My cousin gave an old acer switch that she wasn´t using, its extremely underpowered with 2gb of ram, an old atom and 32 gigs of storage. I tried ubuntu with gnome because thats what i use on my main laptop and while it has amazing touchscreen support it barely runs. I then decided to try lxqt and it runs great but the touch support is really bad. Does anyone know a DE with a good balance between performance and usability? xfce doesnt really seem to have good touch support either and tbh i really dislike it.
Definitely try KDE Plasma. It’s insanely light on resources for what it offers and its wayland implementation is near flawless with amazing touchscreen support.
Can confirm from personal experience, KDE Plasma is arguably the best choice.
I used it on a tiny Surface Go without issue, and I use it with a touch pen display.
You can easily rearrange the UI so things are positioned where your hands are.
Also, it’s the only setup I found where I could rely on virtual keyboards alone, after installing OnBoard.
I also tried Gnome and PopOS, and Plasma came out on top.
You can give KDE/Plasma a try
I can definitely vouch for Plasma, the Steam Deck comes with it and it’s great
Is plasma more lightweight than gnome?
Oh yes, by several metric tons. I’ve used both, calling GNOME lightweight would be hilarious.
Yes
I love plasma and it’s my go-to desktop, but it’s also one of the heavier ones and I’m not sure it’ll play nice with just 2GB of RAM. Maybe XFCE or something even lighter like LXDE/LXQT.
Trinity might be a little easier for touch as well, though I haven’t personally used that one in years
The idea that plasma is very heavy weight is an outdated one. You should give it a try.
You should try reading again, including the part where I indicated “it’s my go-to desktop” (as in, what I use in the majority of machines).
I also have an old acer with 2GB of RAM. While it can run KDE, a standard install with such will not run very well. Been there, tried that.
(Also, if you read the article even the dude mentioned apparently moved to XFCE)
Just to add an offering that is not KDE the beta linux mint includes gesture support which is good for touch. In terms of usability it depends on what you want. If you like phone UI than GNOME with something like Ubuntu or Debian will be better. If you were alive in the 90s and liked the “traditional” desktop than something like KDE or Cinnamon(Mint) will be more comfortable.
Debian 12 with xfce
