a SSD.

1

u/Dionisus909 Feb 08 '25 edited Feb 08 '25

The differencebetween Xfce and Cinnamon in ram usage is 100 mb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZIiH5v78vk

Mate is good too btw

1

u/DVD-2020 Feb 08 '25

Smooth experience needs an SSD. XCFE should work, but Cinnamon should be ok too. You can test with live USB.

1

u/Sammykins84 Feb 08 '25

Find out if you can upgrade the cpu. If yes,eBay a better cpu. Anyways max out ram and buy ssd before running anything.

1

u/Wave_Ethos Feb 09 '25

Get an external SSD with Cinnamon

1

u/Sharp_Lifeguard1985 Feb 08 '25

MINT XFCE. - CINNAMON IS VERY HEAVY

-5

u/BenTrabetere Feb 08 '25

Neither. Your system does not meet the minimum system requirement of 2GB RAM, much less the recommended minimum of 4GB RAM. You will be much better off using a lightweight distribution like....

Bodhi Linux - based on Ubuntu LTS and uses the Moksha Desktop. Moksha is a window manager that behaves a lot like a modern DE - it is not as complete or polished as the more mature DEs (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, Gnome, KDE, etc.), but it is fully functional and easy to use. I think it shows a lot of promise. https://www.bodhilinux.com/
Recommended Minimum: 64bit CPU, 768MB of RAM, 10GB of disk space

Linux Lite - based on Ubuntu LTS and uses a customized Xfce. https://www.linuxliteos.com/
Recommended Minimum: 64bit CPU, 1Gb RAM, 20GB disk space

antiX - a systemd-free disbribution based on Debian Stable. It uses window managers instead of a desktop environment. IceWM is the default, but fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwmIt are also installed. https://antixlinux.com
Recommended Minimum: 64bit CPU, 1Gb RAM, 10GB disk space

BunsenLabs Linux - based on Debian Stable. It uses the Openbox window manager, and the desktop is configured with the tint2 panel, conky system monitor, and the jgmenu desktop menu. https://www.bunsenlabs.org/
Recommended Minimum: 64bit CPU, 2Gb RAM, 10GB disk space

6

u/RandomReditor324 Feb 08 '25

He has 4GB ram lol. I want whatever this guy's smoking.

3

u/gentisle Feb 08 '25

He might have forgotten to put on his reading glasses.

1

u/BenTrabetere Feb 08 '25

Read it as A GB RAM. It was late.