Lightweight Linux Distro
 

Hello folks,

I've been very disappointed last week when I installed the latest Ubuntu release, numbered 11.04 and had a message presented to me saying the equialent of "Your computer has deprecated". Their new user interface, or whatever you call it, "Unity" is too resource demanding. It lags as hell, to put it quickly. I can't even imagine what GNOME3 will need, since even GNOME2.6 had to be run in "safe mode" (every desktop effect turned off), and KDE had my PC sweat blood aswell. Before burning several disks for booting various distros without a point, I ask your help to find a reliable Linux variant for me.
I don't need it to do any kind of magic, I just want it to be able to browse the internet (excluding flash videos, as I know they just don't work on my PC from under Ubuntu), and maybe run some simple tools for coding. There's just only one thing I ask, if anyone has a particular distro in mind: I wouldn't like to install an old version of a distro. I've been using Linux more or less frequently since Ubuntu 9.10, and I can clearly remember it had serious flaws which they only repaired in the next versions.
Any ideas?

P.S.: I'm running Win XP and Ubuntu from two separate HDDs in dual boot mode via GRUB2, so the Linux OS could have app. 64 GBs of space to use. I could provide other info about my PC, but think of it as a Pentium 4 class piece of crap.

If you want lightweight, how about Damn Small Linux?

Whilst DSL is formidable to recover a lot from syscrashes I wouldn't advise it for daily use.
I would rather advise XUbuntu, and more specific ver 10.10.
It even runs pretty good here on my ol'laptop, P3-700MHZ/256MB RAM, now yeah, takes some time to startup applics, but is swell enough for the grandkids to listen to/download youtube crap.

And Tracker, my educated guess would be that it isn't that "P4" that is the problem, more probably a lack of 'enough RAM' for Ubuntu......

You also could try KUbuntu, lesser demanding than Ubuntu....

@The Fifth Horseman: I took that one into account, but I assumed it wouldn't be suitable since it is too small to contain anything useful for me.

@dosraider: P4 refers to my CPU, as Pentium 4 processors had a clocktime of app. 2Ghz. Mine is an obscure one, an AMD Athlon at 1,7 Ghz. But yes, I believe I might have memory issues, as every error message refers to the software I'm running being unable to read/write certain addresses of the 512MB DDR RAM module.

I think I'll try the ones you mentioned, first Kubuntu, and if it won't be good enough, then I'll give Xubuntu a try.

EDIT: I downloaded Kubuntu and burnt a bootable disc, but it was way too slow for me. I think I'll go with DSL, I read that it can be used for everything I need, and the screenshots look good as well. But that is scheduled for tomorrow.

Seeing your specs:
An AMD Athlon 1.7GHz / 512 MB should run Kubuntu without any glitch, and should be pretty fast.
But:
That's another matter.
My advise: run memtest, can get it free@
http://www.memtest86.com/
Errors must be zero. If you can't rely on your memory you can't trust your PC.
Sometimes it can help to get the module out , cleaning the contact surface with alcohol ( gently !! ) and stick it back in. And whilst you're there, clean up the inside of your PC if needed.

Believe me , if you can't run Kubuntu pretty fast on an AMD 1.7GHz/500MB there is something completely wrong with your PC.

Well, I have ran memtest before (back in the days of Ubuntu 9.10 I guess, when it still had it at the boot screen), and let it work for a whole afternoon, but there were no red sectors anywhere on the memory map (note that there were problems with my computer before and after that as well). I dunno what might be the problem. The RAM wasn't removed ever since it was plugged in, around in 2004 (I had a 256 MB RAM to start with, but later it was replaced with a single half gigabytes one). Besides, it's funny that two very different OSs, like Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP would produce similar problems - at least, Linux seems to have just as much bugs as Windows does...

Damn Small Linux: It looks nice and everything while running from CD, but the mouse doesn't work, and I couldn't find a fix yet.

EDIT: Cleaned RAM and placed it into another slot, awaiting results.

I'd recommend looking into Arch Linux.

Arch Linux

It lets you build the system from scratch, so you can customize it to do exactly what you need.

Might work for you if you use lxde or xfce.

Lubuntu is a very lightweight version of Ubuntu that suposedly uses less resources than Xubuntu.
The minimum requirements listed on the Lubuntu site are 128 megabytes of memory and a Pentium II processor.

Link to Lubuntu website http://lubuntu.net/

Actually I'm currently not looking forward to install Linux as I'm using Win XP SP3 which is just fine right now. I must admit though I haven't heard about Lubuntu, so I might give it a try next time, thanks for the idea. Not to mention cleaning the RAM didn't help either, I just really don't know what is going on. But I don't really care anymore, if everything goes as planned I'll have a brand new laptop by december.

- Tracker

Good to hear. I hope you get your laptop.

After thinking about your memory problem though I am wondering if your computer has a built-in graphics card. If it does, it may be using some of your systems RAM and reducing the amount of RAM that is available to your operating system. It's just a theory, but I've seen this problem in a few computers.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (supported until 2013) takes 130 MB on boot. can go down to 110 with some tweaks
Lubuntu is the lightweight in the familly. takes about 80-90 MB ram on boot.

Kubuntu 11.10 (the new one comming out in October) will have low fat version for odler maschines.
Ubuntu 11.04 (in repositories) Ubuntu 10.10 and higher -- will have Unity 2D for older systems (i.e. unity with no compiz - looks the same).

Of lighter and user friendly distributions you have Linux Mint Lxde (uses LXDE same as Lubuntu).

The realyl good, stable, light distribution is Chrunchbang. Don't be averted becase of their strange humor (making maschine go crunch, bang!). It's actually a solid distribution based on Debian Stable. But with some tweaks to make it easier for users to install and use (it comes with XFCE and Openbox). Xfce is like in Xubuntu only uses a bit less resources here. Takes about 80-90MB on boot i think. Openbox is even lighter on resources but also a bit strange/minimalistic.

If you have 512 MB you can easilly go with Xubuntu and that should leave you plenty to spare.

A bit late with the reply, I can't resist to mention I have an Nvidia GeForce MX 440 (SE, maybe?), which has 64 MB RAM. I don't believe that would be the problem though, as that amount must be enough. Still, it's kinda odd that my PC that was quite good if not high-end in 2003 can't run Battlefield 1942 without crashes. But what bothers me now is to find a suitable laptop that would last for a few years...

If the graphics card is built into the motherboard, it's using 64 MB of memory from your running memory, but I'm not sure if that's the problem anymore. 68 MB isn't really enough to slow down your computer to much, and 512 MB of memory should run Windows XP just fine, unless you've got several programs running at once.

On my old computer, I had Windows XP SP2 and after I upgraded to SP3 a few of my games preformed poorly. At first I didn't think it was SP3 that was causing my games to be slow, but after I uninstalled it, my games were running smoothly again. I also read on several other forums that people who install SP3 often noticed slowdowns in their games. Once again it's just a theory and I don't advise uninstalling SP3 unless you know what you're doing.

The Specs of my old computer were:

Processor – AMD Athlon 2x 2.21 ghz.
Memory – 2 gigabytes of DDR memory
Graphics – ATI HD 4670 series graphics card with 1 gigabyte of memory

I've never bought a laptop, but someone told me that Asus brand laptops are good for gaming (the batteries supposedly didn't last to long on them) and Alienware is also a good brand for gaming (If you can afford it that is).

Hello there,

sorry for joining this discussion very late.
I am looking for a Linux distribution that will run with minimum RAM (<=256MB).
My systema are (dual) PII-400 that only have 256MB of Rambus :-( RAM. Therefore a memory uprgade would be somehow expensive.

XUbuntu doesn't even install and does not seem to be too lightweight compared to Ubuntu...

Does anybody have experience which distributions need how much RAM?
Preferably something with XFCE.


Have a nice evening.

256 MB isn't much to work with. For me personally 512 MB is the absolute minimum. But according to this site it should be possible:

XFCE Wiki - Minimum Requirements

Right you are. But because of the RAMBUS RAM, an upgrade wouldn't make sense. I don't understand who pays those incredibly high prices for it still.
Upgrading the whole PC seems to be cheaper.
Really a pitty that there seem to be a lot of distributions which are after all not as leightweight as the used components promise to be.

Thank you very much for the link. :))
I'll try some of those distributions.

i ran older Ubuntu on 16MB Ati rage and it worked just fine. only i didn't get any special effects.

XFCE might be a stretch due to processor. You can give old chrunchbang a try (new image has only openbox and XFCE needs to be installed manually). you can also give puppy linux or Slitaz a try. porblem could be support for old processor like yours in kernel. latest ubuntu etc dropped the support (only works with i686 and above) so you can forget about those (you have i586).

I am a little bit confused...
thought i586 was the Pentium 1, i686 was Pentium Pro.
The Pentium 2 came later...
Thought it was more or less using the same architecture/core.