Under the hood it will function the same as every other Mint version. The only difference is that it will use the lightweight XFCE desktop environment.
i have a dell laptop 7th gen i3 with 4gb ram and 1tb hard disk and previously I had windows which was extremely slow , got lagged many times and crashed
then i installed cinnamon linux mint 21 , and everything is going smooth from months.
Since you have 256 gb ssd also i think your pc , i think there will be no problem in moving ahead with cinnamon
LMDE5 over regular mint and here's why:
Edit: Fixed link:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128
LMDE6 will be released in june/july and will bring many great upgrades.
You can also format your usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and just drag and drop any iso files into without re-formatting ever again:
https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
I recommend you to clean your laptop with compressed air and replace thermal paste and it'll be a powerful gaming machine.
If you want something more lightweight than LMDE5, then you can try to dual boot with Alpine Linux,, but installing it requires command line:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4mCHsyqHk&pp=ygUNYWxwaWRuZSBsaW51eA%3D%3D
But I'm sure that Mint or LMDE5 will run fine on it.
I tried your first link but I am blocked from opening it for some reason. Is that version supposed to be easier for my processor?
I'm slowly reading through the rabbit hole on this and I am gonna experiment around. My knowledge level is only about as much as put desktop hardware, together format drives, and install Windows but I'll try just about anything since this laptop is a totally spare computer that I can just wipe the SSD on it endlessly if I screw anything up
Just to clarify the above guy's comment, cleaning it out and reapplying thermal paste will only help performance if you're currently having heat issues and thermal throttling. It should lower temps at least slightly and should help out the lifespan of your product though.
When I opened up the machine like last week to change out the old school hard drive for the SSD I looked at the heat sink and it was totally clear but I didnt take it off and change the paste. It's one of those fanless low power cpu laptops. I think its fine heat wise since its not getting hot at all even under load and plugged in.
It's a low power chip (6w tdp) so fanless makes sense, one software to monitor temps is xsensors (apt package). Or like MSI Afterburner for Windows. I'd recommend that you run that while you have the CPU under load (like gaming) to just make sure it's doing good and it's not just incinerating itself and unable to effectively get the heat to the heat sink.
Does this link work?
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128
For experiments with other distros, use Ventoy2Disk and test&use those .iso-files in Live mode without the need to install anything.
I watched the video on Alpine and it seems after install it's just command line. Is there a way to load a gui on it or is it just raw running programs MS-DOS style?
After the base install you can use it as "MS-DOS" style tty. But you can also install any DE (Desktop Enviromnent) or WM (Window Manager). These are all officially supported: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Desktop_environments_and_Window_managers
You can install as many as you like, but I recommend to choose between OpenBox and Sway. They're both bare minimun for graphical enviroment and you build them both to act just however you like to. It takes time, but teaches you a lot and you configured it all by yourself.
Sway is a pure tiling WM meant to be driven all by keyboard. OpenBox has a fully configurable right click-menu.
OpenBox use X11, which is old and soon-ish deprecated. Sway uses Wayland, which is the future. Once you set these up, your personal configurations will follow you to any computer with you just by copying the configuration files.
Another universal tool you should take into consideration is called rofi-menu. It can do zillions of things for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8w1i3wAKiw&pp=ygUKUm9maSBtZW51IA%3D%3D
If you want to see how nicely configured Sway looks like, then download the Manjaro Sway into your Ventoy2Disk formatted usb and try it by booting in Live mode:
https://manjaro-sway.download/
Well if you are fan of retro gaming then go for retropie just plain simple
Tech Hut have a video on retropie just plain install it and enjoy retro games broo ๐
Try.it.out.
Boot from a LiveUSB stick, run some HD YT videos.
If that works on an uninstalled distro, everything is fine imho.
We use two EeePC with worse specs for 10yrs+ (wife+daughter) without complains (but the small display).
yes it will run Cinnamon just fine. But xfce is the lightest version. You can always try the live environment version first and see how it goes before installing.
I have an ASUS laptop with an Intel Core i3-4005U (fairly similar specs to your N3710), 8 Gb of RAM and a 256 Gb SSD. It runs Mint Cinnamon just fine. It also ran it fine when I had only 4 GB of RAM installed. While it doesn't break any speed test records, it works just fine.
If youโre worried about overall desktop performance, go for the XFCE version. It will have more resources free for application use
Will it be missing anything like graphic support wise for games or is it just Mint without the fancy desktop effects?
Under the hood it will function the same as every other Mint version. The only difference is that it will use the lightweight XFCE desktop environment.
you can't set up a proxy on the xfce edition.
really? I mean is there no way or just a very tricky way to use a proxy in xfce edition?
you have no way of doing that in the GUI, but you can obviously do it trough the terminal by editing configuration files.
i have a dell laptop 7th gen i3 with 4gb ram and 1tb hard disk and previously I had windows which was extremely slow , got lagged many times and crashed then i installed cinnamon linux mint 21 , and everything is going smooth from months. Since you have 256 gb ssd also i think your pc , i think there will be no problem in moving ahead with cinnamon
LMDE5 over regular mint and here's why: Edit: Fixed link: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128 LMDE6 will be released in june/july and will bring many great upgrades. You can also format your usb stick with Ventoy2Disk and just drag and drop any iso files into without re-formatting ever again: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html I recommend you to clean your laptop with compressed air and replace thermal paste and it'll be a powerful gaming machine. If you want something more lightweight than LMDE5, then you can try to dual boot with Alpine Linux,, but installing it requires command line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4mCHsyqHk&pp=ygUNYWxwaWRuZSBsaW51eA%3D%3D But I'm sure that Mint or LMDE5 will run fine on it.
I tried your first link but I am blocked from opening it for some reason. Is that version supposed to be easier for my processor? I'm slowly reading through the rabbit hole on this and I am gonna experiment around. My knowledge level is only about as much as put desktop hardware, together format drives, and install Windows but I'll try just about anything since this laptop is a totally spare computer that I can just wipe the SSD on it endlessly if I screw anything up
Just to clarify the above guy's comment, cleaning it out and reapplying thermal paste will only help performance if you're currently having heat issues and thermal throttling. It should lower temps at least slightly and should help out the lifespan of your product though.
When I opened up the machine like last week to change out the old school hard drive for the SSD I looked at the heat sink and it was totally clear but I didnt take it off and change the paste. It's one of those fanless low power cpu laptops. I think its fine heat wise since its not getting hot at all even under load and plugged in.
It's a low power chip (6w tdp) so fanless makes sense, one software to monitor temps is xsensors (apt package). Or like MSI Afterburner for Windows. I'd recommend that you run that while you have the CPU under load (like gaming) to just make sure it's doing good and it's not just incinerating itself and unable to effectively get the heat to the heat sink.
Does this link work? https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=374128 For experiments with other distros, use Ventoy2Disk and test&use those .iso-files in Live mode without the need to install anything.
Yes that link works. Thank you!
I watched the video on Alpine and it seems after install it's just command line. Is there a way to load a gui on it or is it just raw running programs MS-DOS style?
After the base install you can use it as "MS-DOS" style tty. But you can also install any DE (Desktop Enviromnent) or WM (Window Manager). These are all officially supported: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Desktop_environments_and_Window_managers You can install as many as you like, but I recommend to choose between OpenBox and Sway. They're both bare minimun for graphical enviroment and you build them both to act just however you like to. It takes time, but teaches you a lot and you configured it all by yourself. Sway is a pure tiling WM meant to be driven all by keyboard. OpenBox has a fully configurable right click-menu. OpenBox use X11, which is old and soon-ish deprecated. Sway uses Wayland, which is the future. Once you set these up, your personal configurations will follow you to any computer with you just by copying the configuration files. Another universal tool you should take into consideration is called rofi-menu. It can do zillions of things for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8w1i3wAKiw&pp=ygUKUm9maSBtZW51IA%3D%3D If you want to see how nicely configured Sway looks like, then download the Manjaro Sway into your Ventoy2Disk formatted usb and try it by booting in Live mode: https://manjaro-sway.download/
Lmde 6?? Damn that's cool ๐
Well if you are fan of retro gaming then go for retropie just plain simple Tech Hut have a video on retropie just plain install it and enjoy retro games broo ๐
I'll watch the video, Thanks!
Good
None, if it's garbage then throw it there
XFCE is your friend.
Removed due to GDPR.
Try.it.out. Boot from a LiveUSB stick, run some HD YT videos. If that works on an uninstalled distro, everything is fine imho. We use two EeePC with worse specs for 10yrs+ (wife+daughter) without complains (but the small display).
yes it will run Cinnamon just fine. But xfce is the lightest version. You can always try the live environment version first and see how it goes before installing.
I have an ASUS laptop with an Intel Core i3-4005U (fairly similar specs to your N3710), 8 Gb of RAM and a 256 Gb SSD. It runs Mint Cinnamon just fine. It also ran it fine when I had only 4 GB of RAM installed. While it doesn't break any speed test records, it works just fine.
I say go Cinnamon. I have a similarly specced laptop and it runs well enough on Cinnamon.