On "it" your set up.

Intel NUC6 ?

If you want I can give a try of Mint20-Cinnamon in a VM 1core 1Go DDR3

Just for fun and for you too,
I will give a try installing it on a Toshiba A60 (Pentium4)

Maybe you remember this : http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/img/1598815286.png


you can see the NUC6 on the left side.

I will come back soon to tell you what hapend ...

Bad news!

1. Iso burned on DVD isn't able to boot my old Toshiba laptop
2. Live session freeze directly opening Firefox, impossible to install lang package (french) freeze too
3. failed to install on 8Go drive ask for 12Go and installer is very slow if you want my opinion this OS is hell bloated
4. as I'm obstinate I decided to test the Debian + Cinnamon based version (lmde-4-cinnamon-64bit.iso) as well => Not better



From here :https://cdimage.debian.org/images/un.../current-live/

you can download hybrid-iso of debian including non-free drivers for hardware.

I choose debian-live-10.5.0-amd64-cinnamon+nonfree.iso to give a try in the same VM to get a comparison between the 2 distributions.

First good point Debian's Menu offers directly language support,
opening the live session I get a warning message from Cinnamon telling it needs graphical acceleration otherwise it will suck cpu resources or something like that.

So at first glance Cinnamon doesn't look good for frugal hardware.
Debian Cinnamon comes with ESR and freezes directly.

Now trying with sister ISO Debian/XFCE everything works fine included Firefox ESR.

So definitely Cinnamon is the problem with a poor hardware.

Your choice should be to change Cinnamon for a lighter desktop environment
or to buy a more powerful PC with enough GPU to support fancy Cinnamon's stuffs.

Hope this will help you to make a good choice.

In your position, I would try XFCE (but as it is yet my favourite desktop so this is not a neutral advise ;-)

Since I do want to run Cinnamon, looks like I will need to go 4 core and enough GPU. Not sure how much GPU. I do not want to go the Debian route.

You should ask Mint community and/or Cinnamon

You're not the only one with this kind of troubles : Linux Mint 20 freezes randomly and almost daily - Linux Mint Forums

The question is wrong. Mint will run fine, but your browser probably not. You do need to run not only the OS, but your apps. The need of these resources depends on your requirements, not on the OS. (Also may depend on the desktop you choose).

1 members found this post helpful.

In the original post I mentioned the Desktop Cinnamon. That first post is a good question. I could have added that I would be running FireFox. I was not asking what I need to run the OS bare bones.

browser itself is not enough. Need to know if you want to run embedded games/video/whatever or just read newsr. How many tabs do you need, which extensions required .....
But there is another approach: try and test. If you only need a browser better to use xfce (lubuntu?).

If you have a machine that meets the current published minimal requirements but does not run the software those requirements are for, then that is an issue to raise with the publishers of the software - only they can either update the requirements or correct the software.

It is not unreasonable for minimum requirements to be explicit in what they [do not] cover - in the absence of any disclaimers, I would expect all software included in a default distro install to run to a minimally usable level on the minimum requirements, but I would not expect that for software that needed to be manually installed. However, in most distros, I would expect Firefox to be in the former category, and - especially given the ubiquity of browsing - I would expect it to be usable or have a suitable disclaimer.

Of course, what it means to for Firefox to be useful is debatable - for minimum requirements I would expect sites like Linux Questions and Wikipedia to run without issue, but not be surprised if video sites and/or bloated webapps did not work properly. (Also, just because a site appears simple doesn't mean it isn't bloated.)

As an aside, using uBlock Origin is a great way to reduce bloat and speed up browsing on any website, and is a plugin I recommend for all browser users. (It works well with uMatrix, which is useful for more advanced users.)

I am currently downloading Mint 20 to install on extra drive. Will see if it boots, and get on the web w/FF. I do not do gaming. I do use YouTube.

Dell Inspiron 1520 Laotop

Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2370 @ 1.73GHz : 800.00MHz
Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2370 @ 1.73GHz : 1733.00MHz

4 GB RAM

I ran Mint 20 Cinnamon Live session. Firefox ran well. I thought 20 Cinnamon ran quite well considering it was live session. Had YouTube music video and streamed a Netflix movie at the same time. No problem. I see no need for 8 GB RAM and 4 core cpu for the present time. Amazing as this laptop is about 14 years old.

I will be shopping for newer laptop in the future.