
"Mainstream Linux distributions typically default to one of two desktop environments, KDE or GNOME. Both of these environments provide users with an intuitive and attractive desktop, as well as offering a large raft of multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools and more. However, these two desktops focus more on providing users with a modern computing environment with all the bells and whistles featured in Windows Vista, rather than minimising the amount of system resources they need. For users and developers who want to run an attractive Linux desktop on older hardware, netbooks, or mobile internet devices, neither KDE or GNOME may be a viable option, as they run too slowly on low spec machines (such as less than 256MB RAM and a 1 GHz processor). This article seeks to
identify the best lean desktops for Linux, for users that have old or even ancient hardware."
Member since:
2005-11-02
After reading the article I decided to go and try what I used to do three or four years ago when I had an older computer with only 128M RAM. That was to run Gnome on top of Openbox instead of Metacity.
When I tried it again, it booted with about 40M more RAM available and it definitely seemed more snappy than with Metacity. I think I might keep using this configuration for a while.
Edited 2008-12-02 17:53 UTC