Ask HN: Is Linux Mint a good choice for a laptop with 8gb of RAM?
I find Ubuntu to be a bit bloated, dual booting with about 100gb for Mint.
I don't want to have to fight my OS or tinker too much. Does Mint provide the best experience here ?
I don't want to have to fight my OS or tinker too much. Does Mint provide the best experience here ?
Do you usually have Chrome open? Won't that dominate the memory usage? Will a different desktop environment fix that?
First of all, the distro doesn't matter much, because you can get almost any desktop environment for almost any distro. I doubt there's much difference, in terms of resource usage, between Mint with Cinnamon or Xfce vs. Ubuntu Cinnamon or Xubuntu.
Second, all of the major Linux desktop environments use about 1 GB of memory after booting up, before launching any applications. Historically, maybe it was true that Xfce was much more lightweight than GNOME, for example, but it looks like a pretty level playing field these days. And that's probably because, in the end, you're mostly going to run Firefox or Chrome to run a bunch of modern, heavyweight web apps. Even if you just use a window manager without a full desktop environment, I don't think you can move the needle much. You still need to be able to run a modern, heavyweight browser.
Third, even Windows 10 runs fine on 8 GB of memory. My wife's laptop does it all day, no problem.
Mint has come up here a few times and I like the concept of the LMDE Mint [4] but it may be worth looking at their forums and IRC logs as there has been some toxic community behavior in the past and I do not know if that has been resolved. This can put a distribution at risk of losing contributors.
[1] - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lightweight-linux-distribu...
[2] - https://itsfoss.com/super-lightweight-distros/
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-weight_Linux_distributio...
[4] - https://without-systemd.org/wiki/index_php/Main_Page/#Debian...
So the Mint Maintainers maintain MINT and LMDE in parallel to hedge that possibility of avoiding more than Just the Snap Store in the future should that become necessary.
yes, imho. linuxmint is the perfect choice, especially if you use the "mate" flavor.
* https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=306
just my 0.02€
I tried zorin but I found I had to jump through too many hoops to get things working.
After that, I just went to a basic debian install. Been very nice, lean, minimal. And I'm already familiar with apt. I used debian for a time before ubuntu, as well.
I haven't really had to do any tinkering besides bringing in my dotfiles and installing my environment. I didn't have any bluetooth, wifi, or display issues, on an HP machine or thinkpad (I migrated two machines).
I haven't tried mint, so I'm not knocking it. But you might like debian, which ubuntu was based on.
Of course some 'tinkering' with fvwm2's config can make the defaults be more to your liking.
Just Get ready for WiFi(Not only a Mint Issue there) issues as Mint's Driver Manager is not really a Manager of Drivers at all. And If you have some newer WiFi hardware that's got an opensource driver but the driver is out of Kernel Tree so ships Packaged(DKMS) as Out of Kernel Tree and works just fine with that driver package until an In Kernel Tree version is Accepted into the Kernel by the Kernel maintainers.
And that's because invariably that WiFi hardware's drivers will eventually be included with the Kernel as an In Kernel Tree driver but you will not be notified when that happens so you may end up with 2 sets of WiFi Kernel modules loaded for the WiFi hardware on your system but Mint's Driver manager is not really a capable application there to assist you in getting that fixed. So trial and error is needed there for some solution!
And I have a Laptop that's was using the rtl8821ce-DKMS version and the driver manager does not even have a setting to remove that but does have a setting to disable the device! And so I disabled that and apparently the in Kernel version of the module is running the WiFi hardware now as even though the device is "disabled"(DKMS version) the WiFi still works and with less issues than before as now the WiFi rarely disconnects at random times as much after the DKMS version of the WiFi Driver Module was disabled in Mint's "Driver Manager"
So Linux has this issue with not all the parts of any Linux OS Distros being developed under one roof so Linux OS Distros are a hodgepodge of separate projects that are assembled together to create a Distro around the Linux Kernel. And thus one finds that they are going to be forced to get their hands dirty in the Terminal with commands that are not really that easy to deal with in a short amount of time as there's that learning curve there to get over.
And the Linux Man-Pages(Manual Pages) are for reference only and lack actual examples of the commands in use and so that's why there's loads of online learning involved there because there's no real reference guides with examples to help with that process.
But for the Linux Kernel WiFi maintainers they need some Notification Page that lists the Different WiFi drivers that are about to be accepted into the Kernel so Folks can get a heads up there if they are running a DKMS packaged WiFi driver that's out of Kernel Tree and that leads to more than one set of WiFi driver modules loaded into the Linux Kernel and both trying to manage the same hardware at the same time. And really that was no fun to deal with for months there with the WiFi randomly disconnecting at odd times all day long.
So With Linux the drivers(WiFi/Other hardware) usually Ship with the Kernel but for newer hardware it could be years getting into the kernel tree so some DKMS Out Of Tree driver will have to be utilized if one is lucky there and there's actually a DKMS packaged version that works with the WiFi card in your device. And do not expect the folks at Micro Center to be at all Knowledgeable about which USB WiFi adapters that Micro Center sells actually work with Linux to begin with.