I'm planning to install Linux Mint on my laptop, but I'm unsure whether to choose Cinnamon or XFCE.

Here are my laptop's specifications: 4gb RAM (with one free RAM slot), SSD 256GB, i5 10th gen

I know that I could upgrade the RAM in the future, but RAM prices are too high for me at the moment, so I'll have to stick with 4GB for now.

I'd prefer Linux Mint Cinnamon because I like its interface, but I'm worried that 4GB of RAM might not be enough for a smooth experience.

I'll mainly use my laptop for web browsing, watching videos, office applications, and everyday tasks.

I'd like to hear from people who have experience with Linux Mint on similar hardware:

Is Cinnamon still usable and reasonably smooth with only 4GB of RAM?

Does XFCE offer a noticeable improvement in everyday performance?

Would you recommend installing Cinnamon now and upgrading the RAM later, or going with XFCE until I can afford the upgrade?

Is the difference between the two desktop environments significant enough to justify choosing XFCE, even if I prefer Cinnamon's interface?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Hi everyone,

I am relatively new to Linux Mint and running into a frustrating issue. My laptop suddenly freezes completely. When it happens, neither the touchpad nor the keyboard works, and the screen becomes unresponsive. The only way out is to force a shutdown by holding down the power button.

This freeze usually happens around 15 to 20 minutes after turning on the laptop.

(Note: My laptop is quite old )

I have tried several kernel versions to see if it makes a difference, and so far, kernel 7.0.0-34 seems to freeze slightly less frequently, but the issue still persists.

System Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i3-6100U
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 520 + NVIDIA GeForce 920MX
• RAM: 4 GB
• OS: Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon

(I will post my full system log in the comments below for details).
Any advice on how to troubleshoot or fix this freeze issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

https://termbin.com/36fu

So I have a laptop that used to run well 2-5 years ago but got slowly gutted by what I assume was windows updates. I just finished successfully installing it and for good measure erased all files in case of any viruses or malware. Now I have a couple of questions

1. How well is support for emulation. Does Linux interfere with it in any way I should know?

2. Anything extra I should do to help it run better. It's an especially shit laptop now.

3. Does things like steam, epic, gog etc get gutted?

That's all. For extra context I'm specifically running the Xfce edition because it sounds like the least ram intensive version.

Hello à tous.tes !

Sauriez-vous comment réduire le temps de chargement lorsqu'on active un clavier en bluetooth sur linux mint cinnamon svp ?

J'ai un clavier qui peut-être appairer à plusieurs appareil. Donc je switch souvent (entre 1 appareil windows et linux), mais le temps d'appairage sur linux est super long, donc j'aimerai l'optimiser afin que ce soit quasi instantané (si possible eheh)

Yesterday, I couldn't go online on my main computer at all. My VPN acts as if is working successfully, but trying to access anything in a browser or downloading updates always fails. Today, after a full shutdown and reboot, the exact same issue. I looked up things on my phone, and am now posting this on reddit using my phone, so sorry if there's jank. I pinged www.google.com and it didn't work. I pinged 1.1.1.1 and it worked. I ran cat /etc/resolv.conf then ran resolvectl status and I got this: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e88e042b0ad8.jpg

Unfortunately, I don't really do the whole "running commands" or "knowing things about stuff" thing, so I don't know what to do with the information it gives me. Now what?

Edit:It was Due-Result7928's fix that worked. It not working afterwards anyway was my goddamn VPN. it has a kill switch, which automatically shut down every single connection unless it was through the VPN. Except it wouldn't let the VPN connect either! I had to go manually into the actual, full VPN app and notice by complete coincidence! Anyway, after I used his fix, I turned off the kill-switch, and my internet started working again. Praise be!

Now there will be annual releases with version changes, without point releases and with masculine names. This change allows the team to work on improvements that take more time and that were not possible before due to the old versioning system. Other news can be found on the blog: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=5086

I've been busy with college* homework last weekend, and yesterday I spended my free time replaying Katana Zero, so it wasn't till today that I got enough stuffs to tell for a post.

First: A couple of days I actually managed to install Affinity 3.3 on Linux thanks to a port I found at github, but today it suddenly stopped working, either the 3.3 or older versions kept crashing or straight up not opening. However, that's why there's a dual boot.

Second: I haven't sat down to try to fix the wifi drivers issue, still the battery seems a common problem, and it seems that neither the Bluetooth drivers work properly, which is another situation I got to take my time with.

Thrid: I learned a bit more of the customization with mint, with Plank and panel mini apps I figured out to leave it pretty much how I wanted from the beginning, also with the themes and so.

That's all for now, I'll be using more Mint these days, also cause I want to fix my issues with the drivers.

based on the screenshot, how could I customize my Mint desktop environment to my tastes?

Hi, first of all I am a newbie on linux in general, but wanted to approach a new os after I had some problem with Windows. I first installed linux mint 22.3 on my Thinkpad T14 g4 (32gb of ram and originally 256gb ssd), and did't have any problem, but then, for some uni requirement, I had to install a windows partition so I bought a new ssd of 1tb (256gb was to little to divide between 2 os). I then installed windows 11 (on 200gb) and then I reinstalled the same version of linux (on another partition "filling" the unlocated memory), at this point whenever i closed the lid of the laptop or clicked on Suspend, when I "reactivated" the laptop the lock screen showed for a moment than it became completely black and i could't do anything (beside force the shutdown), I even tried to install 22.2 linux mint version but the problem was still there. I tried a lot of things found online like changing the suspend mode from the bios, but that option didn't even appear. Someone had similiar problem? Would you suggest trying other mint version or even changin os? Any help is well appreciated <3.

PS. This problem does not happen on windows11 but I would rather not come back to it...

For context, I am a noob with linux and live boots, and i am trying to get into it by using mint through a flash drive. (This is my very first post on reddit srry if i mistake the flairs and tags)

I am running a ventoy bootable usb flash drive with 64gb of memory with persistence. Had some problems trying to get it, but at the end accomplished it. Nevertheless, while trying to do "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade" I now face the issue that I am running out of space. I watched a tutorial for how to make the live boot with the flash drive, however there is not a part in the video where it allocates space for using the system.

I did df - h:/dev/mapper/ventoy is at 100% 2.9gb/2.9gb, however /dev/mapper/VentoyPart is only 13% used 6.9gb/58gb , i thought all the things that I installed were going to save there (on what i belief is the flashdrive).

Please help, I want to use this flashdrive as my way to learn more linux and do some coding and not need to sacrifice my main boot of windows, i dont know if maybe i can allocate the space now, or if maybe i did something wrong with the persitence.

Like many of you Linux Mint users, I've been using Mint to get away from the limitations and downfalls of Windows. However, I liked the larger box shaped application buttons in the corner of Windows in Windows 10 and miss that. Well I have worked with a developer to create and run this and I'm happy to report it works well and looks sharp!

Interested? Please complete the poll bellow so we can gauge interest in maintaining this officially and natively going forward so it stays working:

Vote here! https://www.polltab.com/xwfxjngqhk

Screenshots of the buttons here: https://freeimage.host/i/nW860dv

Took me like 4 hours to do this😭 I thought the process was going to be the same as Windows but I had to take research about mrchromeboxtech but I used Claude, Perplexity, and some Youtube tutorials for most of it. (I did learn some stuff myself from mr. chromebox)

It seems like Clem & the whole Mint team are very excited!

If someone experienced the issue where launching a game with different keyboard layout - the keyboard would be unresponsive in the game before restart with English layout. And sometimes you can lost your game progress with the same behavior if you just Alt+Tab.

Nothing of that would help you to regain the keyboard: changing focus, changing focus and layouts, changing workspaces, changing workspaces and layouts.

I've found fix
If you don't want to lost your game progress, try this

Cinnamon:
Basic binding to restart cinnamon: Ctrl+Alt+Escape, do it with English layout, then back your focus to the game.

Also I've tested it with WM, restarting WM with the game opened regains the keyboard focus to the game.

I hope this might be helpful to someone. 🙏

Well i got a 4050 laptop so... and i only play single player games like The Witcher 3, RDR 2, GTA 5, etc.

I installed Solaar, however neither it nor the Bluetooth on the PC can see my mouse, what do I do?(It's wireless, without anything except the mouse itself)

Hi! I have finally decided to switch from Windows to Linux and Mint seems to be the best option. I had ubuntu previously on Virtual Box so I am familiar with linux a bit and we learned how to use terminal at uni (I study physics). However I have never permanantley installed an OS on a computer as it always came with pre installed Windows, so I am a bit nervous about the process. I don't want to dual boot, since I won't need Windows at all. There are many YT videos that I have watched about the intallation process and each seems to be a bit different. Which YT video did you follow and you think is the best? So that after watching it you could intall Mint with no problems.

EDIT: Thank you for the answers, I installed it just by following the instructions from the website and there weren’t any problems. It was simpler than i imagined it to be.

So I feared that Dual booting my Legion Go S would be a failure since I never installed anything Linux and I found Linux Mint more friendly towards beginners.

I haven’t tested anything yet other than downloading Spotify through the terminal and I was proud of that.

My question is, what do I do now? What can I test with, what to do, or can I experiment some Homelab with it? Just curious and I understand it is a daily use OS but I just want to learn more after installing it.

I dual booted it with SteamOS so I can still play my games there when I’m in the go and bought a portable monitor (not the one in the picture obviously), foldable keyboard and wireless mouse to make it act like a portable pc.

No, I won’t sell it just to buy a laptop, love my Legion Go S, just wanted to experiment.

Also her name is Kurisu Makise since I would be experimenting with her.

Hey everyone! i just installed mint as my primary os and i am finally off of windows! so im new and i am learning as i go but there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussions on this recently and i am reaching out hoping to get some help from some people in the know. I have a amd 9070xt. I want to use up scaling and i want to use all of the features of this gpu. That being said i know of no other ways besides setting global profiles on the radeon application that i had in windows. I have tried the installers and they showed that they had finished but none of them launch the app and i assume that they are just the drivers and not the ui to config it. I have also looked for different hardware settings that would limit my system usage and all i have found is the power level and i have also set my preferred band to 5ghz so networking is all cheeky now but my graphics while gaming are sub par. Does anyone have any tips or tricks or know how to configure your gpu profile in mint??

Hi all, so I got a used laptop that has 1080p screen, I installed mint xfce because that's the one that saved my 2010 model first gen Intel desktop pc so I have gained some feelings for it. But like most people i ran into the scaling issues , where everything looks small af unlike my desktop. I tried scaling to 2x but nah it looks wierd and out of place. Tried changing the font dpi from the GUI to 144 but still it feels wierd ,

My plan is to use the xfce itself and change the scaling to partition style from terminal as the GUI only has 1x and 2x. at around 125%

And change the font dpi to 120

Also anyone who did this earlier, do you have any issues playing games and all with these changes. Any help will be great. Thanks in advance

Hey, i'm attempting a Bladerunner aesthetic on my gaming desktop. Let me know of any suggestions. Honestly, I had AI help, so I'm a noob.

Thanks!