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Picking a Linux Distro in 2021

I’m evaluating new Linux distros for my revived Linux rig.  The old Lubuntu 17.10 while fantastic is obsolete and I am unimpressed with Lubuntu 20.04 LTS.

It seems the mindset of Linux has evolved to take into consideration increasingly more powerful computers and now a minimum of a dual core CPU and 2 GB of ram is required.  The HP i3-4010u with 8 GB of ram is just slightly above those minimum standards.

1. Lubuntu 20.04 LTS
I’ve been a longtime Lubuntu user and fan.  My absolute fave has been Lubuntu 17 and later 18.04 LTS so I was expecting the same experience with 20.04, but was disappointed.

It is laggy and unresponsive and feels bloated.  It took 15 seconds for Firefox to open and the loading of pages would take even longer!  I found this unacceptable as 17 is lightning fast and on the same machine with less ram.

Finally, I threw in the towel and installed another distro.

2. Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon 

I used an older version Mint before and wasn’t impressed with it then but now I’m trying out the latest Mint 20 Cinnamon and finding it better than Lubuntu 20.04.

I’ll likely keep it for a while.  It’s very Windows like and that was one of the things I liked about the older version I tried years ago.

3. Elementary

While testing the components for the revived rig.  I used an old version of Elementary that I kept on an old flash drive.  I remember how clean and pretty it was and may give it a spin later.

I’ll likely do a multi OS setup and have it installed alongside Mint.

Update - 5/18/21 - Going on 3 months on Linux Mint
So I've been using Linux Mint for almost 3 months now since my laptop rebuild in February.  I'm overall quite pleased with it and while I miss the old Lubuntu, this is a decent approximation in terms of performance.

Linux Mint 20 is quite close to the Window's experience, probably the closest I have seen on a Linux distro and many Window users would be comfortable migrating over to this platform, with some caveats.  While I use it exclusively on most days, I still rely on my Windows laptop when filling out my tax return or performing other online transactions as some websites are not always optimized for Linux.  This is understandable, as majority of PC users are still Windows based, with a smattering of MacOS and the rare 1 in a 100 being a Linux user like me.



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Comments

  1. El LinceSagradoMarch 13, 2021 at 9:03 PM

    I have a HP Stream 14, and after several tries of different Linux mint distros, which were my favourites, I've been using manjaro xfce the last 3 months. Fast. Really fast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LKMarch 13, 2021 at 9:09 PM

    Thank you. I’ll take a look into manjaro.

    ReplyDelete

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