Are we lightweight? Let's ask the Internet.

[Valtam]

Google - 'lightweight operating system'.

2019 results:

https://mashtips.com/lightweight-os/

https://thelinuxcode.com/lightweight-os-...-netbooks/

http://www.alltechflix.com/5-best-lightw...or-old-pc/

https://www.how2shout.com/tools/best-lig...-2019.html

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/best-l...nux-distro



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[torreydale]

[size=1em]The alltecflix link mentioning Windows 7 in their list?  Crazy.[/size]

[size=1em]I'm really tired of people mentioning Puppy Linux as lightweight.  It might be, but I would NEVER recommend it to anyone.  It's not lightweight on the time involved to make it usable. [/size]

[size=1em]Mashtips says this about Puppy:  "There is no system hard disk required to run this light OS. This Linux is the first aid for your data and laptop. When your system gets corrupted or hard drive lost, you can directly boot the PC from Puppy Linux USB. You can access the PC hard disk and retrieve the data from the hard drive, once you were done, shut off and take back the USB to carry with you."  [/size]

[size=1em]You can do that with ANY Bootable Live Media in the world of Linux.  All of them are more user friendly than Puppy.[/size]

[size=1em]Lubuntu?  The 3 years of support is a deterrent.  It's only that long if you install it the day it's released.  It's better than non Long Term Support versions of Linux, but there are better options out there.[/size]

[TheDead]

[member=5239]torreydale[/member]
Strange you mentionned that about Puppy, I had the same though about TinyCore, Bohdi, etc.
Don't get me wrong, they all have their strengh, but it's not 1990, recommending something more marginal in these kind or "general" articles should take into account ease-of-use as a higher priority in the rankings.

I think it's crucial to have the "common user" in mind if we collectively want Linux as a whole to gain momentum in home/office.

- Having to do hours of teaching to use an OS is a clear example that something's not right. i.e. After a few pointers, could your Mother use this? How about your Grandpa?
- An distro needing to install 5-10 apps to get standard home computer functions should be down-ranked.
- You can't compare a desktop with fast/optionless interface thats a pain to use/install versus a bigger/simpler distribution. This is like buying a no cup-holder Ferrari when you need a minivan with DVD. Comparison should have "Usage type" listed or a "What are you going to use this for?"
- A booting GUI distro at 50MB memory is impressive technically, a 200MB workable one for that old/closet PC is cool, a 300MB one that does almost everything you need, everyday, is awesome.  If the 300 MB has everything needed for daily use, a distro using 500MB should have a big PLUS somewhere.
Linux Lite is able to strike that hard-to-get balance between low-ressource usage and user-friendlyness.It also does this really, really well. Is it perfect? no, no distro is, but it perfectly hits the mark of it's target audience.

Also, Elementary OS, in a low ressource listing? People are strange!
Alltech's article having LinuxLite, Puppy and Windows7 ?!? Facepalm... Also, thats Windows 7 ULTIMATE, the worst ressource wise for old PC. Double-Facepalm.

[trinidad]

[member=5239]torreydale[/member]

Yeah I agree. I use a 16.04 Ubuntu live disk (which could be LL too in a lot of cases) all the time for all sorts of things, and though I'm a Debian guy, the only time I use a Debian live disk is to save time if UEFI booting stuff goes awry on an existing Debian installation. Lightweight doesn't really mean what it's chatted up to be anyway. How a system is configured relative to its hardware is how resource efficiency is achieved, not the amount of software in the system. True even for Windows 10. Nothing is more lightweight than custom installations of pre-seeded Debian or basic Arch Linux of any flavor.

TC 

[TheDead]

[member=5916]trinidad[/member]
Just curious, whats the lowest RAM usage you can get with bare Debian after booting? i.e. Terminal command : watch free -h , lets say 30 secondes after startup disk activity.

[trinidad]

Modern 64bit minimal stuff would be under 250Mb. I don't have any minimal stuff running right now but my big systems all idle at about 800Mb. They all have big DEs. There was a discussion with lots of examples on the Deb forum a while back but I can't find it.

TC

[Moltke]

Just curious, whats the lowest RAM usage you can get with bare Debian after booting? i.e. Terminal command : watch free -h , lets say 30 secondes after startup disk activity

[member=6733]TheDead[/member] I don't know exactly what you mean by "bare Debian" but some months ago I was playing around in a VM with Debian 9 Stretch using the netinstall.iso. I didn't install many graphical programs and instead of a full feature DE i.e XFCE, I installed awesome-wm and some text based tools like ranger as file manager, cmus as music player, newsbeuter as feed reader, mutt as email client and a few others like Links2 as web browser. The experience was quite enjoyable and actually I grew fond of some of those like Links2 and cmus. I did so because that was the main purpose of it; learn how to manage in a cuasi-non graphical environment, meaning I wanted to improve my skills managing things from the command line and I kind of did 
Thing is, resource usage was really low; 103mb. Check it out:

[MS]

Cool stuff, [member=7109]Moltke[/member]. For such experimentation, it pays to have Linux just the way it is nowadays. But the question is, apart from experiments, do you see yourself using this kind of environment in the 21st century on a daily basis? Well, bravado attitude aside, certainly not, I guess. Point is, as someone has mentioned here, how far can we get while still remaining casual approachable and making common sense? This Windows7 on the list of fastest operating systems may indeed unnecessarily be the best ideal, but it is something maybe reminding the Linux world what people are generally used to and what does the majority of users expect. Linux world tends to overhype on the nerdiness at times, making it deatached from the plain audience of desire to be reached, combating the market monopolists. Many tech savvy tinkerers do not get one thing well, which is, that other people may not really enjoy what do nerds enjoy and would rather skip ahead to the final result, which intuitively ought to be graphical, simple, intuitive, easy to navigate procedurally. Perhaps telepathy is the next step where we would communicate with a machine, omitting the graphical interface, but it is not for nowadays yet, as you understand.

[Moltke]

do you see yourself using this kind of environment in the 21st century on a daily basis?

Like I said, the experience was quite enjoyable, that being said I think it all depends on what you need; what you need your OS to do for you and how you want it to do it. Do I see myself using a system like that on a daily basis in the 21st century?  I think, I wouldn't mind if I did, but since I have choices I choose not to  8) what I mean is that having your own customized system is really something, but the fact is that there are many tools that won't probably work or at least not in the way you expect them to "out of the box" as they do in almost every modern distro out there in such an environment. I'm a translator, I translate documents, articles, you name it and for that purpose I use tuxtrans which is a Ubuntu based distro, why? because it was created for that purpose; for translators. It has a lot of tools I don't think will work in a non-graphical environment. I have it in a usb stick and whenever I need I just boot it up and start translating, I don't like it for my daily OS but it perfectly serves its purpose. At the end of the day it all comes to choices and everyone has an opinion of their own.

[MS]

[member=7109]Moltke[/member], why would you need a specific entire OS for professional translators? I mean, I do understand it comes with a suite of helpful tools, but is it not possible to install the same set of tools, say, on Linux Lite? Since you are a veteran Linux user, probably a single script prepared beforehand could do the job on any related system. Therefore, is it not more about the tools rather than the OS?

For the Linux, I do understand how it has never been about becoming a product and I respect that. There is wisdom to it. On the other hand, one cannot expect any casual PC user to suddenly become savored in techy details. Like, for example, if a system is lightweight or not. People can certainly appreciate if the thing runs better than something else of comparison - or at least if the thing is not too bothersome in what it does or how it does - but first, they need to have that comparison. Linux is full of comparison opportunities within own world, but to the outside, it does not really matter. Because what in particular of Linux do you compare versus Windows and MacOS? Ubuntu is the last attempt to actually make Linux a product, for which the Canonical gets a lot of flak from the community.