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This lightweight Linux distro made my 10-year-old laptop usable again
I have this old HP laptop that still works. At least it powers on, connects to Wi-Fi, and does what it should. The only small problem is that using it feels like too much work. It takes several minutes to boot, feels sluggish when opening new apps, and ordinary typing may lag at times. It still runs Windows 10, but the computer has become too slow, and the user experience is quite unpleasant.
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What made Linux Mint Xfce an easy pick is that it doesn’t pretend you have an infinite number of resources on your device. It idled at around 350 to 400MB of RAM on first boot, and I barely noticed CPU usage.
But the behavior is more significant than the numbers, and Linux Mint Xfce did not disappoint. I didn't notice constant disk chatter or services that wake up every few minutes. More importantly, the distro strips away unnecessary visual effects, allowing windows to open instantly because there are no extra struggles in getting animations running.
Linux Mint Xfce inherits polish from Mint, which adds some flavor, since Xfce on its own can be bare. Without bloating the system, it inherits sensible defaults like a preconfigured Update Manager, the Timeshift snapshot tool, and the Driver Manager.