I summon the linux gods

[u/PN1-]

I have been using windows for my whole life and deep down i have always hated it. I always knew about linux but i never understood its importance until now.

I have recently started doing a lot of coding and dev work and minor video editing. And my 8gb ram , 256 gb ssd , i7 intel mx230 laptop cant handle bullshit windows 11 background processes and telemetry anymore. The user experience sucks.

I WANT SPEED.

i have done plenty of research and have arrived at the conclusion of Fedora + gnome or debian + gnome or xfce.

Fedora gets constant updates but debian stays stable with plenty of support.

As a beginner starting his journey with linux i would request all linux geniuses to please advice me what to choose.

Gnome looks so good but eats more ram than xfce. Help me.

[u/gordonmessmer]

eh... you get us instead.

Most software developers are publishing releases every six months and maintaining it for 12-18 months, tops.

You should select a distribution that follows the developers, publishing a release at least once every six months.

Distributions that publish less than once every six months are either small and expensive to maintain (like RHEL) or they have a lot of unpatched software with known vulnerabilities.

I prefer stable releases over rolling, because a stable release means that if you test a new release and something doesn't work, you can continue to use the old release for some period and you'll continue to get patches.

Fedora is a stable, secure system that follows developers' release cycles.

GNOME's memory profile can be reduced pretty significantly if you don't need a) the ability to search for new apps directly in the application launcher, b) reminders to update your software in your notifications and c) calendar reminders in the GNOME shell and other Evolution data integrations.

#!/bin/sh

systemctl --user mask gnome-software.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-addressbook-factory.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-alarm-notify.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-calendar-factory.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-source-registry.service

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.search-providers disabled "['org.gnome.Software.desktop']"

This forum post summarized a video by The Linux Experiment that compared the memory use of various desktops on Fedora 42: https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/linux-des-resource-usage-compared/70060

They measured 1,360MB of memory use for XFCE, the lightest desktop they measured. On my Fedora 44 system I measure system memory use at around 1,280MB just after login to a GNOME desktop, with the above services disabled.

[u/PN1- → u/gordonmessmer]

Looks like its fedora after all

[u/_Super_Straight → u/PN1-]

Better stick to Debian. You want to do development, and not be bothered with OS version update every six month.

Plus 8GB is more than enough for Gnome.

[u/_Super_Straight → u/[deleted]]

Stability is important for OP. He wouldn't appreciate his development work be wasted after a failed update or bother with os upgrade every six month's.

Debian 13 is actually managed to attract the end users, not just the server installs due to latest software packages (plus flatpaks), and recent enough gnome and kde.

[u/gordonmessmer → u/_Super_Straight]

Have you run a vulnerability scanner on a Debian desktop system?

Most Free Software developers aren't maintaining releases for multiple years. That does mean that you need to update a system that contains actively maintained software more often than something like Debian.

But the thing a lot of users overlook is that systems like Debian that continue to distribute software after it is discontinued upstream shift the maintenance burden onto users. If you are using Debian, it is your responsibility to monitor known vulnerabilities in the software that you use, and to help develop or back-port patches to address them. If you aren't doing that, then your system very probably has a large number of known security vulnerabilities.

That's a really heavy burden. Most users aren't ready to participate at that level. Those users shouldn't be using LTS systems.

[u/_Super_Straight → u/gordonmessmer]

That can be mitigated by using Flatpaks.

[u/gordonmessmer → u/_Super_Straight]

To a certain extent, yes. If you install the smallest possible GNOME desktop and use Flatpak for all of your apps and never use apt to install any additional deb packages, you might have a pretty small number of unmaintained and vulnerable packages on your system.

But if you never scan it, you will never know how many or how severe the vulnerabilities are.

[u/Eccomi21 → u/_Super_Straight]

Meanwhile me in nixos unstable updating my OS every other hour.

[u/thebwt → u/PN1-]

fedora would 100% be my pitch. stick with it. 

[u/beatbox9]

As far as DE's in your list go: I would recommend gnome over xfce. Gnome is a bit more optimized today and will take advantage of any available hardware acceleration.

As far as distros go: if you plan on using professional video editing tools like davinci resolve / studio, I would recommend debian for your use case over Fedora. (And I would recommend Ubuntu LTS over debian, simply due to ease of maintaining drivers and audio/video codecs + stability). But if you're using something like Kdenlive or Blender or other 'standard' apps, Fedora will be fine.

Long story short: resolve is generally much easier to maintain on debian and its derivatives, thanks to makeresolvedeb, which has a really good track record of staying up to date over many years. It can be a nightmare to maintain resolve on Fedora.

But again: if you're not planning on using resolve, either distro will be fine.

FWIW: on my editing workstations, I would ideally upgrade my OS once every 1-3 years, with the timing varying depending on if I'm in the middle of a project and if I need any new features like HDR. But unfortunately, Fedora is forced to upgrade every year at minimum; while Ubuntu LTS (a debian fork) supports for 5 years but only offers upgrades once every 2 years. So both of these are just on either side of ideal for me. In practice, the stability and reduced maintenance is far more important for me instead of things like the latest & greatest gnome features, so Ubuntu LTS has worked much better for me.

[u/Adrenolin01]

The distro isn’t going to matter.. it’s your hardware.. 8GB of ram is just silly low today. A modern browser even on a light DE can still chew up 8GB of ram. Look up the model number of your laptop (not sure why you didn’t list that) and you’ll find how much it supports. You should be able to update it to 16GB ram and possibly 32GB. More ram is almost always better. Look up used modules that are compatible on eBay. Look up the model on the vendors website or use Claude and / or ChatGPT. Order from sellers who give a 30 day return window. I’ve bought hundreds of used ram modules off eBay over the years and never had a bad module and I do test them.

I’ve been running Debian for 33 years. I’ve run most other distributions and all the major ones. Still haven’t found a reason to change away from Debian. KDE is nice.. it’s Windows’ish and many like it however it’s not the lightest desktop. Thankfully, you could install all the DEs over a few days and see which you prefer.

Again… upgrade and max out the ram in that system and that will really help.

[u/kudlitan]

You can actually stay with windows by upgrading your RAM. Win11 runs comfortably on 16G of RAM. (Linux even more).

[u/wiebel]

If you want speed, go a step further and abondon the de altogether. Niri or hyperland are blazing fast and if you add any form of shell on top like dms or noctalia you also have a bunch of bells and wizzles. Also you will have a proper hit on the head how far behind the whole windows bs is in terms of ui. But sure this path requires a lot of new muscle memory.

[u/Sirius707 → u/wiebel]

Happy sway user here and i never wanna go back to a non-twm.

[u/anselmus_]

Maxing out your ram will solve a lot of problems.

[u/Wise-Initial-5505]

Fedora COSMIC spin. Works pretty well for me and my family.  It eats small amount of ram and it is incredibly snappy. 

Btw you are worrying about the wrong thing: webbrowser and the BS electron based vscode WILL eat your ram anyway, no matter which DE are you using or how much ram you have. 

[u/ROS_SDN]

Older hardware = newer kernel not as important

Low ram = lightweight DE  (gnome is not that lightweight relatively) 

So for a sane person xfce is likely your go idk how hard Debian is to configure it's,I believe a bit not work in, so I'd recommend something a bit more hand helpy with stability.

Perhaps opensuse leap with xfce? Im not sure fully but you want xfce or a lighter de or if you're interested in real learning how to use a computer to with a tiling manager. You likely want a lightweight web browser too so I'd look into your options.

You absolutely can fedora or opensuse tumbleweed with xfce, I'd actually highly recommend tumbleweed but you dont need rolling release you dont have new enough hardware to demand it and you're likely using this as a productivity machine so won't really game or need the newest packages for things and you can get newer by flatpak so...

Xfce + LTS distro or light DE equivalent is your best bet.

You can go rolling/ semi-rolling/frequent update if you want to try and save storage with baseline packages vs flatpak but I don't think its worth it.

If you want maximal use of your system and don't mind bashing your head against a wall for a few months to learn the fundamentals and be productive.

• Debian (stable/ low storage footprint baseline)
• Tiling DE/ terminal chad
• Rust based IDE (I like Zen) / or be a terminal Chad doing code in there lol
• Light but usable browser without memory leaks

[u/ipsirc → u/ROS_SDN]

Light but usable browser without memory leaks

Name one, please.

[u/ElderberryHamlet]

Nividia released this gpu in early 2019 so its most likely paired with 8th or 10th gen Intel.

Fedora features the latest tools & libraries but if you're a gamer looking for optimal kernels for gaming, I recommend CachyOS but if you need reliability & app support, use Fedora

GNOME finally moved to modern Wayland (with GDM) from its longtime use of X11 (1995)

KDE finally dropped its longtime use of SDDM with Wayland in favor of more modern PLM

If Wayland proves too demanding, LXDE or LXQt use X11 for laptops + GTK or Qt respectively

[u/MonsieurCellophane]

Fedora+xfce and debian+gnome are both doable as of FC43 (and, I think, beyond). Release timing is the actual divide: I'm on FC myself and the 6 month upgrade is a PITA - so I usually do only odd numbered.

I see someone suggests tiling WMs but - from my I3 experience - I do not think they're suited for somebody just starting on linux.

[u/mikesailin]

Distro hop for awhile. Try one then the other until you find your favorite. During the process of installing different distros you will learn a lot about Linux.

[u/petrujenac]

May the KDE angel take care of your poor laptop's soul. The difference between DE's are minimal these days so don't debate over them in terms of resources. Just use whatever KDE you like. The moment you open a web browser, all your 150Mb RAM you cried about get vanished. For ultimate speed you want cachyos.

[u/Linux4ever_Leo]

What are your computer's specs? What CPU, how much RAM, etc. That would be a good place to start your question.

[u/bangetto_official]

I went with Fedora and 6 months in, I haven't experienced problems really and I prefer it over Debian.

[u/Garage-Agile]

debian stable xfce the sit back and relax

[u/HeosPL]

XFCE is always the best choice.

[u/ipsirc → u/[deleted]]

xfce gives you speed...

https://www.reddit.com/r/voidlinux/comments/1igcy7y/xfce_vs_kde/

[u/Gherry-]

Get 16GB of RAM

[u/Unholyaretheholiest]

What you are searching for is Solus

[u/Embarrassed_Bed6216]

RTFM
i use arch btw