Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 26th May 2008 10:58 UTC, submitted by i386DX
Abandoned Zone reviewed several lightweight Linux distributions, and concluded: "First of all it has to be clear that there's a difference between 'lightweight' and 'lightweight'. Especially Damn Small Linux is very lightweight, but also it's not really usable on 'more recent' systems. It think DSL is perfect for 486 or Pentium 1-based systems but nothing more. At the other side there are Zenwalk and Xubuntu which are pretty heavy lightweight distributions. I think the use of Xfce has something to do with that. All the others are floating between those two extremes."
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Member since:
2006-10-08
I'm glad you used quotations marks for the term "desktop oriented" FreeBSD variants. By their nature, the BSDs aren't oriented to anything, they are all purpose OSs. You can use them on servers and on desktops (as I do since FreeBSD 4.0), and you can use them for mixed forms (i. e. when your "desktop computer" is offering server functionalities).
The FreeBSD ports collection gives you the tools to achieve this goal, the installer (sysinstall) supports "local additions", that's what you're looking for. Furthermore, you can even create live CDs from a configured and running system.
Hmmm... yes, Sir. :-)
Same here, too. One of my first (4.x) systems was a Pentium 150 MHz with 64 MB RAM, WindowMaker, mplayer, xmms and all the nice stuff. Another system that's still in use is my favourite 300 MHz P2 (5.x) with XFCE 3, OpenOffice and Opera. These systems run so well with their limited resources, but some of the Linux distributions that call theirselves "lightweight" won't even install on them.
From my experiences, ArchLinux is a great approach to the concepts you find in the BSDs, just as the older SlackWare was. If configured properly, it can result in a really fast and versatile Linux system.
Just for information: I like software that is "lightweight" - meaning: not short on features, but short on bloat - so I don't squander my system's resources just to please a fat toolkit that does nothing more than a similar application with, say, Gtk or Xaw. Usually, application evolution makes your system slower. I like the trend to go into the other direction. :-)