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What's the best lightweight Linux distro?

Posted at 11:08am on Wednesday April 7th 2010

Group test: There are plenty of reasons for wanting a low-resource distro running on your computer. Maybe you have some ancient hardware that you need to breathe new life into. Perhaps you want something that will fit on a modestly sized memory stick. Or it might be that you want to run 200 virtual machines simultaneously on your desktop.

The important things that we'll look at here are the amount of space needed, how much processing power is required to get the distro running at an acceptable level, and the effort required to get it to work. Something to bear in mind is that one of the ways in which developers are able to create slimmed-down distros is by ditching the scripts and wizards that we've come to take for granted. This can complicate tasks that you might expect to be straightforward, such as installing software.

Strict criteria

The simple truth is that you'll be getting your fingers slightly grubbier with a low-resource distro than you would with a fully featured one.

In selecting our shortlist, we've left out some contenders either because they didn't support older processors, they wouldn't install in 4GB or less of space, they simply didn't work on our hardware or they're no longer being maintained (as is the case for both RULE and U-Lite). The one exception to this is Damn Small Linux - although it has been over a year since the last release, and the homepage is as quiet as the LXF office at 9.30 on a Monday morning, this is still such a widely used and influential project that it was considered worthy of inclusion.

There's still plenty of activity in the area of low-resource distros, including WattOS, which we hope to cover next time. We also gave Zenwalk a try, but ran into difficulty trying to run it on the low-spec system that we permitted ourselves here. But aside from this, it's a light and capable distro nonetheless and worth a look if you have the time.

How we tested

The main idea of this test was to see how well these distros would run in a restrained environment. To this end, they were tested, where possible, on an ancient Compaq laptop with 256MB RAM, Vesa graphics, a 4GB hard drive and a 200MHz Pentium processor. For the sake of sanity, all distros were then also tested in a Qemu virtual environment with the same limitations, but this time using one half of a 3GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

There were no special tests other than to install these distros (which was testing enough) and attempts to do some normal desktop tasks.

Damn Small Linux

The rise and fall of Damn Small Linux is one of those tales along the lines of a great concept executed well. The idea was to create a Linux distro that was small enough to fit on a credit-card sized CD-ROM. With a target size of 50MB or less, this format certainly concentrates the developers' minds if they also want to create a hassle-free user experience.

For the most part, DSL does succeed. Based on the grandfather of all Live CDs, Knoppix, DSL strips out layer after layer of non-essential stuff, while leaving a core working system.

It might not exactly be replete with applications, but there's enough there to legitimise its claim to the title of a desktop operating system. Look past the rather clunky interface and the tricky-to-read text and you'll be amazed at the amount of functionality included with DSL. Text editors, a PDF viewer, Firefox and other handy utilities provide a workable and stable environment. There are task-specific add-on packages available to download as well, and it's difficult to fault the level of hardware support.

DSL may look clunky, but it has an amazing array of shoe-horned-in-applications.

Unfortunately, the story of DSL doesn't have a happy ending at the moment. The community developing it seems to have split rather fractiously over demands made by some of the contributors, so it's been a year since any of the main contributors has even posted on the project's website. The future of development seems uncertain. We've included it here (in spite of the exclusion of other defunct systems) because it still holds up surprisingly well to some of the other options, and remains widely used. If you need further testament, DSL was selected is one of the few systems supported by the boot.kernel.org (BKO) project.

That said, obviously as time wears on, DSL slowly becomes more and more out of date, and may eventually become something of a liability.

Our verdict: The original and still one of the best, but getting a bit long in the tooth now. 7/10.

CrunchBang

Long before there was an official Ubuntu-lite project, the ground had been contested by the likes of Xubuntu and U-list. CrunchBang ('#!', get it?), or HashPling as one might decide to call it, evolved some time later, but before there was official support for the Lubuntu project. The head-start seems to have worked out for the developers, though, because CrunchBang is pretty much there.

It comes in more than one flavour, but we decided to test the lite version because it fits in better with the theme of this particular group test.

The installer was one of the easiest to use, but it didn't work on our decrepit hardware, only the virtual machine. The graphics driver seemed to be causing difficulty, so your mileage may vary.

Although this is a lite version, it still includes useful applications, including the Leafpad editor, VLC and Firefox 3.0.11. One of the major selling points is that this distro is built around Ubuntu, to the extent that the included Synaptic Package Manager will happily fetch anything from the Canonical repositories to bung on your box. But as soon as you start installing big things, it comes tumbling down as dependencies spiral into gigabytes of space.

Although it looks minimal, CrunchBang takes up a lot of space

CrunchBang also takes the unusual but welcome step of stuffing a whole load of keyboard shortcuts into the desktop - quite literally, because the list is displayed on the screen via the Conky system monitor software. They mostly make use of the 'special key that should have a penguin on it', so they won't interfere with normal operations.

CrunchBang is small, stylish and performs well. It'll be interesting to see what happens here when Lubuntu is released publicly, but it seems that CrunchBang has a pretty solid proposition ready to go.

Our verdict: Stylish, compact and plenty of Ubuntu software available. 8/10.

Lubuntu

Early in 2009, Mark 'Space' Shuttleworth gave the nod to an Ubuntu project that would create a lightweight variant of the world's favourite distro. Based around LXDE, Lubuntu was on its way. And it still is. Well, getting a new distro sorted out takes more than a few months, so we shouldn't be too harsh. It's also worth noting that at the time of writing, the current release was still an alpha version, so we're giving it extra latitude.

As with most of the other distributions here, the install media runs as a live CD first, which is a useful way to check that the system is going to work with your hardware before you go to the trouble of installing it.

If you imagine that Lubuntu is going to look anything like Ubuntu, that idea will be destroyed the minute the desktop loads. Lubuntu has more in common with the other LXDE distributions, with the LXPanel running at the bottom of the screen and a more KDE 3.x look to things rather than Gnome. The chosen apps aren't quite the usual - Firefox, AbiWord and Gnumeric are among those included, which seems to suggest that not everything in this distro is going to be pared to the bone.

It might be a shock for Ubuntu users, but the Lubuntu desktop is fast and functional.

Of course, the main selling point of this distro is that it will have access to the Ubuntu repositories for easy upgrades and plenty of extra packages to install if you need them.

We did have a couple of problems installing this to disk, so the figures in the table on page 35 that compare memory usage and disk space aren't that reliable. However, since this is still an alpha release, you couldn't really rely on them anyway.

Lubuntu is definitely one to watch for the future. With the backing of Canonical, it'll have the developer resources to make the other lite distro projects rather jealous.

Our verdict: Although it looks nothing like Ubuntu, this is one to keep an eye on as it moves towards a stable release. 6/10.

Puppy Linux

This sounds as though it ought to be based on Yellow Dog, but in fact, Puppy is a built-from-the-base-up independent distribution from down under. This is a middleweight offering - not as stripped back as some of the distros, but not bloated out to a full CD either. Memory usage is low to average and a recent kernel gives a good chance of hardware support, although it'll run on i386 hardware.

It runs direct from RAM on the initial boot and reveals a packed desktop with some thoughtfully selected apps scattered about. There are loads of helpful scripts to guide you through things such as setting up display preferences and installing to disk, but you still need to perform some stages manually. As is so often the case, less bloat means less complete and helpful apps that do everything for you, so you will need to put a little bit of effort in.

Puppy manages to pack a lot of programs in to a small space. For graphics, there's a lite version of Inkscape, a few camera tools, MTPaint and Gxine. Browsing and mail is taken care of by a full version of SeaMonkey rather than separate apps, while Gnumeric and AbiWord should suffice for most office purposes.

Puppy Linux has a fast, responsive and tweakable UI.

Packages available for additional install include IceWM and Openbox if you don't like the default window manager, plus a selection of other tools. Of course, the distribution also has GCC, so you can build your own software - which may be necessary since the repositories only hold a few dozen extra apps.

While it may be restrictive in the number of programs available, there's still a lot to recommend Puppy - it runs like a solid, modern distro but in a fraction of the space. However, if you have specific application needs, it may be easier to look elsewhere.

Our verdict: A solid and dependable offering, but limited software available. 6/10.

Slitaz

Many of the lightweight Linux distros on offer are based on more popular desktop variants such as Debian, but this one's grown completely from scratch since 2007. It's one of the few that includes languages other than English (Spanish, French, German and Portuguese).

The base install is competent enough for a variety of tasks. The browser is Firefox 3.5, which may not be the most lightweight app you could think of installing, but it does give Slitaz the ability to run pretty much any web app, which is what many people will want to do with such a diminutive distro that doesn't have a lot of its own software. That said, there's a cluster of useful tools included as part of the minimal install, including a MTPaint, a PDF reader, music player and a couple of editors (Leafpad and Nano).

For lightweight and embedded projects, it rather unbelievably includes a fully functional webserver (Lighttpd) with PHP/CGI support, and various other standard network tools as well (such as SSH and FTP).

Configuration scripts and installers are easily accessible in the Slitaz menu.

If you feel the need to bloat out the system, there are over a thousand packages available in the online repository. Package management is via a tool called Tazpkg, which is tiny, but straightforward and easy to use. The packages themselves are custom archives with included information and dependencies, so you won't get caught up in a whole world of install pain (though you are limited to the packages available from the Slitaz repository, unless you want to make your own).

The desktop uses the nippy but low-overhead Openbox window manager, combined with LXDE desktop, which should be pretty intuitive to most users (it's most akin to a KDE 3.x desktop).

Slitaz achieves the objective of cramming a lot into a small space. It doesn't have an overwhelming selection of default packages, but they do the job, and they do it very fast.

Our verdict: Exceptionally quick, deceptively powerful and has a built-in webserver. 9/10.

Tiny Core Linux

The Tiny Core project was started in 2008 by one of the refugees from DSL, so it isn't much of a surprise that it follows the same ethos of trying to get as much as possible into the minimum amount of space. If anything, Tiny Core has taken this to more of an extreme, completely savaging the package base to create just about the smallest distribution you could still consider to be a Linux OS.

While this is great news for those trying to fit the OS on to ancient hardware or embedded devices, it does inevitably mean you'll need to do more work if you want to do anything other than boot it up and look at the X display.

Fortunately, there's an app installer that enables access to the large repository of TCZ packages, so you can easily install the apps that you want. Dependencies are handled, but obviously, if you choose to install something like Firefox, you're going to see the disk space taken up by this distro ballooning to new levels. But you will have to install something, otherwise a few system scripts and a terminal will be your only company.

Yay! Tiny Core Linux took no time to set up. What shall we do now? Oh...

In some ways, it's not quite so useful to have such a diminutive distro. There may be some specialist cases, but for general use, most people can easily spare, say, 100MB of space. Sure, you can build on the Tiny Core install by adding applications, but it may have made things easier to aim for a slightly higher target to begin with.

But that's to take nothing away from the remarkable achievement of creating a Linux install that fits inside 10MB of space. It's easy to see Tiny Core becoming the basis of many specialist application distros - if you can get the base install down in size, it leaves you with a lot more room to pile on your custom applications.

Our verdict: A remarkable achievement, but requires effort to install and use. 6/10.

Unity Linux

This Mandriva-based distro wants to give you low resource computing, but it doesn't want you to slum it. Although possibly the best-looking of the distros in this group test, it does come at the cost of a slow boot time. Unity is pretty much as sluggish as a full desktop distro when it starts, compared to the nippy zippy likes of Slitaz and Tiny Core. Once the Openbox-based desktop is running, though, it is as fast and responsive as you could want a distro to be.

The install process couldn't be easier - run the graphical installer, tell it where you live, allow it to partition the drive however it likes and you're done in a couple of clicks. In fact, it may be a little too easy - perhaps it should ask a bit more about where you're installing, but there are manual options available for most of the stages.

Installation may take a while, but you can always avail yourself of the live Unity while you're waiting, then reboot back into that lovely desktop.

That's when the real shock hits you - Unity has gobbled up nearly 1GB of space before you've even started installing anything! The minimal install does contain lots of configuration tools, but if you want to do anything like browse the web or play some music, you'll need to get downloading.

It gets an A+ for its looks, but Unity Linux takes up huge amounts of disk space.

The smart package manager is preconfigured to fetch updates and packages from the extensive Unity mirrors, though you could most likely install Mandriva or generic RPMs without much difficulty. Setting up networking was seamless and we were gorging ourselves silly on frivolous applications such as image viewers and audio players in no time.

Surprisingly, once installed, Unity only came mid-table in terms of memory use, but we found that it was sprightly and easy to use.

As with some of the other distros we've tested here, this is a beta release, but based on what we saw, it seems ready for a full release already.

Our verdict: It's both slick and fast, but you will need a bit more disk space available. 7/10.

VectorLinux

Based on Slackware, Vectorlinux was originally all about being a small, self-contained and easy to install and use distro. Since it started life in 2000 it has been through many different iterations and sprouted a few different variants (SOHO, Deluxe, Standard, Light) to target specific use scenarios. We tested the Light version, though even that's a full CD.

At 617MB, it's heftier than some of the others on test. Even if you discount the optional packages, the Light install requires 1GB of space, so it isn't that surprising that it has a wide choice of apps occupying all that space. Development tools and the kernel source can be excluded to give you change, but we don't recommend you install this on anything smaller than a 4GB drive if you want some swap space (which you do on a low-memory system) and room to store your files.

In terms of app choice, things are skewed towards web and media stuff. There are four web browsers, but only Leafpad, Pathetic Writer and Siag Office by way of office programs, and MTPaint holding up the graphics end of the ship.

VectorLinux's space demands make Unity Linux look quite reasonable.

Installing VectorLinux is straightforward for a veteran of pre-Ubuntu installers. This Curses-based trip back into prehistory actually has the temerity to ask you questions about things and also wants you to partition and format your drive!

There's nothing particularly wrong with VectorLinux, it just isn't that inspiring. It has by far the largest boot image, consumes the most disk space and yet doesn't deliver an exceptional performance or user experience. In some ways, you might as well be running any normal mainstream distro.

The interface may seem fussy and there isn't much customisation available, but it becomes deceptively easy to use after a short time.

Our verdict: This is a decent choice if you have space and memory to spare. 5/10.

Our choice: Slitaz

We hope you've seen that the world of light distros is more exciting than you may have imagined. Choosing the right one depends on the hardware you want to run it on and what you want to use it for.

The Ubuntu-based distros are interesting, particularly the nascent Lubuntu, mainly because they have a tiny footprint but offer the promise of installing anything from the vast Ubuntu multiverse. However, we were looking for a a distro to work painlessly in a cramped hardware environment. Honourable mentions must go to DSL and Tiny Core at this point, which have clambered into the territory of the minuscule. It's amazing how usable a system can be that takes up less space on your drive than your holiday pictures. Puppy Linux and Unity were both easy to use, although the latter was a bit more polished (and bigger).

There can be only one winner in the context of our group test, and it should be Slitaz. It's fast, easy on memory, and comes with a considered selection of apps. Not being able to install new software easily apart from stuff in the Slitaz package format is one of the few drawbacks, but for a fast, lightweight desktop it's hard to beat.

Slitaz takes the crown for usability and speed on a low-resource budget.

All the versions tested here either install from a live version or have live versions available, so check that your hardware's compatible before you install. It's not always the case that the biggest distros are the most compatible - it varies, although those tested here should provide basic functionality (some sort of graphics, keyboard, mouse and wired network). If your target is a laptop, you might be in for all sorts of difficulties. Many laptop parts aren't what they seem to be, at least as far as kernel drivers go.

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Your comments

wattOS

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 12:12pm

There is another one lightweight distro. It is wattos.
http://www.planetwatt.com/

Archbang

homoludens (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 12:37pm

is mine favorite during last few months: http://archbang.org

#! staler

ricardo nunes (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 2:41pm

hi all,

just to say that my favorite is #! specially now that is debian based instead of ubuntu based, in fact there are lots of distros abandoning it's buntu's ancestry and going Debian all the way.

i made a list of them in here - http://nixware.net/node/15

#!, eb4, mepis, wattos, opengeu, gnewsense.

thank you for the Unity Linux review

mdawkins (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 4:05pm

I'm curious why Unity Linux was chosen for "best lightweight distro" comparison and not TinyMe, which is really focused on the lightweight desktop and is one of the branches based on Unity Linux.

In all honesty our target is not ONLY the lightweight distro arena, but rather whatever you can make of the distro as it is a basing ground to go much bigger or smaller in the case of TinyMe.

None the less, this is a great comparison review and gives us something to work for. Kudos to Slitas and Crunchbang.

The lightweight Linux Mint

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 5:12pm

The lightweight Linux Mint editions are also worth a look i.e. Fluxbox and LXDE editions.

What about Elive/Enlightenment?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 5:44pm

Elive looks pretty and is super low resource usage. Why not include it?

Unity the odd one out here?

fraxinus (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 5:45pm

Thanks for a very interesting review. My only slight criticism is re. your comment about Unity's disk demands.

It's only fair to say that Unity has not really been launched into the same market (older hardware/limited resources) as Puppy, Slitaz, DSL and others. As mdawkins says, it is intended as a base for customisation, development and remastering by people who may wish to create distros of all kinds - 'big' and 'small'. The fact that it clearly performs well as a lightweight distro should be regarded as a bonus. I have never tried it before - I will now!

I have relied on DSL to see me out of difficult situations in recent times, but clearly it's time to trial some others on my friends' Pentium IIIs and similar boxes. Thanks again.

One more

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 6:26pm

With a next round stated how about a test of AntiX. I've tried it on a 700 Mhz it ran fine, it would be interesting to see how it would do on order hardware.

Debian stable custom install

uomosenzanome - April 7, 2010 @ 6:30pm

How about just a regular Debian stable install -packages you don't need?

Debian Lenny

kabniel (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 6:39pm

Debian Lenny have a Xfce/Lxde CD, i decided to try it out in virtualbox after reading this article.

Debian Lenny LXDE install: 41mb RAM, 1.4gb disk usage (400mb OO.org and 250mb swap file), 1-2% cpu (on 2ghz)

Debian Lenny XFCE install: 49mb RAM, 1.5gb disk usage (400mb OO.org and 250mb swap file), 0-1% cpu (on 2ghz)

Debian Lenny

kabniel (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 6:46pm

Ignore the swap part above..

+1 for AntiX

rokytnji (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 9:17pm

I had installed AntiX 8.2 on a IBM 390E Pentium 2 366hz 128mb of ram CDROM/Floppy laptop and it ran respectably well. I was able to sell it for a respectable amount because of AntiX.

Puppy and its Offshoots of Puplets also have my respect as packages can be found at ibiblio besides the package manager. Simple to install also.

Slitaz worked well for me. But I have not tried the newer cooking versions and my experience was poor Wireless Support with the versions I tried. It has gotten better though from what I have read in the later cooking versions.

Nice article. Thanks.

SalixOS

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 10:08pm

I agree with the choice of Slitaz 3.0.(current at this time). You should try SalixOS.

SLAX

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 10:48pm

SLAX gives you a KDE 3.5 desktop in under 200MB with apps. I don't understand how the author missed that.

Slita'Powaaaaaaa

kgg (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 6:24am

For me Slitaz is definitively the best lightweight Linux ..
and better than ubuntu,fedora,opensuse,mandriva ... which doesn't worth to uninstall winXP

> Puppy and its Offshoots of

Alister (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 6:40am

> Puppy and its Offshoots of Puplets also have my respect as packages can be found at ibiblio besides the package manager.

?
The packages at ibiblio ARE the ones in the package manager.

The vast majority of Puppy packages are posted to the Puppy forum though... most people should be able to find what they need there - and if they can't someone will often build it on request.

CrunchBang isn't lightweight

johnvile - April 8, 2010 @ 8:54am

http://linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/144

DeliLinux

Myky (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 10:37am

and deliLinux?
http://www.delilinux.de/index.html
it is distribution for 486 to pentium 3

Why ?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 10:43am

Why everybosy coming with
" What about this .. what about that .. ?? "

Slitaz wins in every point

What about

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 1:40pm

What about http://www.grml.org ?

Don't wait for Lubuntu

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 3:13pm

Instead of waiting for Lubuntu, check out Mint LXDE.
It screams on my old HP tablet, and unlike all the other LXDE installs i've tried, everything worked right out of the box, including WiFi and the Wacom pen.

Another +1 for Antix Mepis

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 3:47pm

I've been running Antix for about a year now on a PIII 650MHz with 192 MB memory and 8GB disk. It runs fine and I use this PC more than any of the others. A bit more memory would help it as it slows down if you start watching funny cat videos and using the swap file. But stay away from videos and it's excellent!

Alixe

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 4:20pm

I really enjoyed Slitaz too, it's the best lightweight linux distro, I agree!

I would somehow suggest Alixe (http://www.alixe.org), based on Slackware, a 329 m iso. Alixe works in french or in english (language is asked at launch time). The conceptor, a women living in Québec (City), allways tried to get an iso less than 350 m.

Thew project seems to slowdown...

Try this one at home:

Bill Pechter (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 4:23pm

Try to run on my old laptop test box.

Thinkpad 760XL 64mb of memory.

* ntel Pentium MMX 166 MHz CPU
* Trident Cyber9385 video controller with 1MB
* 12.1" TFT display with 800x600 resolution
* 16MB or 32MB memory standard
* 2.1GB HDD
* ESS1688 Audio controller
* IrDA 1.0
* UltraBay Thick with 1.44MB FDD
* (2) Type II CardBus slots or (1) type III

I had a pretty slick patched up Corel Linux on the box, but
it really ran out of steam with RedHat 7.x or later.

I actually had Corel Office 2000 for Linux running (er crawling on the box.).

Max memory is 104Mb possible. I'd love to find some to load it and try it with 104mb.

Some Puplets (Puppy Linux offshoots) contain a lot of software.

Prootwadl (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 4:33pm

The VestaPup Puplet I run at home came with OpenOffice, both Firefox and Opera, and GIMP, and I've been able to add things like GIMPShop without much effort.

The fact that it comes with CompBiz Fusion also makes it purty, heh.

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/VestaPup-39794.shtml

+1 for Puppy Linux

vipinonline - April 8, 2010 @ 4:59pm

customized versions of Puppy Linux is available for older PC's.
with devx package you can have not only the 'gcc', but 'lex' and 'yacc' tools too.most of the main stream distro's are decades behind puppy in optimization.
such a collection of the best packages in a small ~90MB iso. Puppy rocks !

I'm curious. Crunchbang

charlie-tca (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 5:08pm

I'm curious. Crunchbang placed very high, if 8/10 is towards the top instead of the bottom. Yet, it would not install on your hardware. Those that did actually install appear to place in the middle, 5/10 or 6/10.

Or, is the grading actually reversed here, with lower being better?

I have serious doubts about the usefulness of any report that rates a "didn't work on our decrepit hardware" higher than any that did install.

Elive should be tested, as well

Not So Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 5:46pm

I was able to installa Elive, using the beautiful Enlightenemnet desktop manager, on a pc based on a Celeron 500, 64 mb ram, 1 mb video (shared).
Not only Elive runs smoothly, but I was also able to run it live, with no installation.

Other packages in SliTaz

Ben (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 7:47pm

The Tazpkg package manager has a 'convert' utility, that tries to convert RPMs, DEBs etc. to TazPkgs.

The usual disclaimer of no guarantees, as the generated TazPkgs won't have any dependency information so you'll have to grab them, but it's certainly worth a shot.

Elive

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 8:14pm

Elive is a "gotcha" proprietary piece of crap! It's offensive that it has even been mentioned here.

Can any of these installs boot from floppy?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 9:16pm

I have a system of similar vintage as yours but the firmware doesn't have the capability of booting from a CD. When this machine was in use, Windows NT and OS/2 booted from a floppy which enabled the CD-Rom drive which was then used for the rest of the install. Do any of these distributions have the option of booting from a floppy like the old systems used to?

Puppy Linux

TheAsterisk! (not verified) - April 8, 2010 @ 10:21pm

@Anonymous Penguin (above): I know that in Puppy there is a wizard to create just such a boot floppy to hand it off to the CD. You *might* need to make the floppy from another machine that can start Puppy from CD, though, 'cause the utility to make the floppy is actually in Puppy.

It's under the setup menu, titled "WakePup create boot floppy"- pretty well labeled, actually.

Don't ask me about the others, though; I'm a Puppy nut.

As for Puppy's seemingly miniscule repository, that's not because there are fewer packages, but because Puppy's pretty freewheeling, and users tend to make the packages then post 'em to the official forum (<http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/>), but if you can handle a forum search, then you can handle Puppy's cobbled "repository."

Which Unity? & CrunchBang gets lighter

Chris Watkins (an Appropedian) (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 1:06am

<i>Unity Linux, in itself, is not a full distribution. What our group provides is set of “core packages”... and the tools which make it very easy to remaster the core into a distribution of your liking targeting specific functionality... Unity itself will have no end-user releases (see above). "</i> - from http://unity-linux.org/about/about-unity/

So I'm not even which Unity-based distro did you test?

---

Agreed that <b>CrunchBang</b> isn't lightweight - I use it and love it, and it's significantly lighter than regular Ubuntu, but let's call it "midweight." But CrunchBang 10 Statler is based on Debian Testing - the alpha is getting great reviews, and I'm guessing it will be a bit lighter again than the previous Ubuntu-based CrunchBang releases.

---

Lest any newbie make the mistakes I did, here's some essential advice: Be sure to try out a few LiveCDs. Install /home on a separate partition, to make it easy to change distros. Have geeky friends on standby if possible. And if a distro isn't working for you, know that the easiest option by far may be to try a different one.

Boot From Any CD Without a BIOS Update

C. Whitman (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 4:02am

It's been a while since I needed it, but Slackware includes a bootable floppy that transfers the boot process to a CD even if your computer's BIOS doesn't support booting from a CD. It's in the directory isolinux/sbootmgr. The name of the floppy image is sbootmgr.dsk.

+1 SliTaz

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 6:21am

Havent found hardware that did not boot this one. And have all the packages that I need.
I used Slax alot, but SliTaz gives me all that Slax has got in about half the space.

Using AntiX for ~2 years now

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 10:04am

I've had antix running on my "old" machine for at least 2 years now and had no reason to switch away. It manages to make Fluxbox an attractive and (almost) intuitive environment to work in. Very good for getting work done, can be kept up to date with Debian Sid repos as well as the user-friendly tools that come from Mepis.

Boot Floppy

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 2:54pm

Slitaz has a boot floppy here: http://www.slitaz.org/en/get/

Puppy Linux can install software for other distros

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 5:00pm

Puppy's package manager can install Debian/Ubuntu .deb, Slackware .tgz and Arch .pkg.tar.gz packages:

http://bkhome.org/woof/ppm.htm

Slax is the shit, and based

nucleocide (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 5:51pm

Slax is the shit, and based on slackware, how could it not be in here?

I've tried crunchbang,

Guille (not verified) - April 10, 2010 @ 1:42am

I've tried crunchbang, slitaz, elive, puppy and tiny core. I'm very disappointed with crunchbang... far the worst. Very heavy even with openbox. Elive runs equal slitaz, but is much more powerfull. The best fit for my equipment with 128mb ram is a "pupplet" derivated from puppy called Boxpup. Is usefull, full of codecs and very easy to setup.

Debian 5.2

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 11, 2010 @ 6:52am

I read the comment above about Debian Lenny and decided to try it on my ancient machine. I used Debian 5.2 and I was happily rewarded. It is faster than SalixOX, more stable than Puppy, and it automatically configured my printer which is something I had a very hard time with in Slitaz. I did not expect this as Debian is not known to be a lightweight distro. I have less than 200 megabytes of ram and it runs pretty fast. Of course anything requiring Flash is useless on this machine.

Arch

Jordan (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 11:38am

Inspired by the fact that Slitaz worked really well on the old PIII in the basement, I installed an Arch Linux system with LXDE. Its working great. Thanks for the article guys.

Crunch Bang: > But as soon

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 12:41pm

Crunch Bang:

> But as soon as you start installing big things, it comes tumbling down as dependencies spiral into gigabytes of space.

Did you deselect the option in the settings of Synaptic that handles recommended packages as dependencies? Because when the option isn’t selected there are much less packages that are going to be installed (only megabytes and not gigabytes ^^).

Live CD for Online Banking Security

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 1:54pm

I want a distro that only runs from LiveCD, and only has two "Buttons." One button to start Firefox, and one to make a CD copy of itself.

That way, my 80-year-old Mom can do online banking safely, and give out copies of the LiveCD to all her friends, so that they can, too.

Where do I start? Slitaz, then remove apps until only those two work?

Re: Live CD for Online Banking Security

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 2:08pm

Why not have a look at Webconverger? It boots off the CDROM straight into a browser.

Debian Testing with XFCE

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 2:22pm

I have installed Debian Squeeze 64 bit with Xfce. This is all I need. Fast, stable, versatile, plenty of packages available...

I you want to live more at the edge, you can try sidux with Xfce. This will give you the latest kernel, more up-to-date applications and all the advantages and risks of a rolling distro.

Re: Live CD for Online Banking Security

Original Poster (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 2:25pm

Webconverger's kind of what I meant, but it needs one more "button." The one for Mom to copy the CD and give it away.

$200 might be worth it, though, since it would let a sassy older woman get all her friends off Windows for their banking. And all their friends, and all their friends, etc.

Shutting down the botnets? Priceless, I guess.

Puppy Linux gets 10/10 for dial-up modem use

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 2:31pm

I run Puppy Linux 4.3.1 on three machines: 233MHz Pentium II with Lucent/Agere chipset WinModem, 866MHz Pentium III with Lucent/Agere chipset WinModem, and 1.86 GHz Core2 with Conexant chipset WinModem. Puppy runs like a champ on all three. The Conexant WinModem support is built in -- no drivers to buy.

The first time I set it up, it took me about 5 minutes to activate and configure the firewall and the dial-up modem, and get online with my ISP. On the third go-around, it took less than 3 minutes with the Conexant modem.

I run Puppy from the LiveCD, and never had to install the operating system to the hard disk. It starts up fast enough this way, and stores configuration settings and new software in a file on the hard disk without upsetting the operation of WinMe, Vista, or Ubuntu. It requires virtually no computer smarts to make this software work in just about every way I want it to. My rating: 10/10.

Debian Testing with Xfce (re)

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 2:38pm

I also have installed Debian Squeeze with Xfce (32 bit) in an old laptop (a gift to my mom). Then I installed and configured mac4lin (this requires some Gnome stuff to work properly). The result is so cool, intuitive and responsive, that people just cannot believe it. Someone should make a distro offering a similar configuration out of the box (I do not have neither the knowledge nor the time to do it).

The laptop is an old IBM ThinkPad T40 (1.5 GHz and 512 KB of RAM).

A screenshot (not very representative):

http://i44.tinypic.com/14o5cwi.jpg

how about xpud

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 3:54pm

how about xpud
http://www.xpud.org

Where's the table of memory usage?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 4:11pm

"We did have a couple of problems installing this to disk, so the figures in the table on page 35 that compare memory usage and disk space aren't that reliable."

Where is this table? There doesn't appear to be a link to it in this article.

How about Debris Linux

Anonymous Penguin² (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 4:42pm

How about Debris Linux ?
http://debrislinux.org/
Based on Ubuntu, but small and fast!

mint 9 lxde will be killer

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 7:12pm

wait and see mint 9 lxde. u will forget ubuntu. mint 8 lxde is good, but i am waiting for pcmanfm2 to be stable

Tiny Core Linux

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 12, 2010 @ 9:29pm

" The Tiny Core project was started in 2008 by one of the refugees from DSL... "

WRONG!
Let's get the facts straight.

TinyCoreLinux was started by the one 'active' developer that
developed and designed all of the functionality seen in DSL
from version 0.8.0 to the current downloadable version.

The reason DSL is no longer actively developed is because
that ONE developer went on to create a new distribution,
based on source, and not based on knoppix or some other
previous offering. It is truly a 'tiny core' to build from.

The beauty of TinyCoreLinux is the pristine condition
it enjoys at each bootup, without bloat or being locked
into any previous configuration.
TinyCoreLinux can be a dozen different distros at boottime,
with every added package modular, and each one built from
available and downloadable source code and build scripts.

It is not engineered to be a 'plug-&-play' distribution,
and is designed to be extremely flexible and incredibly
fast on hardware ranging from a 486 to any modern
processor, and is very virtual machine friendly.

TCL includes a modern kernel, very active forum community,
FAQs and wikis, and a large group of active developers
who have worked well together for over two years,
who listen and value user feedback and contributions.

Should "tiny" be a requirement, consider looking at its
companion - microcore - a 6MB GUI-free distro with the same
tools, modular design, and bloat-free efficiency as its
larger offering.

Boot Floppies.

Nightflier (not verified) - April 13, 2010 @ 2:29am

The Vector Linux Light ISO does come with boot floppy images, allowing you to install from CD-ROM or ISO image on hard drive.

+ Antix - Slitaz

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 13, 2010 @ 8:20pm

I would love to run Slitaz on three older computers I have, but it will not boot on any of them. Two are ten year old Toshiba laptops with 192k, the other is a five year old Acer laptop with reasonable specs. After trying WattOS, Lubuntu, Mint LXDE, and numerous others, I always end up back on Antix 8.2 because it runs everything and is reasonable snappy. The others have me waiting around wondering if I actually clicked the mouse or not. Antix is also fully configurable and has no problems with various wireless cards. Slitaz runs great on my newer and much more robust desktop, but so does every other Linux distro. So, if you're not happy with those in this test, try Antix.

You must have been testing

slu (not verified) - April 14, 2010 @ 5:51am

You must have been testing slitaz 2.0. I installed 3.0 and I've had a whole gamut of problems. Many of the configuration apps just don't work or don't work well. Trying to eliminate the tux logon and put in my own username and password was a dead end...my new password was never accepted. Even going to the console (passwd/adduser) didn't fix it.
Many problems with the network apps. While wired eth0 worked well out of the gate, getting an ndiswrapper based usb wifi dongle was much trickier and it could never remember to the next boot.
That said, it is incredibly small and fast and runs well on the old compaq k6-2-433 machine I installed it on...really tantalizing but problematic.

Look here, all of you "Elive" people:

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 14, 2010 @ 8:30am

If you want to run a nice stable and gorgeous-looking Enlightenment environment, then try the new PCLinuxOS 2010 E17 Final that will be released in a few days. Unlike Elive, you CAN install it, the apps are completely up-to-date, the repo's got over 12 thousand packages available, and it really WORKS GREAT.

It is your best Enlightenment choice, period.

Choices for an iMac PPC?

Jeremy W. Murphy (not verified) - April 18, 2010 @ 1:34pm

We found a first-generation iMac that we would like to use, but it has the rather restrictive specifications of being a PowerPC and having 64 MB of RAM. The only light distribution that supports PPC that I have found so far is the Debian XFCE/LXDE combo that was mentioned by someone else earlier. What else is out there and, if possible, recommended for PPC? Thanks, cheers.

PCLINUXOS 2010 E17

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 19, 2010 @ 2:16am

PCLinuxOS 2010 E17 Final is out now (04/18/2010):

http://pclinuxos.com/?page_id=215

However I find that I am very happy with Slitaz and E17. I had to install the second E17 in the Slitaz repos the regular one didn't work. Now it's running great.

another article please

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 19, 2010 @ 3:54pm

Hello
when I saw that it spoke of light distributions, I was interested in particular about the implementation on mobile phones, pc handle, or tablets like iPad etc. Indeed this seems to me the true target distribution and light it there is a need, a market. I thought things like dd-wrt or Android or Meego and so on.
I am a bit disappointed because this is not the case and all these distributions are relatively well known, it brings nothing new.
I suggest another article on these fascinating topics but useful.

another article please

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 19, 2010 @ 3:55pm

re: imac ppc

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 19, 2010 @ 7:09pm

@Jeremy W. Murphy : At the "Architecture support" section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions there don't seem to be much Linux distros for PPC, compared to x86. If you want a modern distro, it seems that you won't have much choice : rather lightweight general-purpose distros such as
- Debian Xfce/LXDE
- Arch Linux PPC (unofficial)
- Slackintosh (unofficial)
but the 64 MB will make your iMac slow; the lightest RAM use I could measure in current Arch Linux is 60 MB (Arch i686) so it will swap, and an older release will be better; I already saw usage such as 48 MB (Slack 12.0 i486/E17) or ~50 MB (Slack 8.0 i486 with KDE 2 (!)). Final piece of advice : do NOT install proprietary display drivers, my x86_64 system uses 80MB less memory after a nvidia->nouveau switch

Just a note that Lubuntu

gilir (not verified) - April 19, 2010 @ 11:35pm

Just a note that Lubuntu beta2 is quite different that the one tested here. Surely not as tiny as Slitaz, but maybe more interesting to test :)

Why not add Slax and ArchBang into the list?

terrywang - April 22, 2010 @ 1:55am

Where is Slax (based on Slackware) and ArchBang?

My Laptop...

Smelly (not verified) - April 27, 2010 @ 7:03am

is a 1.4 ghz celeron with 230 megs of RAM. Right now it is running: AntiX, Stardust Puppy, MacPup Opera 2.0, Crunchbang and Slitaz.

All this was for testing seeing which I prefer. Crunchbang is very good, but a slight upgrade in RAM would make it ideal. Anitx runs great too and is a bit faster than Crunchbang, so I prefer AntiX right now. However, the puplets are just flat fast. I boot into those most often and they work best with all my hardware, no tweaking involved.

So far mixed results with Slitaz. It is fast, but I had to work hard to get wireless up and working. Also not many apps come with it, which I don't mind because it lets me decide what to put on, but sometimes it is missing A LOT and takes a lot time to get it up and running.

So far I find myself going back to Puppy and AntiX most of all.

BTW - LXDE Mint brought my laptop to a screeching halt. Much to heavy for my hardware.

Best small Linux

MartyTInOZ (not verified) - May 18, 2010 @ 10:14pm

Damn Small Linux (the REAL DSL); use it all the time for quick tasks!

Installed distributions

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér (not verified) - May 25, 2010 @ 5:01pm

So, you have used the best lightweight Linux *live* distributions. Are you going for the basic installs of the classics, too, like Debian base, Slackware CD1, Archlinux, Gentoo?

Age of mobility.......

Anonymous J (not verified) - June 29, 2010 @ 11:59pm

This is the age of mobile devices. what about a linux distro for hand-held devices (palm tops, mobile phones, tablets, etc)? which distro has a very appealing, glossy GUI that can match superb performance?

Anyone? Great contributions from you all.

Linux + / - BIOS

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - June 30, 2010 @ 12:32am

How come linux still depends on BIOS to start? is there any linux distro that can start without BIOS? believe me, it's gonna be landmark distro if it were to be developed.

i would if i could.......

cheers y'all!

Asian support

Anonymous J (not verified) - June 30, 2010 @ 1:25am

... also, most linux distros have problem displaying asian characters. none of them come asian-character-enabled, that is , out of the box. one has to go around looking for files and all that to download. i usually just copy a unicode text into the font folder and it shows, but there are still problems, for example, none of the browsers display chinese characters on the top bar, it just shows boxes in its place. of all the OS that i have tried that support it out of the box (windows and mac excluded) is opensolaris. opensolaris even come bundled with an ime, so no need to download and configure and break your head.

c'mon linux champs, you can do this! make it universal.

cheers!

Ignoring the lack of WiFi support, other lightweight: PEPPERMINT

Timmi (not verified) - July 2, 2010 @ 3:41pm

It is surprising that easy autodetection of WiFi interface and easy configuration of WiFi was overlooked. Lightweight is something not only sought out for old hardware, but also for modern, under-powered netbooks. There, Puppy, DSL, Slitaz fail miserably, and there is no "easy" solution to fix that (as a matter of fact, the generated ISOs from the Slitaz build website will not even run on some hardware). True, recently Puppeee (and it's Fluppy counterpart with more netbook brands supported) are Puppy versions ("pupplets") for netbooks, but Puppy's interface and packages don't satisfy everyone, and at the time of this writing, they are still under heavy development. In a few weeks from now, when 1.0 is released, they may be well worth taking a look at.

One well working, lightweight distro, is PEPPERMINT. It's done by one of the developers of Linux Mint-ubuntu LXDE. Except that this is truly fast, and supports modern hardware. Downsides are the more difficult customization of the menus intrinsic to Openbox, but as it is, it works very well. Upside is access to 30,000 programs from the Ubuntu repositories. And WiFi just clicks in automatically, painlessly working on first run.

Puppy App Selection > Slitaz's: Why the Low Rating?

Chris Flood (not verified) - July 6, 2010 @ 8:30pm

You have nothing but praise for Puppy Linux and Slitaz, and note that limited app selection is a problem for both. However, Puppy gets a 6/10 and Slitaz a 9/10?

Puppy's advantage over Slitaz is that it addresses the limited selection by cramming a ton of Puppy builds into the 100 MB download. Slitaz doesn't have close to the variety of apps that Puppy does. Moreover, the vibrant Puppy community has provided "pup" packages and "puplets" that give you virtually every app you'd need.

Finally, all this is moot with the newest version of Puppy, which is fully compatible with all Ubuntu packages. Now, you can have the best of both worlds. That's why Puppy remains my own top pick for the best lightweight linux app: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/43541.aspx

Peppermint for now.... Will try others

azinux (not verified) - August 1, 2010 @ 7:14pm

I've been using mostly full size distros on my Asus 900e for a couple of years now, including most of the ones designed for netbook use.Install would use 2.5- 2.9 gig of precious space. They have all worked well but after several months worth of updates would soon fill the small 4G ssd drive.....Peppermint linux installs very easy, boots quickly, and with Openoffice and a few other packages installed only uses 1.9G of space on ssd. Runs as well or better than any distro I've used so far.I know 1 extra gig doesn't sound like a big difference, but when you are only starting with 4, it's huge!!!

Salix 13.1 LXDE rocks for me

CMartens (not verified) - August 1, 2010 @ 11:02pm

I have an older 750 MHZ PC with 256MB RAM but a fair size (60GB) drive. After trying WattOS, Peppermint, Lubuntu, AntiX, etc, I found Salix LXDE to be the winner -- most stable and as fast as any of the others. It is Slackware based, so sometimes it takes a little work to configure, but overall very speedy and stable with a good selection of available apps.

Peppermint

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 3, 2010 @ 4:55am

nuf said!

Peppermint ice

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - August 3, 2010 @ 4:56am

Even better, and faster still.

Good review, but "lite" category is too broad

Anonymous Dude (not verified) - August 9, 2010 @ 12:45pm

I like the article in general, but I don't think OS's like Vector, Crunchbang, & Lubuntu are in the same category as slitaz, tinycore, and dsl. Not at all. Linux OS's that are so small they can live entirely in ram are NOT comparable to the others. Personally the breakdown really aught to be:

ULTRA LITE (generally boot up to a desktop of 20 to 65 megs):
Slitaz
TinyCore
AntiX
DSL
Puppy

LITE (generally boot up to a desktop of 65 to 150 megs):
Crunchbang
Lubuntu
Archbang
WattOS
Vector
GOS
Elive
Peppermint
Dream Linux
Remastersys lxde lite

I've run many of the distro's above. In my experience, if you have an old Pentium II, III, or 486, you can run the "LITE" Distro's and they'll work decent - sometimes. But the ultra's are needed if you want to really cruise.

For instance, I have an old Pentium II 233 mgz with 256 ram. Slitaz, Puppy, and tinycore "sing" on that old rig. While crunchbang statler 486, & Remastersys LXDE lite 486 work well, but just can't keep up. Antix is also responsive, but given it won't fit into ram (requires a bit more than 512 for toram feature to work) it is not as quick.

So it depends on your need. For complete out of the box ultralite, I think Slitaz takes it. Tinycore's potential is somewhat better (at least in theory), but it does take more of a front end regarding reading, homework, etc. Once you install taz, it's pretty much ready to roll.

It seems like the advantage of tinycore is the potential to build up an OS to the exact specs you need on your hardware. If you have the time and inclination, that is very seductive. It's boot speed is amazing. But once you've added your necessary extensions, I'm not so sure it'll really be any faster than slitaz - whose default is definitely NOT bloated.

For the Lite variety, my favorite is Crunchbang - though dream linux is sweet as well as peppermint and many of the others. Of course, all this stuff is SO subjective. But that's my 2 cents.

Peace

Great reviews, more please! <grin>

HairyEngineer (not verified) - August 10, 2010 @ 5:36pm

Excellent! Yes there are lots more distros in this category, but look at the response! Well done.
It is all pretty subjective, but so is life.
We love Puppy - used it on a heap of real cheap P3 laptops for the grandkids, my test machine had a 40GB HDD with 10 distros on it at one time.
Puppy is so friendly and so flexible - Barry Kauler is a genius, and the community is wonderful. But we do have problems with logging on as root. Prefer a conventional setup. We can usually find packages we need, thanks to the community.
SliTaz 3.0 - slightly harder to get to grips with - has many merits (so tiny! so fast!) and am now using it for production on my dual-core ION net-top. With xcompmgr it fades the menus etc; Conky reports 50MB of RAM. The repo shows over 2000 packages, and TazWok is destined to produce more as soon as I have it all figured out.
Mint 8 FluxBox CE is the one that (for us) straddles the middle ground seamlessly. On a Celeron 420 laptop it boots up into < 80MB - according to Conky - with Wbar plus three Widgets on-screen. Transparency too!
LXDE version uses around 120 MB, with less eye candy - both very smart, but I prefer the Fluxbox configurability and eye candy as well as the lighter RAM footprint.
Lubuntu is similar in footprint to Mint LXDE, bit heavier iirc, we used it to rescue our neighbour's ancient 1GHz P3 XP desktop and he is so pleased with it. LXDE is more mainstream Win-alike than Fluxbox. Can be an advantage when it's their first Linux!

Isn't Linux grand? Ben

Liked Slitaz for speed but 2 annoying hurdles

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - September 20, 2010 @ 4:41pm

Installed quickly and worked like a champ. Well, until I couldn't get it to connect via wifi where xubuntu did. Also, needed to deal with a tar.gz file and read I needed to convert it to tazpkg or something like that.

So the honeymoon is over and I'm kicking this one to the curb and will try the next one down the list.

It's stupid stuff like this that keeps the masses from embracing Linux.

Best for RDP?

Marcus (not verified) - October 9, 2010 @ 8:11pm

We have a Windows 2003 Server in Office and all we want is our older machines with Via 800 MHZ process/256 MB RAM/20GB HDD to connect to it through RDP. I tried DSL, Puppy and loads of them but couldnt get to install on hard disk. The systems somehow dont support USB boot .

So can anyone suggest what the best small distro just for booting up and opening and RDP screen.

DSL,so shame

exigent Penguin (not verified) - October 23, 2010 @ 1:35am

DSL,could be the best,ive tested,but the limitations are big,they did the DSL is not,but is not the same DSL thing,i hope DSL could be giant in repos,and packs,and a Final Version,to 8 to 64 could be good,and more Desktop like to final users,but my thumbs up is for slitaz

Such a great arcticle... welcome SliTaz

spaceyjase - October 30, 2010 @ 7:50pm

Stuck SliTaz on my eee 701 this weekend as the latest *buntu just doesn't seem to fit anymore via an upgrade. So, so fast and plays media perfectly with a little bit of Minecraft thrown in for good measure. Super.

Thanks!

Peppermint ice and antix

Adiga (not verified) - November 7, 2010 @ 10:52pm

hello pp, from my side i have tried almost every distro starting from fedora and ending up with some i cant even spell, the fastest i found was antix and peppermint ice, both will run smoothly on a 128 MB of ram, but on peppermint you will need to install firefox insted of chrome as it eats more ram, regarding hardware, Peppermint ice did not cause any problem with any part i add, language support for other non english is also great, its the os of choice for me, but ive been using antix as the main distro to install and run squid, dhcp, apache, mysql, ssh .....

i have no clue why, but antix handles servers better than peppermint even on lower resources. ....

"it's stupid stuff... that stops the masses embracing linux"

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - November 10, 2010 @ 10:19am

Hi,
I am part of the masses and dislike tech: I just want a few buttons that say "go" and "stop", really simple to use stuff, etc.

One of the really annoying things is getting these smaller distos to easily work with a Mobile Broadband Dongle.

Xubuntu and Ubuntu have solved this beautifully this year...but Puppy is simply annoying as it seems to offer this same easy-click access, but then does not. Not house trained (for domestic use) yet?

Perhaps a review of the lightweight distros that allow "no brainer" (as Puppy wants to be, and in every other respect appears to be) plug and play dongle support?

I'm on a roll now, a mindless mass, a sort of Quatermass forming

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - November 10, 2010 @ 10:50am

A couple of thoughts brewed after making the earlier comment about Dongle access on lighter Distos.

Poorer people will use older machines, and not have landlines usually. So Mobile Broadband is best for this situation. So light (and free!) distros attract, of course.

One annoyance with Microsoft (may I breath that name here?) is the continual and perhaps needless constant expensive upgrading, which pushes people to then also need to upgrade the equipment they use to keep up with the software's new demands. Hence mountains of expensive but now obsolete computers get dumped, causing environmental problems and straining companies budgets. Lite Distros: way to go for a greener approach to computing and keeping costs down.

I am also starting to dislike the authoritive, "let me guide you", tone of a well known leading very expensive propietary OS (anyone else noticed this tone?!), where I find I start asking "Who's computer is this anyway?".

People are not an extension of their world, to whom they can issue commands too in a similar way they enter Dos comands (we are the master drive; while you out there are the slave drives, after all). So well done, you Linux community for breaking a monopoly and reacting against a Big Brother in the making (who is it actually running the show these days:...I mean which goverment does not wants a handle on the way computers are run? What better way to control your computer than having only one OS system for everyone). One Ring to rule them all? Very important to keep our computers our own, and the only way is to break the dependancy on one software supplier (who for legal purposes will have to remain nameless) I guess.

For what my students need...

Timay (not verified) - November 15, 2010 @ 12:14pm

As a teacher, I taught my students not be conditioned by MS Windows. That's why when some old PCs needs reinstallations, I picked a distro from this article.

I haven't tried too many other distros or hardware specs. However for a AMD Sempron 256MB machine, Lubuntu works quite well. By now, the 10.04 Long Term Support is already out. It has some good out-of-the-box codecs, and uses chromium as the browser. It provides you with the essential options without overwhelming you. The interface also doesn't depart dramatically from WinXP. The combination of such advantages made Lubuntu much less intimidating for the beginners, which fits perfectly for my needs.

It's fast and quite stable for my machines. So far, I have very few complains, except that short-cuts are difficult to create.

In brief, If you are looking for a distro for those who know a little or very little about PC and MS Windows, Lubuntu just might be the choice for you. :-)

new to linux

j0s14h (not verified) - December 11, 2010 @ 9:54pm

nice article. it gave me some good advice on which distro to install on my families rebuilt gateway that i am trying to fix, desperately. before everything i tried to run was slow/unresponsive/ or wouldn't install to hard disk. hopefully this will work. tnx

xPud

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - December 17, 2010 @ 6:54pm

might be in with a shout

Thanks, and my results

The scientist (not verified) - December 18, 2010 @ 7:42am

Hello,
First, congratulation for your test, very useful. I need a linux live, so i was happy to read it. I tested your choice, slitaz, and i didn't agree with your opinion about my needs. Then, i did a smiliar test of some linux live, in the goal to find a distro wich meet my needs. My needs are simples : play music, play divx, open pdf, open doc-word, open doc-excel, access to local hard drive, internet connection by wifi and can use vpn connection. So, i tested some distro on my 3 years old computer. Here, my results :

CrunchBang
iso size : 640 Mo
play mp3 : 10/10
play divx : 10/10
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : no
wifi configuration : 10/10
web surfing : 10/10
vpn connection : 10/10
easy to use : 7/10
low memory usage : 10/10
Conclusion : Excellent, but a crucial problem : we are not allow to access to local hard drive... Really shame...

Lubuntu
iso size : 550 Mo
play mp3 : 10/10
play divx : 10/10
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : 10/10
web surfing : 10/10
vpn connection : 10/10
easy to use : 10/10
low memory usage : 6/10
Conclusion : Excellent, but the size of iso is not small and usage memory is not low.

Puppy
iso size : 130 Mo
play mp3 : 10/10
play divx : 10/10
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : 6/10
web surfing : 10/10
vpn connection : no
easy to use : 6/10
low memory usage : 10/10
Conclusion : Excellent, but the environment is not really good to use and vpn connection is not implemented.

Slitaz
iso size : 30 Mo
play mp3 : no
play divx : no
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : no
web surfing : not tested
vpn connection : no
easy to use : 10/10
low memory usage : 10/10
Conclusion : Not really good. Because play music and video didn't work. Wifi config didn't work too.

Knoppix
iso size : 700 Mo
play mp3 : 10/10
play divx : 10/10
open doc-word : 8/10
open doc-excel : 8/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : 10/10
web surfing : 10/10
vpn connection : 10/10
easy to use : 10/10
low memory usage : 7/10
Conclusion : Excellent, but iso file is not small. However, the environment have nice design effect on windows ;-)

Linux Mint
iso size : 700 Mo
play mp3 : no
play divx : no
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : no
web surfing : not tested
vpn connection : no
easy to use : 8/10
low memory usage : 5/10
Conclusion : Slow to use. Music and video didn't work and wiki config too.

Slax
iso size : 200 Mo
play mp3 : 10/10
play divx : 10/10
open doc-word : 10/10
open doc-excel : 10/10
open pdf : 10/10
access to local hdd : 10/10
wifi configuration : no
web surfing : not tested
vpn connection : no
easy to use : 7/10
low memory usage : 10/10
Conclusion : Fast to use. But, wifi didn't work and vpn connection not implementation.

Final conclusion
All my needs are not checked. Hard to choose, because all have a little problem. If i find an easy way to access to local hard drive in CrunBang, then i will can say : get it !