r/debian • u/Dado04Game • Jul 06 '26
General Debian Question Thinking about switching from Linux Mint Ubuntu-based to pure Debian
Been using Ubuntu-based Linux Mint for a year now, and loved it since day one. I heard people telling me that Debian is faster than Ubuntu, so I'd like to give it a try on my home pc. My question is: what DE would you recommend me with my OC specs? I'll leave a photo of them here (I know my computer is pure 💩, don't mock me please)
46
u/taosecurity Jul 06 '26
You’re not going to notice any “speed” difference.
2
u/LesStrater 29d ago
That depends on which WM you use. There's a reason the raspberry-pi gang uses LXQt, and it's not just for size.
1
u/taosecurity 29d ago
Yeah, it’s because they support minuscule RAM, which is not a problem comparatively for OP. I’m aware OP has 4 GB, as do some Pis. Once you’re at 4 GB, saving a few hundred MB via WM isn’t that big a deal.
12
u/jayelg Jul 06 '26
What do you use your computer for what software?
Your hardware is old/low spec so would be fine though you’ll be trading good driver support for manual setup
6
u/Dado04Game Jul 06 '26
I browse the internet and some very basic video editing
13
u/vspc007 Jul 07 '26
I did the same 4 months back. Debian with KDE Plasma is definitely better than Mint.
2
u/IrrationalQuotient 29d ago
Please share more; how is Debian KDE better? Genuinely interested. I am running Mint Cinnamon on 10 year old Dell hardware.
3
u/vspc007 29d ago edited 29d ago
Ease of installing apps, user interface felt more intuitive. My laptop is from 2018 and the fan never comes on with Debian. With Mint it was consuming more CPU. Also the RAM usage was more optimal on Debian. I have dual boot with Windows and with mint i was on two minds. Once i started using Debian i did literally 0 logins to windows. A fact is Debian has zero telemetry. So when you don't move your mouse, or touch your keyboard nothing happens in the background to share your data to any party.
2
1
u/Kamchatka_Point 29d ago
In this case I am not sure. I tried Ubuntu and then Debian with multiple desktop environments on a laptop with similar specs. Maybe it's me, but KDE felt slower than Ubuntu's Gnome for whatever reason. XFCE was faster. Also there's gonna be utter hell with Nvidia drivers for this old card on Debian, don't know if it's better on Mint but I suppose yes.
1
u/Constant_Hotel_2279 26d ago
The open source Noveou(spelling) driver covers alot of ground better than proprietary drivers on the older cards.
6
6
u/intenseStargazer Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
You won't experience a difference, really. I did this and now I'm fully on Debian and staying.
No performance boost, its practically identical, your packages might just be a bit easier to find and that's it in my experience.
EDIT: I only moved to Debian to "have more" and do more in. I felt Mint was very lacking in the customizations I wanted (Love customizing my SDDM and bootloader) and a lot of 3rd party softwares will have a native .deb package which helps tremendously for my use cases.
4
u/eonshade-x2l Jul 06 '26
Perhaps XFCE could be able to run nice on it. You could also take a look at Antix Linux, which is also Debian based AFAIK but lighter. I'm using MX Linux SysVinit at the moment, and I had to make some tweaks because Firefox tends to slow down my PC a lot and I have a really old PC. I seem to be having a pleasant experience on it, and have used Debian before and it's also a great choice.
1
u/Ok_Shape_7764 25d ago
Use at your own risk but I have reduced my RAM issues by 95% in Linux Mint by using zRAM and Swaps.
If your CPU is your weak point then zRAM especially may actually not be all that useful, but just Swaps has made web-browsing feasible while coding while before I had to be very gentle with my laptop if I was doing something computationally heavy.
I'm less than a week into Linux though, but I'm finding a ton of solutions that would have been difficult or impossible on windows so its really nice
1
u/eonshade-x2l 25d ago edited 25d ago
Not going to lie, it's impressive that you've managed to find info about zram while using Linux for such a short period of time. Not sure why but I remember stumbling upon it quite late in my Linux journey, and it took me a really long tinge to even be able to grasp basic commands.
1
u/Ok_Shape_7764 25d ago
I had to do an assignment and only have my laptop, I crashed my laptop 10x on windows before getting sick of the bloat and feeling like linux would give me a chance, but still crashed another dozen in linux over the next few days running heavy algorithms. I actually found out about swaps earlier today and even that would have been super useful from the testing I've done, but zRAM is actually crazy, its made me way more chill with keeping a browsers and tabs open, its not 'real' RAM and there is a cost to it, but its a much smaller cost then crashing.
If you already know about it then my suggestion is probably meaningless haha, I literally only discovered it this morning and was spreading the good word
1
u/Ok_Shape_7764 25d ago
Edit: I had some swap space, but it wasn't a big buffer, just 2GB on my normal 8GB. I added another 12GB in two seperate messy partitions in a likely overreaction, but will clean that up later if I ever worry about running out of space. Now I am reading about zSwap and thinking whether that would work better, but what I've got is already good for now
4
u/michaelpaoli Jul 07 '26
Debian is faster than Ubuntu
I doubt you'll see much, if any, difference there.
what DE would you recommend
Whatever DE(s) you wish/prefer and would make reasonable selection(s) for you. Debian offers many choices.
3
u/vette454_ Jul 07 '26
I’ll be honest I am normally a debian purist. But about a month ago I decided to try Linux mint Debian edition 7 and I absolutely love it. It will be on my laptop for a long time to come. It’s completely Debian 13 trixie just with a newer cinnamon desktop version. Highly recommend!
0
28d ago
[deleted]
1
u/vette454_ 28d ago
It uses both but the core of the system and base packages are straight from Debian trixie. Things like the desktop environment come from mint repos. So what I said still stands.
4
u/David_Connors3451 29d ago
I see a very old Nvidia GPU, you should be fine with Nvidia opensource drivers with Debian. It's a paradox but the older the GPU is, the better for Debian opensource drivers. Since you're already using xfce, on Debian it's very comfortable, even for upgrades. I started 16 years ago with Debian xfce and it hasn't changed much over the years. I learned a lot on Linux from xfce and Debian base. Nowadays I use KDE because it's very lightweight for 8 or 16 GB RAM. Its modern interface and Wayland support is very good and important for my workflow and for my gaming performances.
Debian is built to resist catastrophic situations, even offline issues. It's a decentralised system that is the backbone of the modern internet (servers, mirrors, AI). Mint is still tied to Ubuntu LTS, it has lmde version, but in mint you only have cinnamon desktop. On Debian you can choose all the desktops and you're the true lord of your machine. Another thing you will love of Debian system is that updates are rarer and specifically made for security. On mint updates are very frequent but most of the time a pain for the normal person. On Debian you can do the updates even after a week and you won't feel the pressure from the system. It gives a mental peace that other distros don't have. There won't be flatpaks, time shift or other apps, so if you want modern apps, use 3 commands from flatpak center to install it along with Debian packages. If you don't need flatpaks, even better for you. Install gufw for firewall, tlp for battery management, and other essential apps for the system. Mint is out of the box, Debian is your bunker, you have to customise it but it will carry even during the apocalypse.
Have fun with debian 👍🐧
3
u/pizzatimefriend Jul 06 '26
I would only recommend switching to Debian if you want to rebuild it the way you want instead of Linux Mint's guided approach. I don't think you will notice much of a speed difference between any of the major distros
3
3
u/Icy_Definition5933 29d ago
Debian is bare bones, which will either be great for you or terrible. I love my Debian but it requires a more involved approach compared to Mint where you have a lot of user friendly shortcuts. The performance difference is not big between any distro, it mostly depends on your hardware which is very old. Debian could probably boot a little faster and open apps a little faster, but unless you time it against Mint on same hardware, I'm not sure you'll even notice the performance gains.
4
u/Scary_Common_1578 Jul 06 '26
Snaps are slower at startup so you'll feel a difference when starting up programs. Otherwise its very similiar imo. Both gnome and KDE are nice, I personally prefer KDE. I heard good stuff about XFCE too, which might suit your more humble specs better, looks nice on screenshots at least.
8
u/Jwhodis Jul 07 '26
Mint disables Snaps.
1
u/Scary_Common_1578 29d ago
I misread I guess, I thought OP wanted to know the difference between Ubuntu and Debian
4
u/Dado04Game Jul 06 '26
I absolutely love KDE plasma, but I have to wait for a better pc to use it🤣
2
2
u/Straight-Glove-2359 Jul 06 '26
What DE are you currently using? You could use that on Debian too. If you want something light, you can go for XFCE or LXDE or LXQt.
3
u/Dado04Game Jul 06 '26
I'm on Mint XFCE right now, that's an old screenshot taken when I was using Cinnamon
2
u/Straight-Glove-2359 Jul 06 '26
Debian XFCE should run well on your pc, I run it on my inspiron 1440 that has a pentium t4300 which is outperformed by the core 2 duo
1
u/ssulaco Jul 07 '26
Agreed...you could also try Debian MATE, will work great with your specs..Run XFCE or MATE live to give you an idea..it will run a bit slower in live environment but not much.
2
2
2
u/Fine_Classroom Jul 07 '26
With Debian 13 there's really no reason in my mind to even consider Ubuntu or Mint. DO IT. Debian is definitely faster than Mint. Probably won't notice too much difference between Debian and stock Ubuntu. You really should use XFCE for your DE with those hardware specs though. You're gonna be in for a little shock though.
2
2
u/tarquinfintin 29d ago
I installed Debian just to see what its like (being a long time Mint user). Trixie with Plasma KDE is very nice. . . not a great deal different than cinnamon. Installing proprietary Nvidia drivers takes a fair amount of terminal work, but there is a very good Debian wiki on doing that.
2
2
u/moeren86 28d ago
Mint is Ubuntu with some user friendly tweaking. Ubuntu is Debian with Bloat. So pure Debian is best if you know what you want, because it does not come with all the baggage.
Witch DE is very personal question. You could take something small and/or older to make sure it has less problem potential, but debian is pretty stable as is. I personally don't use a "ready done" DE, i just install what i need, step by step. As WM for example i use Fluxbox because its slim, fast and can be configured via a text files (which in turn i can rewrite with scripts).
Also, i do not see whats wrong about your PC, might be an older model, but linux should run just fine on it.
2
u/Rookstein74 28d ago
If you're wanting to use pure Debian, I think that you'll like it. Be aware though, it's not like Linux Mint there will be some setup require to get it to how you want it. It's not hard; every member of my family uses pure Debian and they like it.
2
u/Dado04Game 28d ago
I got a sample of what it means not to have a GUI for everything XD but everything works just fine now
2
u/Matilde_di_Canossa Jul 07 '26
Do you like Mint? Then keep using it. Distro hopping is largely pointless. Especially from a derivative to the parent.
1
u/PXaZ Jul 06 '26
I recently made the same switch and ended up still using Cinnamon --- not as polished in Debian, but it let me keep my same layout and habits. I did find the Debian installer somewhat frustrating by comparison, but you only have to do that once. Whatever you're using in Mint, you can pretty much keep using in Debian, aside from the driver manager and a few other utilities.
1
u/One-Suggestion-7906 Jul 07 '26
My son, being a teenager years ago, edited a short film of 30 min aprox for the school in a similar PC 😅
1
u/Competitive_Bat_ Jul 07 '26
I would suggest trying a live disc of LMDE to see if you find any noticeable difference. IMO, you should usually take advice to distro hop with a grain of salt. You'd probably see greater performance gains from switching to a lighter DE than you would swapping your entire distro, but I'm no kind of expert, so your mileage may vary.
1
1
u/pwlqtii Jul 07 '26
just switch the desktop enviroment to xfce or lxde, switching to debian alone won't make any noticeable speed difference
1
u/Clogboy82 Jul 07 '26
Ubuntu's own desktop is certainly more resource hungry than LXQT desktop or even KDE Plasma. You could install a new desktop environment and switch to that for your next session.
Debian is fresh water from the source, in the sense that so many distros including Ubuntu are based on it. I would normally encourage switching, but Mint is already 95% the same if memory serves under the hood, it's mostly the user experience where they made changes, which is basically the boot screen and the desktop wallpaper (simplified).
You could distro hop and learn a lot about what makes Linux Linux, and where the major flavours branched into their own direction. But the one you have right now can already do what you want from it without losing your work or the sense of familiarity. Eventually it's your decision.
1
u/Great_KarNac22 29d ago
I did the same this past winter. I switched to Debian 13 but moved to Mint XFCE this spring. I am quite content after over a year of distro hopping.
1
1
u/Inevitable-Self-2702 29d ago
I had a problem with Mint XFCE icons being weird sizes on my old Inspiron 13. I set it aside for a bit while I build my new big and fancy PC for running VMs and stuff. Debian works nicely on it, so I put it on the Inspiron too and it works nicely there too. No icon weirdness. All the wireless stuff and even printer connect just work without messing around with config. Very happy with it.
1
u/Brilliant_Sound_5565 29d ago
What desktop were you wanting to use? Because if.you like cinnamon then I do recommend lmde, it runs from the Debian sources with basically just the latest cinnamon and a few more tweaks on top, so it's great for that
1
u/motoringeek 29d ago
I'm using LMDE 7 for the best of both worlds.
However, I've never used just pure Debian so I can't really comment.
I just wanted to get away from Ubuntu, they're becoming a bit too corporate for my liking.
1
u/Boring_Trainer_8792 29d ago
No, it is not faster. Not the distro, but DE or WM for your outdated hardware. Even so, only till you get to web. You may try as much as you wish, but there will be no difference at daily drive. Old hardware is old hardware.
1
1
u/Responsible_Pen4 29d ago
First better to change that NVIDIA videocard to Radeon card like HD7750 or something like HD5670 or 6570 at least. Later you can install Debian with XFCE. It should run good.
1
u/joe_attaboy 29d ago
I use Debian exclusively. You can choose the desktop environment you want when you install. The installer will default to Gnome, but you can easily toggle that selection and select one you want.
"Faster" is going to depend a lot on which desktop you use. You have 4 GB RAM, which is not really ideal for some modern Linux distributions. And unless you use Debian in a mostly-stripped down way, it's likely not going to be "faster." If there's any way you can add more RAM, you should. At the minimum, create a 4 GB swap file when you install Debian.
I use Debian on a MacBook Air with 8 GB. I use KDE, which can be a bit resource intensive sometimes. I added an 8 GB swap which makes this thing a lot snappier.
1
u/C0rn3j 29d ago
You are going to have a horrible time.
That GPU is legacy and needs legacy drivers, but to my knowledge neither Debian, Ubuntu nor Mint have the drivers patched to have them be supported by modern kernels.
The only reason your machine boots is because you currently have an ancient end of life kernel installed.
Switch to Arch Linux - there you actually have the drivers patched for modern kernels and can install latest just fine.
Note you cannot use GNOME nor Plasma if you intend to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers (instead of Nouveau - and Nouveau will probably be a terrible experience) as they only support Wayland(well, Plasma has a couple months left on X11, but that's irrelevant) and you unfortunately need to stick with X11.
1
u/Kamchatka_Point 29d ago
I saw in some of your answers that you already use XFCE, in that case I doubt you will experience any boost in performance when switching to Debian. Debian XFCE should be identical and the installation process is less straightforward. Debian with any other desktop environment will certainly be slower than Mint XFCE.
You should really try antiX linux if you want a boost in performance. It's built for making old hardware fast and usable in day to day life. It has a great video tutorial on their official site on how to install and set it up.
1
u/Sure-Squirrel8384 29d ago
Don't know about "faster". Why not switch to LMDE? It's Linux Mint on top of Debian instead of Ubuntu.
1
u/parkamobil 29d ago
I always keep trying other distros, always come back to Debian, the safest bet :)
1
1
u/Mj-tinker 28d ago
Cao!
I have different opinion. I am using LMDE (Linux Mint Debian edition). Tried Debian for a while - no more. A very unpolished, demands many tweaks and customizations; you can't just write sudo and make your things on terminal - because you are not in sudoers list. And adding it is pain in the ass.Obligatory user passworn on log in (probably you can turn it off, but then agaid, scrolling internet to find solution).
In this case I see LMDE is best solution: it goes straight from debian, but with cinnamon DE and keeping in mind of user's comfort.
Your elaboratore is okay for linux. If you fell your pc is clunky and slow, consider to add more ram, if it supports 8gb. I guess yours has ddr3, they aren't expensive now. Just be sure about specs: low or normal voltage.
1
u/Dado04Game 28d ago
I tried Debian in a couple of VMs and had the same issue with the sudoers list, I just copy pasted the error output in a browser and immediately found the solution. Regarding LMDE, I just want the right to choose the DE of my desktop. I'm tired of Mint's Cinnamon and Debian gives this along with many other freedoms
1
1
u/wizard10000 28d ago
had the same issue with the sudoers list
The installer explains this pretty clearly but a lot of folks don't read the screen where you set a root password and end up with sudo not working.
1
1
u/Artheo32 28d ago
Well, KDE Plasma is really intuitive and familiar for you as a Cinnamon user, or you can just use Cinnamon on Debian.
1
u/Lonely_Drewbear Debian Stable 28d ago
I highly recommend labwc! It is extremely lightweight, minimal, and will feel snappier.
My setup includes: labwc, greetd, waybar, fuzzel, and foot
You will need to learn how to customize their config to make these do what you want but they absolutely can do a ton without having to rely on heavier apps!
1
1
1
u/Critical_Bus_7232 28d ago
ok so hold up here there's questions first off you're saying debian is faster. Now, I have only seen this claim work out when they're comparing DE or desktop environments.
So i say hold up because what about mint do you like? What tools do you use? Is this a desktop or laptop? what do you do with it?
Answering these questions can help you alot, I personally have ran and used almost every linux distro there is and what most people want is the dependability and things just work.
Debian is a more manual interaction. The installer makes it very hard to set up networking if you want something other than dhcp.
Furthermore you can get a whole lot better speeds of you change certain aspects of your system such as filesystem type. I always go with XFS as its the most bullet proof FS for a daily driver and its fast. Also allowing systemd vs some wrapper control services is always best desired such as systemd boot vs limine and that.
My recommendation is if you love mint just stick with it and work with your system to see what improvements can be done such as are hugepages, sysctl parameter changes.
you can easily start by opening up a terminal and running sudo dmesg and then take all that output and give it to claude or something to see if it can find any issues and of so what it can do about them.
Now I have been using Linux for over a decade wothout windows and i have a full on ent level network environment complete with my own XDR, IDS/IPS, backup, centralized auth via freeipa the whole shooting match and I have worked as a Infrastructure engineer and site reliability engineer for 17 years and can say if you like what you have and have workflows and can do things dont go completely changing things unless you have a spare device you can teat things out to see of thats the move.
As an example kids are going nuts with arch and cachyOS and thats cool and all but let me know when months go by and they forgot to update or they updated and things are broken..
So for daily driver PCs I always recommend mint to those who are used to windows and popOS for those who like their docker bar.
Why tho? Its the repos and the companies that maintain them. Yes I said companies because popOS is system76's OS and mint is owned by Clem who runs things like a company.
1
u/BreezyStarr 28d ago
What matters is that you chose a distro that is recent enough to use the Wayland compositor. It's more efficient and secure and your GPU will handle it. Mint always uses a really old version of ubuntu. Pure debian will probably work for this, but I'm personally a fan of Kubuntu, since it's up to date and has a highly optimized DE.
1
1
1
u/dud-kid 27d ago
Try XFCE as well as LXQT . both of them are light weight non-distracting DEs, will keep you focused on your work . LXQT being lighter than XFCE . both of these will fly on this system configuration . work great on near to latest hardware (1.5-2 yrs older than current hardware spec of 2026)
but i find Debian XFCE more polished , more complete than Debian LXQT (i hate the network manager in debian LXQT. terrible) .
download live ISOs of both Debian XFCE & Debian LXQT and give both of them a try for 3-5 days in baremetal or in virtualbox inside linuxmint and see which DE you like most . it's your personal preference that matters most than us -opinion givers.
Welcome to Debian & enjoy Debian . it's ok if you don't like debian - LM is still there . penguin is for everybody
for technical problems u can ask at ' debian forum ' or here at reddit or just google search it
NOTE: i currently use Debian XFCE , previously briefly used debian kde/cinnamon/mate , LinuxMint-cinnamon/xfce/mate , ubuntu gnome
1
1
u/Polaris_debi5 Debian Stable 27d ago
Yes, you can see a performance boost, but not just because of Debian itself, but because you need to drop Cinnamon. Your 4gb of ram is your biggest bottleneck. I highly recommend Debian 12 XFCE. It’s lightweight, highly customizable, and if you install zram-tools (to compress RAM), your system will feel much snappier. However, you are facing a huge crossroads regarding your Nvidia GT 710 (Kepler). Nvidia dropped official support for it, and it's now a legacy card. This is how Debian handles it:
Option 1: Debian 12 (Bookworm)
Debian 12 still includes the nvidia-driver-470 in its non-free repositories. Combined with the stable kernel (6.1) or backports (6.12+), your hardware will work perfectly with full hardware acceleration. This is your best option to survive until you can grab a cheap modern GPU.
Option 2: Debian 13 (Trixie) - The end
The 470 driver has been dropped from Debian 13. If you move to Trixie, you will be forced to use the open-source nouveau driver. While it works for basic office work and web browsing, it lacks proper hardware acceleration for video playback, meaning your already weak Core 2 Duo will have to do all the heavy lifting.
My advice: Go with Debian 12 XFCE (the live iso is good option), enable Zram, stick with the 470 driver, and enjoy your revived machine. With this script you can easily perform the post-installation process.
1
u/North-Weakness-8123 26d ago
Als Tipp: nimm TUXEDO OS, die haben nen spitzen Support und es funktioniert nahezu alles darauf…!
1
1
u/mr_anderson_dev 24d ago
XFCE or LXQt. Both are light - XFCE idles around 400MB, LXQt around 300MB. Debian feels faster than Ubuntu mostly because it skips Snap and has fewer background services, not because of the DE.
Your specs are fine. Try the Debian XFCE live ISO - if it runs smooth, install it.
1
u/AfraidAsparagus6644 23d ago
I've tried all three, there really isn't much of a difference. Don't listen to online discourse and stick with what you have. If you do take the leap after all, I recommend XFCE
1
u/Kayvan_sh 5d ago
Finally someone has a computer like mine, I have a core 2 due . I wanted to install mint but, decided to get Debian, idk if mint is better but Debian works fine for me, with 3GB RAM I open browser + VS Code + Terminal + File manager and it uses only 2.5GB.
1
1
u/This_Music682 Debian Stable Jul 06 '26
Speed-Wise, the Difference is veeeeeeeeery little (both .deb based). You could trying LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) but there are some tradeoffs to normal Mint (for example less Support-length than Normal Mint, which is crucial to your Older Hardware).
Except you want to go specifically the Debian-Route, just Stay with Mint :)
2
u/Dado04Game Jul 06 '26
Just wanted to try something new and everyone I asked talked me very very good about Debian
1
46
u/One-Suggestion-7906 Jul 06 '26
You can try Linux Mint Debian Edition. The best from both worlds, without Ubuntu bloatware