I am planning to move to Linux soon from Windows. I am still debating between Linux Mint and Fedora, but I would like to ask your opinion please regarding my PC’s specs and the DE I should install.
I have a 12 year old PC, 16 GB RAM, core i3 processor (Intel(R) Core™ i3-3240 CPU @ 3.40GHz), intel integrated graphics card. I am currently running Windows 10 on an HDD, but I am soon going to install an SSD on which I plan to install Linux.
Before Windows 10, I used to be on Windows 7. It ran very good, no noticeable lags and such. And then I had 4GB RAM. After I moved to Windows 10, this became unbearable and I experienced system freezes etc., so I had to install more RAM.
I would like to ask you if you think with these specs I will be able to run DEs like KDE or GNOME comfortably? Some people advise me to go with a lightweight DE like MATE or XFCE. It doesn’t sound like a bad option either, but I wonder if Fedora KDE/GNOME can also run “smoothly” on my PC. Since GNOME (and maybe KDE soon) are official “workstation” releases of Fedora, I assume they are more developed than the spins and can give a better experience.
I have a Dell Precision M6500 (looks around 2010) and pre-Haswell CPU that worked fine with GNOME 47. I have 16GB RAM.
I also used GNOME 40-somethings on a C2D 2012 Macbook Pro (NVIDIA chipset), and Lenovo X230 (iirc Ivy Bridge) with 8GB RAM. GNOME works pretty good on low-end hardware!
What specific CPU model please?
You can get the CPU model from the Task-Manager Performance tab.
The speed of the CPU and number of core are important to know to answer your question.
You can download the ISOs, flash them to a USB drive and boot into the live environment without comitting to installing them. Give that a try, and see how responsive the desktop environment is.
I suspect the biggest limiting factor would be your CPU only having 2 physical cores.
This will also tell the user if their network and sound devices work without extra work installing non-free drivers. In the US, there is currently an oversupply of much newer systems that can’t run Windows 11, so refurbished machines are available at good prices.
Use the LHDB to see issues with linux on a particular system.
I saw someone saying that KDE and GNOME are comparable to Windows 7 in terms of resource usage. Is it true?
If so, then if Windows 7 used to run comfortable, maybe it can be assumed that KDE/GNOME will too?
But as you advised, I will probably have to check.
With the media writer you can choose almost every spin/edition available on Fedora.
This really depends on what you want to achieve. For my sons gaming Fedora I also chosen a lightweight fedora spin.
I think the default fedora Workstation/KDE Desktop is to bloated with all the preinstalled stuff. If it is a computer you like to use a fraction of all this, you can also to install a DE on your own with the everithing/netinstall.
My old workstation was a dell optiplex micro with a core i3 4170t. The underclocked variant, should be close in performance to yours. With 8 gb ram and sata 3 ssd. SSD did the most of it to make this old thing more responsive. Aging hdd can make a system stall to a crawl.
Both kde and gnome ran fine for basic browsing, text editing etc. Don’t expect to do much more and it’s alright.
Though 8th gen intel workstations being decommissioned on ebay for cheap as dirt all the time if you need to upgrade later. I’d wait for october win 10 eol to get your hands on better gear.
I run Fedora on some pretty old hardware that the Grandkids use for school and that I use for a mail server. Here are the Specs:
Dell Optiplex 960:
Core 2 Duo @ 3GHz, 8GB DDR2, 500GB HDD (spinning-rust), integrated i915 video/graphics
OS:
Fedora 41 using GNOME as the DE
I would not call it the fastest in existence but it is rock stable and usable for normal day to day things.
