Which flavor of Linux would be best for this system?

[jnelsoninjax]

I have a Lenovo Thinkcentre AIO Intel i5 4570s 2.9 GHZ with 8 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD. Windows is painfully slow on it, and I would be interested in playing with Linux to see if I can get better performance. What Linux Distro would be the best for me to play around with?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Are you familiar with Linux at all?

If you are 100% new, I'd suggest Linux Mint. The XFCE version might set you bast, as Cinnamon is a little heavy.

If you are a little more into it, I'd suggest going with Debian. The father of all the Bunutus.

If you are really into it, I'd suggest Arch. EndeavourOS is your best bet. It runs Wayland, to. If you're into that. The greatest and latest software.

[satukoro]

I agree with mindovermaster for the most part.

If youre not super linux savvy i recommend going with Linux Mint. If youre comfortable in the terminal, i recommend arch/endeavouros. If you want desktop environment recommendations, i used to favour gnome when i used ubuntu or debian, then fell in love with cinnamon when i moved to mint, then kde when i tried out opensuse. I've been on kde plasma since.

Anecdotally, arch/endeavour feels lighter and snappier to run on my gaming pc versus mint, however ive had a great experience with each in general.

One last point to performance, if that 500gb drive is a spinning platter drive you are going to have miserable performance in pretty much any os, especially when utilizing the disk (read/write operations). A cheap ssd could make a huge diffence in perceived performance.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 06/03/2025 at 10:44, satukoro said:

I agree with mindovermaster for the most part.

If youre not super linux savvy i recommend going with Linux Mint. If youre comfortable in the terminal, i recommend arch/endeavouros. If you want desktop environment recommendations, i used to favour gnome when i used ubuntu or debian, then fell in love with cinnamon when i moved to mint, then kde when i tried out opensuse. I've been on kde plasma since.

Anecdotally, arch/endeavour feels lighter and snappier to run on my gaming pc versus mint, however ive had a great experience with each in general.

GNOME might be a little too hard on his system. So is Cinnamon. (also based on GNOME)

I think MATE, XFCE, LXQT, or something along those lines are more fitting for his system.

Debian has all those DE's. (I know, technically you can load any of those on Mint, but I was just saying on first install)

But, everyone has different viewpoints about different distros.

[jnelsoninjax]

I think I will try Mint and see how it fairs on this system. Thanks for the input

[Som]

On 06/03/2025 at 16:01, jnelsoninjax said:

I have a Lenovo Thinkcentre AIO Intel i5 4570s 2.9 GHZ with 8 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD. Windows is painfully slow on it, and I would be interested in playing with Linux to see if I can get better performance. What Linux Distro would be the best for me to play around with?

They're all (linux / windows) gonna be slow until you replace the hard drive with an SSD. you can pick them up cheap nowadays 

[jnelsoninjax]

On 06/03/2025 at 10:16, Som said:

They're all (linux / windows) gonna be slow until you replace the hard drive with an SSD. you can pick them up cheap nowadays 

I am aware of that, and I am going to get one and attempt to replace the mechanical drive with an SSD, I just need to get into it since it's an AIO, there's most likely a bunch of screws

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 06/03/2025 at 11:16, Som said:

They're all (linux / windows) gonna be slow until you replace the hard drive with an SSD. you can pick them up cheap nowadays 

Totally not true, my friend. There are other DEs, as I said above, that are less intensive, even on a HDD.

[Riggers]

If it`s like one I changed the drive in, it`s dead easy, you just take off the stand then at the bottom there are 2 slider locks (have a look) which go outwards, then the back just lifts off from the bottom. The drive is in a blue plastic case which needs taking off. The ssd can then just be plugged in without the case. I slapped a bit of blue tack on it just to help

Maybe get a copy of Ventoy on a decent USB stick then slap several distros (Mint, Mx, Pop, etc) on there to see which may suffice. It`s a great way of seeing which you might like to actually install.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

This is a Lenovo ThinkCentre M93z AIO, correct?  If so, from looking at the specs at https://psref.lenovo.com/WDProduct/ThinkCentre/ThinkCentre_M93z_AIO?tab=spec you can upgrade the RAM to 16GB using two 8GB DDR3-1600 SO-DIMMs and/or replace the 2.5" SATA HDD with a SATA SSD.  A CPU upgrade to an Intel Core i7 is also possible. 

I'm not personally familiar with this model, but replacing the HDD with a SSD it likely going to make the machine a lot more responsive.  Here's the Hardware Maintenance Manual for the computer:  https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/thinkcentre_pdf/m93z_hmm.pdf.  Next up, upgrade-wise, would be to look at increasing the RAM.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

 

[redvamp128]

Actually with that specs it is really any modern Linux distribution should run well. (I went through these options recently before wiping a painfully slow Windows myself) I am not a  new person to Linux- I chose Linux Mint with Cinnamon but then turned around and went and installed MATE.  I had previously ran Mandrake 7-9 (the Dragon was always on Point  if you know you know) and also Ubuntu. 

The main thing is ask these questions:

How familiar are you with Linux? 

If somewhat then I would suggest a distro like Fedora  (which is said to do better with Thinkpads) or OpenSuse (though that one tends to be kind of a quick with the releases) 

If not then Ubuntu or Mint. (as stated  XFCE or MATE are good choices for DE) 

If you are Media Person then Mint would already Pre-Load a lot of stuff.(of course checking the box for install media codec)

If you very familiar with Linux then 

Arch or Manjaro and Debian.

Then of-course you could and should create a boot USB stick with Live versions to test out the look and feel before just installing.

Then you could always make separate partitions splitting the drive 1/2 one Distro and 1/2 another which is unlike Windows that only wants to be the only one operating system.  Linux will more successfully co-mingle with other versions using some form of Grub to choose the distro. 

 

 

 

 

[bill20]

I’d start with Linux Mint (Cinnamon or even MATE) or Ubuntu, since they’re easy to install and “just work” while you’re learning. If you want something lighter and faster, Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE are great and still very beginner-friendly.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 18/01/2026 at 06:57, bill20 said:

I’d start with Linux Mint (Cinnamon or even MATE) or Ubuntu, since they’re easy to install and “just work” while you’re learning. If you want something lighter and faster, Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE are great and still very beginner-friendly.

All distros are easier to install these days. And yeah, there's a lot of lighter DE/WM's.