Hello there. I’m a beginner so keep that in mind. I have an old laptop (something like 10 yo). It has an HDD, 4 gigs of DDR3, an i3 4th gen 1.7 GHz and an NVidia Geforce 710M (Windows Game Ready Driver 391.35 WHQL which I think doesn’t support Wayland). It also has CSM BIOS so yeah. It has the option of UEFI but the GeForce (I think) doesn’t support it.

Currently, it has Windows 10 on it, but it has been veeeeery sluggish. I’m planning to upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs and upgrade to an SSD, but (even if I upgrade those parts) I don’t want to use Windows anymore, at all.

So, I have a few options. (kinda in order)

  1. Linux Mint
  2. Fedora, though idk if the 2 GHz requirement is a big problem
  3. Pop!_OS
  4. MX Linux
  5. Debian
  6. Ubuntu and its flavors
  7. Zorin OS

and maybe Solus? though the same problem with fedora.

Yeah yeah ik, all of these except Fedora and Solus are Debian/Ubuntu based.

DE options: (again, also kinda in order)

  1. KDE Plasma (love the looks of it, though is my hardware enough?)
  2. Cinnamon
  3. XFCE - LXDE - LXQT (because of “lightweightness” :D)
  4. Budgie
    5. GNOME too heavy

These are some options for me. If you have any more suggestions, let me know. Also, are there any compatibility issues with my system for the distros/DEs?

Thanks for the replies in advance.

(Note: this was also posted in the c/[email protected] and the r/linux4noobs subreddit. don’t ask why im still on reddit, it’s because of Infinity for reddit.)

  • azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    On the old NVIDIA driver, if you’re brave, they’re still available and on Arch(-based) pretty easy to install. I used some old desktop GeForce 6xx with it last time around 2020 and it worked for basic stuff, like desktop compositing, OpenGL games or even some WineD3D. Don’t expect it to run anything somehow modern. And yes, with the driver you’re limited to X11 session.

    If you also have iGPU and it’s switchable, the only option to somehow achieve offloading (switching the graphics dynamically) would be through unofficial methods like Bumblebee.

    Also, graphics that old should have some support in the open source Nouveau driver, that will probably be loaded by default on most distros. If I’d be stuck with such chip, that would be my first thing to check if it isn’t enough for my planned use-cases.