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Review/Overview of Lightweight Linux Distros
pcause writes "Here is a review of various lightweight Linux distros. Not sure I agree with the conclusions, since I am a PuppyLinux user, but it is a nice overview of some current options." Reviewed are: Arch 2007.08-2, Damn Small Linux 4.2.5, Puppy 4.0, TinyMe Test7-KD, Xubuntu 8.04, and Zenwalk 5.0.
IMO, the best light weight distribution is Debian. A net installation leaves you with nothing but a console. You can apt-get anything you need, and only what you need. Why do you need a specific distribution for this? What does the Debian based Damn Small Linux offer me that plain Debian doesn't?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No, really, I'd like to see a comparison, because the basic FreeBSD install without Gnome or KDE is pretty small, and it's what I'm used to, so I'd like to see how he compared it to these supposedly small Linux distros, since I'm doing more Linux in my new job.
I just installed Xubuntu 8.04 on that setup this weekend and it works OK. Hardly lightening fast feeling after coming off a c2d with 2 Gigs of RAM, but definitely usable. It's going into the guest room for, well, guests to use if they didn't bring a laptop of their own. Usually guests only need a browser, so it's perfect. If they need to print something, I've got networked printers.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I think that DSL has a great niche working with really old hardware. The only distro I know of that is still actively being developed that is smaller than DSL is SliTaZ - very interesting, but very new.
DSL has an old 2.4 kernel, an old Firefox browser, but you can count on it to work with old stuff.
Puppy works with pretty old stuff, but really shines when you load it into RAM on equipment made within the past three years. Wireless support is something that Puppy handles better than DSL.
Zenwalk has a relatively unknown, but fast package manager called Netpkg and a snappy implementation of the XFCE desktop. Derived from an earlier implementation of Minislack, Zenwalk comes out of a stable Slackware heritage. With a fast package manager and a fast desktop implementation, Zenwalk carves a nice niche out of the Slackware landscape.
Arch Linux really is another distribution that once grew out of the Slackware space and has now come into its own with the pacman and AUR package management tools and the idea of giving you total and complete flexibility to build exactly and only what you want. It aims for simplicity rather than coddling the user with its own notion of ease of use. People really either love Arch Linux or avoid it for these very reasons.
Xubuntu is an easy to use system with very current software from the Hardy Heron Ubuntu project, replacing GNOME with XFCE on the desktop. Good solid stable software with excellent wireless network configuration.
TinyME is brand new, as far as a Version 1.0 implementation, but the project has been going on for a couple of years now as a community supported effort to provide lighter versions of the well regarded PCLinuxOS software. This one uses OpenBox instead of KDE. Like other PCLinuxOS systems, it really benefits from the good hardware detection algorithms from Mandriva and the solid packaging from "TexStar", expert RPM packager and founder of PCLinuxOS.
As you can see, each of the distributions mentions has a nice niche. They won't all be appealing to everyone, but each of them is solid in several respects - certainly a credit to the modularity of both Linux and GNU software.
Brian Masinick, masinick at yahoo dot com Linux
A pity that the author didn't review these two. Not only they are they compact and snappy, but they also include the full-featured KDE desktop environment. I couldn't believe how fast they are when I tried them as LiveCDs - and they can be installed on HD, too!
Sorry, but Ubuntu or any of its derivatives do NOT qualify as "lightweight". I find it amusing that Arch was rated towards the end of the list, most likely because they couldn't figure out how to install it.