Raspberry Pi distributions

Despite the hype around the fourth version of the Pi, most desktop distributions run very slowly on it and provide poor user experience. I've tried all the distros listed below and gave them ratings on these topics:

• User Experience
• Responsiveness
• Software support
• Easy to install

The ratings are:

• Perfect
• Average
• Poor
• Terrible

Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS)

User Experience

Average It's ugly but coherent and easy to use

Responsiveness

Average Most things are fast but some programs (mostly Electron apps) struggle

Software support

Perfect It's an Ubuntu base and the official OS

Easy to install

Perfect Plug and play and follow the guide

Raspbian excels in nothing but is not terrible in anything. It's too bad it struggles with Electron apps. Supports hardware acceleration.

Dietpi

User Experience

Poor Dietpi proposes ready-made basic desktops (Mate, XFCE, LXQTm, LXDE) that are ugly and sometimes does not work (sound cursor in XFCE).

Responsiveness

Perfect Everything is fast or fast enough, even Electron Apps are usable

Software support

Perfect It's based on Raspbian and comes with it's own list of ready-made software

Easy to install

Poor Small iso but very long install with terminal based menus, takes a lot of time and not everything is clear

Dietpi is probably the best in performance, but only for people with some skills at setting up their own environnement. Supports hardware acceleration.

Manjaro

User Experience

Perfect It's beautiful, coherent and easy to use

Responsiveness

Poor It's still usable but worse than Raspbian, no hardware acceleration support for video

Software support

Average Based on Arch Linux, most things are available but most configuration tweaks are for Raspbian/Ubuntu

Easy to install

Average There's a few terminal screens but it's quick and works fine

If Manjaro was a bit snappier and did not lack some performance tweaks available to Ubuntu based distros (like hardware acceleration) it would be my default distribution.

Ubuntu

User Experience

Average The classic gnome Ubuntu

Responsiveness

Terrible It's so slow for everything it's almost unusable

Software support

Perfect It's Ubuntu so everything is there

Easy to install

Perfect The classic Ubuntu install experience, everything is clear

Ubuntu is so slow I could not be bothered to use it for anything. Also it's strange because hardware acceleration is supported but I could not make it work inside chrome for video decoding.