I’ve had Fedora updates screw up so many times and spent way too many hours fixing mutually conflicting updates that I have really come to loath the OS. I keep a Fedora server running for my customers who are Redrat enthusiasts but Ubuntu is so much better behaved.

What do you prefer? Linux allows multiple desktops to be installed. I use Mate primarily but I also have lxde installed as a backup in case something breaks.

My advice: try them all, then decide. They are all free. Most offer live systems. It will only cost you time, which will be well spent learning.

tl;dr: Break things and have fun.

The other comments do a good job explaining why you would go with X or Y distro based on your requirements. What I want to do is give you a general recommendation/piece of advice based on a feeling I get from reading your post that, that you are not excluding the possibility of tinkering with your system at some point in the future to get it less bloated and more streamlined to your use case (please absolutely correct me if I’m wrong about my interpretation).

As such, I think if your current computer has the ability to reasonably run Mint you should go with that. The reason is that it simply works most of the time without much hassle. As someone new to Linux, that’s a big part of the transition. A lot of stuff is new, so there’s no need to force extra complexity on top. You have the ability to dabble in said complexity even with Mint, but its not required, and while I am dying to recommend Arch to you having read that your PC is a bit on the less powerful side (the meme is real guys), I don’t think its a productive use of your time nor a healthy level of stress to deal with at this point of your “Linux progression”. That’s why I recommend Mint; make the transition, have the ability to slowly and eventually play with your system to an increasing degree as you get more comfortable with everything, but don’t handicap yourself from the get-go. Eventually, if you do decide to go with a distro which gives you more control in exchange for higher experience/knowledge/tinkering then you should have a solid foundation of skills to build on.

tl;dr: I recommend Mint so you get used to Linux, looking up solutions online, using the tools (commands) available to you to diagnose problems you may encounter, and if you decide its good enough for your use case - stick with it. If you want more control, think of it as a learning experience which will allow you to at some point delve into the more hands-on, complex distributions.

You should probably go for Linux Mint. I love the Gnome Desktop environment, but you’d need to install it afterwards. Probably go for the XFCE version of Linux mint.

Just use Linux Mint, cinnamon edition, and then edit the startup app list to not load some of the stuff that take too much ram, like the reports, nvidia, etc. Also remove fwupd if you updated your laptop’s firmware already via windows. I personally also stop bt (frees overall 30 mb of ram). Make sure during installation that you create a 4 GB swap partition too. At the end, I have a system that starts up at 750 MB of RAM (htop reading, 980 MB with gnome-system-monitor). As long as I use only 2-3 Chrome tabs, I’m ok to not swap. Firefox uses more ram i’m afraid, especially with youtube.

I have 4 laptops here run linux mint with 4 gb of ram. They run fine, my husband even does development in one of these.

The n3060 cpu is slow at 660 PassMark points, just enough for Mint to function. XFce is a tad faster indeed, and uses about 60 MB less RAM, however, it’s missing some desktop options that I find useful (e.g. disabling tap and drag).

What use cases are you planning for it? I mean, antiX would totally rock on that machine. However having Wayland, being lightweight and easy to maintain is kinda tough to find. Lose Wayland part, it’s antiX. Lose lightweight part, it’s Pop OS, openSUSE Leap, etc. Lose easy to maintain part (for a newbie), it’s Arch (mostly derivatives that come with a GUI installer).

Though if I was preparing that device for someone else, I would probably go with LMDE.

My advice is don’t take any advice. Just download the ones you are most interested in and then flash and try one by one until you feel at home.

I run Fedora 41 with Budgie on a low end Chromebook (sounds the same as you, Celeron N3060, 4 GB ram). Runs fine with no issues. I don’t do any power computing, but Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP are fine. It isn’t my work computer, mainly just in the living room couch computer.

I’d probably go with Mint XFCE or those listed, or you can search for distros that target older hardware. I’ll get back to yo on that.

Edit: so, @thatonecoder@lemmy.ca, my main search was focusing on minimal distros for old hardware (less that 1 GiB of RAM that support x86 (i.e. 32 bit)), these may fit the bill: Tiny Core, Puppy, Porteus, Absolute, antiX, Q4OS, Slax, Sparky, MX, Bohdi, Zorin Lite, Xubuntu, Archbang, Slitaz, DSL.
From here on we’re on “may need ≥ 1 GiB” territory: Lubuntu, Lite, MATE, Peppermint, LXLE, LMDE, bunsenlabs, Crunchbang++, EasyOS.

Again, my focus was on low RAM usage and preferably supporting x86. Most distros aren’t Wayland-ready yet, bare that in mind.
As most said, Mint with XFCE is a good start and most distros offer a “live” version you can boot to try without installing.

I personally recommend Mint, but ultimately others will have different opinions and you decide what you want.

As a complete newbie with those specs, I’d try Mint Xfce edition.

If youre new to linux, then I’d say Linux Mint is the place to start. Use it with XFCE if light weight is what you want.

Not having cutting edge packages is a red herring - you really dont want bleeding edge as thats where the errors and breakages happen. Mint is reliable and secure which is what you need when starting out. You dont want to be a beta tester. Dont confuse latest packages for most secure on linux - plenty of packages have stable older versions which get security patches.

Mint is also very popular, with a huge range of easy to find resources to help set it up the way you want it.

Wayland is also a red herring - its the future but its just not really ready yet. Yes its more secure due to how its built but the scenario you’re using linux in the particular security benefits you’re hearing about are not really going to impact you day to day. And the trade off is that Wayland is still buggy, with many apps still not working seamlessly. Most apps are designed for X11 and x-wayland is an imperfect bridge between the two. I’m not saying Wayland is bad - it’s actually good and is the future. But you dont want to be problem solving Wayland issues as a linux newbie. Dont see Wayland as essentialnfor an good stable and secure linux install.

Personally I wouldn’t recommend Fedora - it has a short update cycle and tends to favour newer bleeding edge tech and paclages. Thats not a bad thing but if what you want is a stable, reliable low footprint system and to learn the basics, in wouldn’t stray into Fedora just yet. It has a 13 month cycle of complete distro upgrades and distro upgrades are the times when there are big package changes and the biggest chances of something breaking. The previous version loses support after a month so you do need to upgrade to stay secure. Most people won’t have issues between upgrades but with any distro when you do a big upgrade things can easily break of you’ve customised things and set up things differently to the base. It can be annoying having to fix thongs and get them back how you want them, and worse can lead to reinstalls. Thats nor a uniquely Fedora problem, but the risk is higher woth faster updating and bleeding edge distros. And in fairness there are lots of fedora spins that might mitigate that - but then you risk being on more niche setups so support can be harder to find when you need it.

For comparison the latest version of Mint supported through til 2029, and major releases also get security patches and support for years even after newer versions are released. There is much less pressure to upgrade.

Fedora+Xfce is probably what you want.

XFCE is probably a good, lightweight DE. Many distros will support it. I believe Linux Mint has an XFCE version by default. I’m sure they will get to Wayland eventually, but it sounds many of the features will not matter to you beyond just a working desktop.

I have never tried it myself, but maybe Debian with XFCE might be more lightweight than Mint? Probably more involved to set up, though, so I would research that a bit more before taking the advice of a rando who has never done that specific distro/DE combination.