• JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I’ve got a Surface Pro 5 with the dogshit m3 processor and 4GB of Ram, anyone have any concept of how it’d run under linux? It basically folds at any real task in Windows

    • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      Incidentally, I had the exact same device. It actually worked pretty good to be honest!

      Of course it will not magically be a top tier device. Programs will need some time to load the first time, and then be thrown out of RAM again.
      BUT, compared to Windows, it will be a difference between night and day!

      I strongly recommend you the silverblue-main-surface-image from universal-blue.org.

      Why?

      • Because you need the linux-surface-kernel for it to work. Otherwise, most functions, like touchscreen, webcam, adaptive brightness, auto-rotate and more won’t work at all.
      • You can install the kernel on other distros too, but it might break. I had that already happening. On uBlue, it’s baked in and won’t break. And if it does, you can just roll back.
      • It comes with Gnome by default and provides you a great touchscreen experience
      • And you can install Waydroid easily, which gives you access to Android apps.

      I don’t recommend using another DE than Gnome for that. Especially those “light weight” ones like XFCE are horrible for touchscreens, and if you use a browser, those few hundred MBs RAM less used by them is negotiable.

      • JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Thanks for the advice, I’d not heard of that particular distro. I’m quite comfortable with Fedora so I think I’ll give it a shot

    • themusicman@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It would be smooth as butter with a lightweight desktop (probably not KDE). I suggest Linux Mint XFCE edition

      • iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        “KDE is heavy” is so 2000s. It’s been quite a while since KDE is very tight on resources usage. Unless you’re running a raspberry or similar, there’s no point on constraining yourself with one of those desktops for an everyday use device.

        • TCB13@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Everything’s about perspective… maybe GNOME became SO bloated that KDE now seems very light. :P

          • aksdb@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Look on phoronix for benchmarks. Plasma consumes less RAM and CPU than even XFCE.

            • TCB13@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Hold on, I was kind of joking, I’m not saying KDE is slow. GNOME for sure is slow as hell.

              • aksdb@feddit.de
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                9 months ago

                All good, but I think it’s really often a misconception that a DE like KDE, which is big and brings tons of features, must be more ressource intensive than a (feature wise) smaller DE. Which, as the benchmarks show, is surprisingly not the case.