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?
I can’t recommend KDE for people who aren’t comfortable with computers as there are so many settings they can get into without knowing how to get it back the way it was.
GNOME with Dash to Panel is usually good enough for those used to Windows’ layout, and you can set them up with Silverblue to get the same immutability.
Gnome addons break nearly every version upgrade, so, I wouldn’t recommend dash to panel, and the problem of settings they can get into is actually mitigated by kinoites snapshotting.
Dash to panel gets updated long before Gnome typically hits stable. Especially on Debian like OP mentions.
No KDE settings are all done in the homedir, there is nothing snapshotted here
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240862
Err, KDE at least gives people the option to configure their system how they want.
GNOME takes those options away, so if you don’t like what they have then you’re stuck.
Yeah, it also requires a lot of 3rd party addons to achieve basic functionality. Laymen shouldn’t have to search for these, and they also shouldn’t have to deal with them when they inevitably break.
Gnome hasn’t been for normal users since Gnome2. That’s when they started doing things “the gnome way” instead of just what’s pragmatic.