LW Linux

Notes from a presentation at Penguins Unbound on Saturday, August 21,
2010. The speaker was Jason Hsu.

Why lightweight Linux distributions? They allow older hardware to remain useful for a longer time, and hence not
filling up landfills. If you have a modern machine, you can really enjoy its performance rather than have it eaten
up by OS bloat.

Evaluation criteria for the test

1. The distribution must be fast and light. Specifically, it has to run adequately in a 256 MB
   VirtualBox, with no swap space allocated. This is to simulate
   running a liveCD
2. It has to have large package repository. Jason is an electrical engineer, and has some specialized needs.
3. It needs to be user-friendly. Jason is a computer user.

Distributions

• Debian: Too hard to configure a lightweight installation. Failed (3) above.
  Hence rejected immediately.
• Damn Small Linux: Very llghtweight, but the repository is small.
  Also it still uses a 2.4 kernel and apparently is not being maintained. Hence rejected.
• Ubuntu: Very
  highly regarded, user-friendly, large repository. Hopeless
  in a 256 MB VirtualBox. There an alternate installer for older machines, but that is harder to use. He estimated
  that Ubuntu 10.04 (current) is about the “weight” of Windows XP. This agrees with what I have seen on a dual boot
  XP/Ubuntu machine. Ubuntu will be OK on a 3yr. old machine but not one that is 10 yrs. old. Again, this is consistent
  with my experience. Recent versions of Ubuntu run OK on P4 systems, but did not on the P3’s I used to have. As with
  Windows, the hardware requirements for Ubuntu increase with each release.
• Puppy Linux:
  User friendly, fast and light, but the repository is inadequate.
• And the winner is … antiX, meeting all the
  criteria above. Jason said it is his “Gold Standard.”

He demoed Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, and antiX in 256 MB VirtualBoxes on his laptop, so we could see how slow Ubuntu
really was.

Notes

Lightweight distros do not use Gnome, or KDE. More likely to use IceWM,
Fluxbox, or Rox [which I do
not know].

Apparently OpenOffice will work in 256 MB, rather a surprise to
some in the audience. However, a lightweight system is more likely to use Abiword and
Gnumeric.

Jason said that while he found Debian to be too hard to use, it is a great basis for other distributions. Ubuntu
and antiX are both ultimately based on Debian, as are many others.

Somebody in the audience (Tony Yarusso?) suggested Lubunutu. Jason apparently
was not familiar with it.