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Retelling distro descriptions like this, whether by human, or by text generator, can only be useful to absolute noobs who've never heard about any of those. It

Retelling distro descriptions like this, whether by human, or by text generator, can only be useful to absolute noobs who've never heard about any of those. It tells nothing about the quirks of actually running those systems daily. I would advise to go in the opposite direction. Choose an LTS release of a popular distribution, a DE that is not designed with transparencies and shadows in mind, and a software-oriented window manager if you have an anemic card released before the era of hardware compositing in desktops. If it works fine, enjoy using supported software, then test zram, schedulers, spectre+meltdown-enabling kernel patches, and other options to boost performance if you like. By the way, everyone knows that SSD is the first component needed by a slow PC. A second one is a dedicated GPU instead of integrated one. Even if it's completely mediocre, it still has plenty of VRAM and more than enough bandwidth for display controller to waste (unlike your main memory). And any kind of hardware acceleration integrated GPU pretends to do natively usually seems to result in 2× or 3× more memory transfers than needed to get things on screen.

RetroTechie 3y ago
> By the way, everyone knows that SSD is the first component needed by a slow PC. A second one is a dedicated GPU instead of integrated one. The first? Hmm.. my usual list for old PC's: 1. Max out the RAM 2. SSD 3. Still not *feeling* snappy? Throw lean(er) OS and/or apps at it. GPU depends more on 'heavier' games to be run (if any). Not desktop environment. DE 'needs' a better GPU? See #3
- ogurechny 3y ago
  I didn't mean 3D acceleration at all. Integrated video cards, especially older ones, compete with CPU for memory access constantly, and take some of its bandwidth. The effect is amplified by higher resolutions of modern monitors. The bigger data traffic to screen (multimedia, compositing), the jerkier the interface. So when you encounter Intel GMA, just put inside any compatible video card from a garbage bin instead of trying to gain performance by simplifying the visuals.

RetroTechie 3y ago

> By the way, everyone knows that SSD is the first component needed by a slow PC. A second one is a dedicated GPU instead of integrated one. The first? Hmm.. my usual list for old PC's: 1. Max out the RAM 2. SSD 3. Still not *feeling* snappy? Throw lean(er) OS and/or apps at it. GPU depends more on 'heavier' games to be run (if any). Not desktop environment. DE 'needs' a better GPU? See #3

ogurechny 3y ago
I didn't mean 3D acceleration at all. Integrated video cards, especially older ones, compete with CPU for memory access constantly, and take some of its bandwidth. The effect is amplified by higher resolutions of modern monitors. The bigger data traffic to screen (multimedia, compositing), the jerkier the interface. So when you encounter Intel GMA, just put inside any compatible video card from a garbage bin instead of trying to gain performance by simplifying the visuals.