Other • Re: Help me pick the right OS for my Pi4B 4GBRAM

I have a couple of recommendations:

1. First of all, I think Raspberry Pi OS is actually perfect for you. I used to use Ubuntu for ages on my Raspberry Pi 5 4GB and it was okay but I did a fair bit of web design and work and I found that it was crashing and being slow way too much. Pi OS actually has just as much functionality as the other big distros. It looks pretty minimal and bad when you first get it, but that is mostly because of the default desktop environment which is PIXEL. If you want to make the desktop look nicer, you can simply use a different desktop - I would recommend KDE Plasma as it looks nice but is still relatively lightweight: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69f75aa3ee64819 ... 4796e8d550.
2. Another great option is Manjaro. I only discovered it quite recently, but it works well and I like it. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux, a rare base system on Raspberry Pi. But that’s cool, it allows us to test and learn new things. The goal of the developers is to create a fast and user-friendly distribution. Manjaro is available in various flavors with the most known desktop environments (XFCE, GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Mate, …). You can also start with a minimal version (named Architect), where you can install only what you need and configure everything yourself.
3. Finally, I do still like Ubuntu. It may be a little slow with what you're describing, but it should be alright and the UI is top tier. One thing that I would definitely recommend (I would recommend it for anything but especially Ubuntu) is installing the More RAM app on Pi-Apps https://pi-apps.io. This basically just cuts out a chunk of your storage and uses it for memory instead, and it actually works pretty well.

Statistics: Posted by Miguel Duarte — Mon May 04, 2026 5:40 pm