gonna say this out right as a heavy deepin user… deepin is not for older pre 2010 and lower end graphics stuff it will take up too many resources and push the graphics hardware of lower end laptops… i can barely use it on a 2nd gen i3 so slow i have to turn off alot of the “aero” effects and still its a heavy load
i3’s are for normies! REEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Highly depends on what it does and who will use it. Also, Gnome is missing ( i know…).
I voted KDE because it can be infinitly customized to anything and is usable by most people. Plus, really lean.
Personal choice would be i3 for quick and dirty and awesome for when i have time. But i wouldn’t recommend that to anyone else.
Also, answer is different for an SSH machine, or a Entertainment thingy…
xfce, prove me wrong nerds.
Um, I don’t see Unity. Where’s Unity? oh yeah, it’s ded
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I would go with i3 if I want to use WM. For DE XFCE or KDE.
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Depends on wether “Low-ish res screen” also means “Low-ish res resources”.
KDE is pretty close in Resource usage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80cVpHnf31M this got even closer in the past 2 years) but is much more customisable to various screens.
If you can ran Wayland, you get proper scaling to more than 1x or 2x. Docks and Decorations can be sized to any pixel size, Fonts scale properly etc.
While XFCE can do some of that too, it takes more work and plain isn’t as customizable in some places.
With Plasma where it is now, i can’t see why you’d run XFCE other than for the specific Style or a specific workflow. If you need low resource usage above all else, you should be running a WM. With Plasma you pay a couple of Megs of Ram for a much more modern DE.
XFCE is rock solid though. I’ll give it that. I’ve not had XFCE do wonky stuff ever. It just works.
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I would vote Xfce, but…
I own a netbook with a crappy resolution and some config windows are just to tall to fit on screen. I had to connect an external display to comfortably configure the DE.
Apart from this there is no other DE, but Xfce 
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Yet you say it’s such a good DE. shame
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Shhh it’s still better!
KDE works fine on core2 systems. just sayin
but kde is shit out of the box and requires more knowledge then deepin. the reason i say deepin is stability and ease of use, deepin has all of the DE customization tools in GUI, not cli and has more polish then anything else out of the box. i never recommend things, if it doesnt fit the need. i would never recommend deepin for a server os/DE, and i wouldn’t recommend windos 10 for a core 2 duo… everything has its place… deepin is hella better over all for a “new to linux” user and those looking for a very polished DE.
everything has its place
Ya I always used to think it was super slow, but it ended up just being the animations. In my opinion, they aren’t very smooth and they make the menu feel laggy. But turn off the animations and it’s pretty snappy.
I like XFCE for the simplicity and it’s easy to find help for it, but for some reason my trackpad is really funky in XFCE. Multi-touch scrolling is especially terrible. About 75% of the time I stop scrolling and it bounces back in the other direction for a split second. Trackpoint is fine, but I’m not a huge trackpoint fan.
I went Fedora KDE for now, but that may change. Specifically, this is for my Lenovo T420 with i5, 16GB of RAM, 500GB 850 Evo, and 1366x768 screen.
Depending on how it works out I may switch to Manjaro i3. I’ve tried i3 a few times, but never really learned it. I always just felt like what’s the point. But this laptop is like the backup to my backup to my backup now. I pretty much only use it for funsies, so if I end up not liking it I can always just wipe and switch to something else.
I currently own a Xiaomi.
99% of my calls are Chinese-speaking robocallers anyway, so I suspect they already know my call activity.
My network traffic seems normal and I monitor it. I can flash my own firmware and LineageOS gets updated on it.
Whatever concerns I might have about the Chinese origin of the phone, Google apps are optional on mine, so I feel better about it than most of my domestic options.
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I remember running Enlightenment on a 480×640 display, so I’m gonna say Enlightenment.
In fact, I’m going to see what they’ve been up to since then.
installs enlightenment
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This seems to be the way to go for tech-savvy people who want neither Google nor China spying on them (but who can say they don’t have more ways?).
I usually see the Pocophone F1 + LineageOS as the bang for the buck recommendation.
Depends on what you need. I’d argue the Redmi Note Line is better bang for the buck, if you don’t need a flagship phone. Which you probably don’t.
I’m still running my Redmi Note 5 Pro on Lineage 16.0 (with gaps though), and it’s been decent over the past 2 years. RAM is a bit low, but that’s fixed in newer Redmi Phones.
You get 95% of what all other phones do at sub 200 bucks.
Yeah, cause it’s Xiaomi’s budget line.
But all Xiaomi/Redmi devices (except the Android One models) come with MIUI and depending on the region you get ads.
In terms of specs vs price the Pocophone is a very good deal, though.
Unfortunately Xiaomi made some retarded decisions with the A3 (like going back to a 720p screen while keeping the price up) which caused a bit of a shit storm on social media. They also went a few steps back with the A2 (no headphone jack, no microSD slot).
A3 vs RN7 vs Pocophone
https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9769&idPhone2=9513&idPhone3=9293#*,48mp,global
Considering that the Pocophone has better specs than the A3 while only being ~20€ more, I’d say the winner is clear (assuming both are available and you’re willing to flash a custom ROM on the Pocophone). But personal preferences are important.
Absolutely. But some “comfort features” or quality improvements might be worth spending a bit more.
Personally, I don’t get the sacrifice in build quality for aesthetics. The Moto One Vision looks really nice but it also feels very fragile with the Gorilla Glass body surfaces and plastic frame. Plastic can feel just as nice and is probably more durable (although less scratch resistant).
Apple even goes as far as to making the backside non-replaceable (even for themselves) if the glass cracks/shatters. The replace the whole back+frame. And make you pay ~50% of the devices cost for a replacement. Typical Apple behaviour, but still annoying.
I especially decided against getting a Huawei/Honor or Xiaomi/Redmi because of the baked in UI. It’s not just a launcher on top of stock Android like on the Razer Phone (2). It feels too intrusive to me, and I already find it annoying when there are pre-installed apps you can’t uninstall (I mean for the average joe who doesn’t want to or can’t use ADB to uninstall packages).
Fair point, though Xiaomi devices are still among the easiest to unlock. That’s rather important in a time where most Samsungs can’t be unlocked at all anymore and many other Manufacturers follow suit or making it increasingly difficult.
In the same move, Updates to new phones are getting worse and worse and ever shorter. So the ability to unlock a phone is pretty much mandatory to increase it’s lifespan beyond 2 years at most.
MIUI is certainly not for everyone, but the global Rom comes without most chinese Apps, runs the Playstore out of the box and Xiaomi is great when it comes to timely Updates.
Other than that, they are well supported by the community with AOSP Roms.
The A3 is a dud. Agreed. If you’ve got the money, the Poco is well worth it. The Redmi is just a lot cheaper while you don’t make many sacrifices in comparison.
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Unlike Huawei, who decided to stop giving out bootloader unlock codes.
Yeah, my heart sank for a moment when I powered on my Tab A (2018) for the first time. Completely forgot about Knox but fortunately for the things I do with my tablet it’s of no concern for me (so far).
What I like about Samsung though are some nice features which I absolutely didn’t expect, like you can set the battery to only charge to 85% (which is considered more “healthy” for batteries; it will still show as 100%) or that they list how much of the onboard storage is free to use for the user (a lot of companies don’t do that).
That depends on how well built the phone is and how well you take care of it. Software-wise, yes.
I’d argue that this isn’t necessarily a useful thing. The Play Store is much more important. Some sellers of Chinese variants put the Play Store on themselves but it’s not certified/verified, so some apps might not be available for download or work afterwards.
For your average joe this isn’t important. How many of the phones sold world wide are being tampered with and how many people just use them as is and get a new one with every renewal of their carrier’s plan?
I’d like to see manufacturers put more effort into supporting their products longer/better.
One argument for iPhones are the frequent software updates. How many do owners of a non-Pixel/Android One device get? And I bet the number is even lower for non-Flagship devices.
And they certainly got some nice features which aren’t present in Xiaomi’s flagships, like expandable storage (which is very important to me) or a headphone jack. But like you said earlier, 95% of the things you can do just as good with a 200€ phone. It’s kinda ridiculous that some of those things aren’t present in higher end/more expensive phones.
Like the Razer Phone 2 has the thickness to include a headphone jack yet in both Razer Phones they left it out and just included a dongle. How much does a branded dongle cost compare to implementing a headphone jack? I don’t get it.