I chose Debian 12 as a solid and stable base. Which of these shipped DEs is the best for this particular laptop series and Windows 10 like user experience?
GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Xfce 4.18
Don’t know the exact laptop model and year, but here are some specs: IdeaPad, only HDD, DVD drive, shipped with Win 8 or 10 (I think), unbearably slow on Win 10 currently
Use case: office, web, movies (not streaming), things for non-tech-savvy users
Personally, I’m using Arch btw with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland, so I would prefer this over other DEs, but Debian still ships version 5. Has anyone experience with performance on an old Lenovo laptop with any of the listed environments?
This. It will perform better than when it was new. Pop in some extra RAM while you’re at it as it’s probably dirt cheap.
As far as DE, Gnome and Cinnamon are closest to Windows IMO. Nothing wrong with KDE, but it’s not as simplified.
GNOME is basically nothing like Windows, in fact KDE Plasma is much closer. Cinnamon isn’t in OP’s list of DEs, though it should be available as a pre-installed option for Debian based on what I see in their live ISO list. At that point, it would probably be better to go with Linux Mint though, given the target user. I assume OP would have their reasons for choosing Debian over Mint if they wanted to use Cinnamon, though.
Gnome’s ui is a couple of extensions away from being windows-like. You don’t need to subscribe to the full gnome experience™ to use gnome.