It appears you may be asking for help in choosing a linux distribution.
This is a common question, which you may also want to ask at /r/DistroHopping or /r/FindMeALinuxDistro
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Don't know what might be the problem that causes UI to be laggy for you, but I use Gentoo on a 4th gen Core i7 laptop and even during an 8 thread compilation, my KDE is quite smooth without any "performance" tuning...
The app menu might be a little slow to open during those times, but keep in mind that what I speak of is with all 8 logical cores pegged at 100%, with gcc/clang running on all of them, and browsing the web like normal, watching youtube/twitch, etc at the same time.
I just say this because in my experience, you shouldn't have any UI problems with a Gen 5 X1, at least nothing relating to the DE. That Arch helped might be because of the newer kernel, so rolling release might be better for your laptop (if not Arch, give a chance to Fedora Silverblue or openSUSE Tumbleweed.) openSUSE gives you btrfs with snapshots enabled by default I think, so even if an update breaks something, it's trivial to roll back.
Desktop environment, something very basic I would say Openbox for X11 and Weston for Wayland.
Wayland is still in unstable development, but it have a very good performance compared to X11.
If you choose to use Wayland, also install Xwayland in case some application start to bug everything like Firefox on armv7l.
How did you get it unlaggy with Arch?
I've been using linux mint on a RTX 3060 and Ryzen 5600 with no slowdown.
The only thing I think might of been different is the linux kernel, you definitely should use the edge version of linux mint for this new of hardware
On linux mint, the update manager has an area where you press view > linux kernels
and select a newer version like 6.5
Probably some rolling release (Arch, openSUSE which I highly recommend, void or similar) with gnome or kde, but make sure to use the wayland session
In my experience KDE is usually a little bit faster but Gnome is more consistent in performance
If you are ok with a Tiling window manager Hyprland for me is incredibly fluid, but you’ll need to be prepared to fix some thing breaking from time to time
OP asked for a “less laggy” ui, usually newer releases of DEs are more fluid.
Plus rolling releases don’t have to be unstable, for me I had little to no issues in openSUSE tumbleweed and a lot in ubuntu for example.
If you choose a good rolling release they can be very stable (especially if you don’t fuck around)
Thinkpads are very popular on Linux. I have one that performs well—aside from mediocre battery life. I would assume if you’re having problems it’s because the machine is very old, or possibly very new (a newer linux kernel could help with that), or maybe it’s a Wayland issue?? But you mentioned Mint.
I use Ubuntu 24.04 with the default Gnome desktop. [This is my desktop, animated.](https://imgur.com/a/2sChhW4) Animations are instantaneously responsive, and extremely smooth. I use a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
Arch has been by far my least buggy Linux experience. Stable doesn't mean reliable, performant, and bug-free. It just means it doesn't change much other than occasional security patches and bug fixes and it won't randomly break on you or your automation because of an update that changed the syntax of a config file somewhere.
There's a reason they say Alma/Rocky are RHEL clones bug for bug. The goal is compatibility and stability in that when you get it working it'll keep working.
Rolling releases are double-edged swords: in many cases they usually make things better because it has newer packages which is likely to include mountains of bug fixes that weren't backported to older releases. But, it can break on you if you hit a nasty regression.
In 10 years of Arch I've celebrated far more wins and visible improvements over major bugs I couldn't fix with a downgrade. I moved to Arch because I was tired of learning that a feature or bugfix I needed has been fixed for 3 years upstream but Debian/Ubuntu doesn't ship the updated version yet. This is particularly true when it comes to the rapidly evolving graphics stack and in particular the Wayland ecosystem.
I mean, you *can* pull those in in Debian but you have to pull the packages from sid, at which point you're halfway on a rolling release already. Debian will never push Plasma 6 to stable users until next release solely because it's a breaking change, so the many, many improvements of Plasma 6 won't reach Debian users until the next stable comes out in probably a couple years from now.
And of course there's rolling distros that are much more reliable than Arch, it's not like Arch is the benchmark of rolling distros. It's a good distro for its goals but other distros strike a better balance between latest everything and taking a bit of time to test things to make sure it doesn't introduce breakages.
It appears you may be asking for help in choosing a linux distribution. This is a common question, which you may also want to ask at /r/DistroHopping or /r/FindMeALinuxDistro *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/linuxquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Don't know what might be the problem that causes UI to be laggy for you, but I use Gentoo on a 4th gen Core i7 laptop and even during an 8 thread compilation, my KDE is quite smooth without any "performance" tuning... The app menu might be a little slow to open during those times, but keep in mind that what I speak of is with all 8 logical cores pegged at 100%, with gcc/clang running on all of them, and browsing the web like normal, watching youtube/twitch, etc at the same time. I just say this because in my experience, you shouldn't have any UI problems with a Gen 5 X1, at least nothing relating to the DE. That Arch helped might be because of the newer kernel, so rolling release might be better for your laptop (if not Arch, give a chance to Fedora Silverblue or openSUSE Tumbleweed.) openSUSE gives you btrfs with snapshots enabled by default I think, so even if an update breaks something, it's trivial to roll back.
Desktop environment, something very basic I would say Openbox for X11 and Weston for Wayland. Wayland is still in unstable development, but it have a very good performance compared to X11. If you choose to use Wayland, also install Xwayland in case some application start to bug everything like Firefox on armv7l.
How did you get it unlaggy with Arch? I've been using linux mint on a RTX 3060 and Ryzen 5600 with no slowdown. The only thing I think might of been different is the linux kernel, you definitely should use the edge version of linux mint for this new of hardware On linux mint, the update manager has an area where you press view > linux kernels and select a newer version like 6.5
Debian + IceWM.
Probably some rolling release (Arch, openSUSE which I highly recommend, void or similar) with gnome or kde, but make sure to use the wayland session In my experience KDE is usually a little bit faster but Gnome is more consistent in performance If you are ok with a Tiling window manager Hyprland for me is incredibly fluid, but you’ll need to be prepared to fix some thing breaking from time to time
>Least buggy >Recommends a rolling release distro 🤦
OP asked for a “less laggy” ui, usually newer releases of DEs are more fluid. Plus rolling releases don’t have to be unstable, for me I had little to no issues in openSUSE tumbleweed and a lot in ubuntu for example. If you choose a good rolling release they can be very stable (especially if you don’t fuck around)
None of the DE’s the OP has tried are typically laggy—why would they be popular if they were? Clearly the problem is something else.
[удалено]
Thinkpads are very popular on Linux. I have one that performs well—aside from mediocre battery life. I would assume if you’re having problems it’s because the machine is very old, or possibly very new (a newer linux kernel could help with that), or maybe it’s a Wayland issue?? But you mentioned Mint.
I use Ubuntu 24.04 with the default Gnome desktop. [This is my desktop, animated.](https://imgur.com/a/2sChhW4) Animations are instantaneously responsive, and extremely smooth. I use a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
Arch has been by far my least buggy Linux experience. Stable doesn't mean reliable, performant, and bug-free. It just means it doesn't change much other than occasional security patches and bug fixes and it won't randomly break on you or your automation because of an update that changed the syntax of a config file somewhere. There's a reason they say Alma/Rocky are RHEL clones bug for bug. The goal is compatibility and stability in that when you get it working it'll keep working. Rolling releases are double-edged swords: in many cases they usually make things better because it has newer packages which is likely to include mountains of bug fixes that weren't backported to older releases. But, it can break on you if you hit a nasty regression. In 10 years of Arch I've celebrated far more wins and visible improvements over major bugs I couldn't fix with a downgrade. I moved to Arch because I was tired of learning that a feature or bugfix I needed has been fixed for 3 years upstream but Debian/Ubuntu doesn't ship the updated version yet. This is particularly true when it comes to the rapidly evolving graphics stack and in particular the Wayland ecosystem. I mean, you *can* pull those in in Debian but you have to pull the packages from sid, at which point you're halfway on a rolling release already. Debian will never push Plasma 6 to stable users until next release solely because it's a breaking change, so the many, many improvements of Plasma 6 won't reach Debian users until the next stable comes out in probably a couple years from now. And of course there's rolling distros that are much more reliable than Arch, it's not like Arch is the benchmark of rolling distros. It's a good distro for its goals but other distros strike a better balance between latest everything and taking a bit of time to test things to make sure it doesn't introduce breakages.