Hi all,
When I work with Thunderbird and I open a web page in Firefox from an email, after a short while Linux mint will be very slow to respond to all commands and programs. This problem may also occur with other programs, but I use my Linux computer always with email because that always works fine (this is because of the problem). I am using Linux mint version 19 Cinnamon (64 bit) on an old computer and that may be the cause of the problem. My home-built computer has an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66GHz x4, memory 2.8 Gb, hard disk 300 Gb, the graphics card is an NVIDIA GP107 (GeForce GTX 1050 Ti). The Linux kernel is version 4.15.0-135-generic. I hope this problem can be solved by changing 1 or more settings in a configuration file, possibly in /etc. I hope to hear from one of you soon. Sincerely, Karel.

I would say you're in the verge of switching according to your specs, consider xfce, even mate could be a little 2 much, you have few memory. The result like you said is that you open the browser but will start lagging towards. I'm surprised you can even open both with gtk3.

Check if you have driver nvidia on your kernel, you should according to mint costumes, just in case:

lsmod | grep nvidia

The bad news is it wont make THAT big difference with XFCE, it will improve a bit but it's not a solution.

So you can install it:

With Synaptic - XFCE4
make sure you mark additional dependencies otherwise you will not be able to use it normally.
Command Line
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install task-xfce-desktop

In both ways you can choose after on login to start session with XFCE instead of cinnamon.

This is an option.

The other I would recommend instead is to install AntiX linux, I really don't wanna start praising or geek talk, but it really is the fastest distro with all included I encounter, and probably the better in this chapter. Mint is great, peeps who moved to Solus too, but Antix is really something else, and according to your hardware and stuff you name to use is the perfect combination plus is also based on Debian. So you'll find lot's of forums with things need to know.

PS - If you have the time, and it's a fresh install, you can always make a clean installation of mint xfce 32b, removing cinnamon can be done as well but you must be careful about that.

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Dear Mr. Zrong,
Thank you very much for your response. I did a test with central memory of about the same type that I still had, and it showed that the memory is not defective. After I started the system monitor, it turned out that it really is a matter of low memory, and that is something I cannot change. Although Thunderbird and Firefox don't fit together in memory, I can use them separately without significant performance loss. For the moment, I will continue to use Cinnamon, because I am familiar with it, and because substitution does not bring any significant benefit. I don't know the alternative distributions you mention, so I doubt I will use them, especially since I do know Mint, and think it's a nice distribution. But I appreciate your answer. Sincerely, Karel.