The propaganda worked. I bought a Thinkpad, the thigh highs are on the way, penguin stickers are already here. Now it’s time to actually put Linux on my machine.

I’m a bit lost on which version of mint to put on the T480. It’s an i7 8650u, 16gb RAM, 256gb SSD (will eventually be upgrading the RAM, SSD, and display). My question is, is the t480 “old” by Linux standards? From what I’ve gathered cinnamon is the standard version. Edge is for new (?) hardware that may not be fully compatible with cinnamon. MATE is for old/lower power hardware that can’t handle the demand of cinnamon and xfce is for even older/slower hardware.

I’ve been running in circles all morning trying to find experiences of people with a T480 who are running mint and which version they’re using. Old is apparently 3+ years according to various articles trying to convince me to upgrade and I haven’t found much on what is considered old hardware for Linux. As someone who hasn’t bought a computer in nearly a decade, a quad core processor with 16 gigs of ram is ridiculously powerful. My last computer was a $90 shitbox that I got on clearance from Walmart in 2016 to do online lessons in EMT school. So my perspective/experience is utterly useless.

Can a T480 run Mint Cinnamon 21.3, or am I better off using MATE/xfce? It’s going to live a pretty easy life. I’ll mostly be using it to browse, stream music, do (online) homework, write papers, and put books on my e-reader.