Comments on: Lightweight Linux

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Mon, 23 May 2011 08:36:59 +0000

Hi Roger - with the increasing speed and memory of computers, and seeing people's reactions to the challenges of Linux, I'm inclined to put more emphasis on usability, these days, rather than hardcore lightweight choices.

Another factor is that relatively little effort is going into really usable, very lightweight applications.

For me, the setup I'm enjoying on my laptop is CrunchBang (the new Debian-based CrunchBang Statler), but:
* replacing the tint2 panel with LXPanel, which does a better job of showing up when I want it, not covering the bottom of a program window. I turn on autohide and display only icons, adjust the icon size, change the color, and set it to display all desktops - and voila, it's almost as good-looking as tint2.
* for a file manager, using PCManFM instead of Thunar. The new PCManFM is very nice & very light.

The biggest factor in my RAM and CPU usage is my browser, Firefox 4. With a lot of tabs open, I don't find any other browsers to be better on RAM usage (though Chrome & Chromium might be better on keeping CPU down). And I really like Firefox 4, so I live with this - I just use a task manager to stop it from running if I'm working outside of the browser for an extended period, and work on closing some of those tabs .

But generally, I pretty much feel the same way as in that post. How about you, Roger?

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:22:21 +0000

Do you still feel the same way a year later, Chris? Any updated suggestions?

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:38:31 +0000

Interesting - knoppix is very cool for LiveCD and apparently running from USB drive, but it's not designed to be installed to hard disk. It's possible, but difficult and not recommended. So for now it seems that the best USB drive distro and the best hard drive distro will usually be different.

By: Lavezarez

Lavezarez — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:33:32 +0000

i've tried knoppix 6.2, dsl, ubuntu, linux mint, puppy, fedora, and slax - all taken from http://www.pendrivelinux.com and of all these distros it's only knoppix that kept me happy with its ability to run in both my old and new laptop, as well as reliably detecting my usb broadband connection.

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:08:29 +0000

I think I'll add one to the criteria: A flexible release schedule, where the emphasis can be on getting it right rather than meeting a rigid deadline. This is obviously aimed at Ubuntu - often criticized by frustrated users for new releases that are allegedly not ready. E.g. Fedora Development Schedule says: "We say developed and released about every 6 months because like many things--they don't always go exactly as planned." Sounds sensible.

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:46:12 +0000

Masonux ( http://sites.google.com/site/masonux/home ) is Ubuntu with LXDE. It uses the LXDE desktop, with unmodified Ubuntu packages and the default software repositories. (I like those choices!)

When 9.10 is ready I'll try it out (& see how it compares with Lubuntu).

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:20:28 +0000

Update on my efforts with SimplyMEPIS: it was a disaster on my ThinkPad - couldn't get screen resolution or USB ports working, so I went back to CrunchBang. But a not-so-geeky friend installed the MEPIS disk I gave her (dual-boot with Windows) by herself, on her desktop, and said it works well. Great to see Linux getting so easier and easier to use. Some of those options look like they need much greater geek skills, esp Damn Small Linux. They might be great, (Edit: and actually, I've heard a lot of praise for Vector Linux) but what really interests me is seeing a Linux distro that makes your average non-technical person go: "Hey, this is as easy as Windows or Mac, and fast, and it just works! Are you serious, this is free, and I don't need to buy anti virus software either?"
Ubuntu seems to be working better these days, and the new Lubuntu 9.10 looks like it's going to have a way smaller footprint than Ubuntu and Xubuntu (like 65% less RAM usage, ~57 MB on fresh boot and a similar proportion than the others when they have programs running). CrunchBang seems fairly close too - it's not meant for newbies, but it's not real hard, and it only needs to have the panel menu installed to make it really easy.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:32:27 +0000

BTW Chris,

I used Damn Small for 2 years as a web server and email server on a P166mhz (12 year old computer) and it worked great. I still use it on a older laptop I have.

I haven't ran Slitaz natively. Only in a virtual environment using VirtualBox on a TinyME host.

I used CrunchBand for a few months and liked it also.

I am current messing around with Absolute Linux. It is pretty complete with just about everything a user needs to be productive.

TinyMe is great to. But the guy that created the distro is a college student and I don't think he has a lot of time to keep it up to date. I love TinyME though, it is excellent.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:24:20 +0000

You can also try Vector Linux... They also have a light version. But Vector by itself works great. The light version is way fast.

Mepis is a great distro. Their light version of Mepis is AntiX... it is good to.

By: Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:12:01 +0000

I'm about to try MEPIS - it's based on Debian (more closely than Ubuntu is) so it'll have great repositories. And there's an emphasis on ease of use. It uses KDE, and I should have no trouble installing LXDE, since LXDE is one of the supported desktops for Debian.