I chose Debian 12 as a solid and stable base. Which of these shipped DEs is the best for this particular laptop series and Windows 10 like user experience?
GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18
Don’t know the exact laptop model and year, but here are some specs: IdeaPad, only HDD, DVD drive, shipped with Win 8 or 10 (I think), unbearably slow on Win 10 currently
Use case: office, web, movies (not streaming), things for non-tech-savvy users
Personally, I’m using Arch btw with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, so I would prefer this over other DEs, but Debian still ships version 5. Has anyone experience with performance on an old Lenovo laptop with any of the listed environments?
Gnome is simple. Gnome is native for GTK apps, which are majority. You can turn on classic taskbar, turn off virtual spaces, add minimize button and it is now a classic user experience.
I don’t understand this obsession with Wayland vs X11.
On Arch I choose Gnome and the underlying technology is picked for me based on hardware of the machine.
I recall having X11, because I had nVidia card. I bought AMD video card and it started to run Wayland without any effort on my side. It was a while ago.
Arch would require you to make more decisions, which may lead you into the woods. Use Manjaro, which made Arch tech decisions for you like choice of network management stack.
I tried Manjaro last week on laptop. It has a polished user experience. Pick to use non-free drivers. Use Libre Office instead of free office. Install Firefox and chromium. Done.
Gnome just added full search and it is included in Arch and shall be in Manjaro in less than 2 weeks.
The advantage with rolling release for your parents is that you will never run install again. You will never need to upgrade version of Debian or Ubuntu. Just update OS every time you visit them, no more frequent than once every few months, not less than twice a year.
Manjaro has polished software installation experience at graphical user interface level.
Manjaro is amongst the worst distros for advanced users, giving it to beginners is a complete mistake, they shipped an update that uninstalled the DE