Edit 2: to everyone suggesting an SDD: i know. Look, if this guy had enough $$$ for an SSD, he could buy a used lappy less than half the age of this one that has an ssd and 2-3x the memory.
Currently, my buddy has a budget of $0, and, if he ever has money to spend, it will be on a newer computer, not upgrading this one. Thx!
My buddy’s old laptop was useless running Windows 7. I wiped it, put on Linux Mint (MATE), and it’s humming along just fine.
Edit: I really love helping people out like this. This guy is in his late 60s and has no other computer. He told me he hasn’t been able to use it in years (I believe it!), so I told him I could wipe it and make it usable again. He was thrilled!
After trying LM Cinnamon, I found it was a bit too much for this machine (Core 2 Duo “Penryn” @ 2.3GHz, 2.77GB Memory, Intel Series 4 Integrated Graphics). I reinstalled with LM MATE, and found it more responsive. I did the standard secondary installation of all the goodies like multimedia codecs, TTF support, battery tweaks, etc. I set up snapshots and the firewall, and installed UBlock Origin in Firefox. I updated everything. Shockingly, the battery still gets about 90-120 minutes, which blows my mind. The damn thing is 18 years old!
So, it’s still slow to launch stuff, as it’s running off of a slow HDD, but it manages to run most things just fine. It’s certainly far more responsive than Win7, and it enables my buddy to enjoy safe, secure, and modern web browsing (which is pretty much all he uses it for).
Any reason MATE over Xcfe? Just curious if the performance is close or MATE is better at things, not trying to question your decisions. I have a >9 year old PC at this point and installed Cinnamon on it but was finding it a bit laggy. I tried out the other editions but am sticking with LMDE for now, but sort of feel like I don't really need nice animations, I just need more CPU for faster compile times, haha
XFCE is so ugly and clunky, I wouldn’t ever suggest that a Linux novice ever use it. It’s fucking horrific. It’s a user interface you choose when you have no other choice and are just that desperate. Suffice to say, I wasn’t that desperate.
It was important that this user have an interface that he could navigate easily, an XFCE was not that interface, nor will it ever be.
Edit. I should note that this may be colored with some personal bias I have against XFCE. I just don’t like it and only use it when forced to. So, ya know, keep that in mind…
Definitely bias against XFCE.
EndeavourOS switched their default desktop from XFCE to KDE and I think it looks worse. They switched for toolkit reasons, not UX. The XFCE desktop look is heavily themed, very modern, and I think quite beautiful ( though a little purple for some tastes ).
I have another XFCE box that is practically pixel for pixel themed to look like Windows XP. This is just novelty value of course. Even if you do not like XP, it is hard to argue that it was a UI that normal people hated.
I agree that the “default” XFCE look is not great.
Here is the EOS XFCE desktop: https://github.com/endeavouros-team/endeavouros-xfce4-theming
Here are a few more themes including clones of both macOS and Windows 10: https://itsfoss.com/best-xfce-themes/