In the past year I’ve reviewed four lightweight Linuxes for OS News: VectorLinux, Puppy Linux, Lubuntu, and Damn Small Linux. This article compares the four distributions. I invite your comments in response: what are your own experiences with these and competing lightweight distros?
Here are links to the OS News reviews:
The reviews all cover current releases (except for Lubuntu, which is
now at version 12.04). This article refers to the current 32-bit
versions of these OS’s — including Lubuntu 12.04.
Hardware and Performance
As lightweight distros, all four products provide excellent performance
on any Pentium IV or better with at least 512M of memory. This makes
them great candidates for reviving any old PC you may have lying around
the house. Why not make use of that old laptop?
Even if you have only 256M, VectorLinux and Puppy run fine. Puppy runs
entirely from memory by default on any computer with least
256M. It releases the CD/DVD for your use even if you booted from it.
Damn Small Linux requires even less resources. Detailed specs are in
the chart at the end of this article.
On the other end of the hardware spectrum, what about 64 bit systems?
The Lubuntu project is furthest along. They’ve offered 64
bit versions ever since their release of 10.04 over two years ago.
VectorLinux is beta
testing its first 64 bit version right now. Vector will likely roll out
the various editions
they support in 64 bit throughout the year.
Puppy Linux has several official releases and many
unofficial “puplets” or special builds. The official releases are all
32 bit but 64 bit puplets like FatDog and Lighthouse
are available. Damn Small Linux is no longer an active project. It will
have no 64 bit version.
Applications
Puppy and VectorLinux both bundle all the
apps needed for typical desktops. They are easy to use. Both used to
offer their own middling-sized repositories for
downloading additional software, but that’s all changed now.
Puppy Version 5
“Lucid” uses Ubuntu’s huge repositories, while the “Slacko” build uses
the Slackware repositories. Puppy includes dependency-checking when
using
these software libraries.
Similarly, VectorLinux 7 boasts a newly-expanded repository that now claims
one thousand packages. You can also use Slackware’s
big repositories with VL, but you don’t get dependency checking if you
do.
Lubuntu’s bundled apps are
roughly equivalent to those offered by Puppy and Vector. Lubuntu
directly accesses the Ubuntu repositories with their 11,000+ apps.
Damn Small Linux is a much smaller distro than the others. It
weighs in as only a 50M download. While DSL bundles a full range of apps,
they were selected for their small size, rather than for functionality
or ease of use. The apps are pretty geeky. And they show their age,
since the final release of this distro was in 2008. DSL uses its own
repository for software downloads called myDSL.
Support & Documentation
Puppy Linux and VectorLinux have active, friendly forums. I’ve used
both for over five years and have never had a single question that
wasn’t answered. Puppy Linux has a ton of documentation, though it’s a
bit disorganized and not always clear to which release any particular
document applies. Vector’s documentation is less voluminous but it is
better organized and clearly labelled. Vector is the only distro that
offers a paid support
option.
How you judge Lubuntu’s support and documentation depends on whether
you view the product as part of the Ubuntu family or as independent.
For example, Lubuntu users tap the huge, very active Ubuntu forum, where they tag their
questions as pertaining to Lubuntu. Lubuntu doesn’t have its own
independent forum. Similarly, the Lubuntu doc is sparse though expanding
rapidly. Of course, users can rely on the tons of material available
for Ubuntu.
Damn Small Linux is no longer maintained so support is limited. The DSL
website is still up and
you can buy the highly-rated DSL
book. If you have DSL questions you must post them on generic Linux
forums like LinuxQuestions
or the LinuxForums.
Which are Suitable for End Users?
End users easily and productively use Puppy and VectorLinux. Both
distros should be installed and configured by an experienced person
first.
Lubuntu is also very user-friendly. Some argue that end users can
install and configure it, but I believe it’s similar to Puppy and
Vector — users will love the system, but it’s preferable that an
experienced hand installs and configures it for them first.
Damn Small Linux has a primitive GUI and the geekiest apps because it
runs on very minimal hardware. It’s a fun hobbyist tool but I would not
recommend it for end users.
The graphical user interface of a distro partially determines
its ease of use and configurability. Here are the install
defaults:
| Distro: |
Default GUI: |
| Lubuntu 12.04 LTS |
LXDE |
| VectorLinux 7.0 Standard Edition |
Xfce |
| VectorLinux 7.0 Light Edition | Several (you choose when installing) |
| Puppy Linux 5 |
JWM |
| Damn Small Linux 4.4.10 |
Fluxbox |
Which Run on Old Computers?
All four of these products run great on Pentium IV’s with 512M. Beyond
that …
Puppy Linux 5 includes a “retro release” called Wary, specifically
designed for older hardware with an older kernel. Wary runs on topped
out P-II’s or better. It is a good choice for aging hardware because it
has a large active community actually using old machines.
VectorLinux has been around since 1999, so older versions support older
hardware. For Version 7 I’d recommend a P-III or better.
Lubuntu’s first independent release dates from late 2009. It’s a poor
bet for old hardware simply because the product post-dates that era.
Pentium IV’s or better are recommended, preferably with at least 384M
to 512M of memory.
Damn Small Linux is frozen in time. Its final release dates from 2008.
DSL still runs the 2.4 kernel and it includes the SYSLINUX bootloader
for machines that won’t boot ISOLINUX. DSL is your best bet if
you’re playing around with a really
old computer like a P-II, P-I, P-I MMX, Pentium Pro, or 486.
When to Use Each Distro
Let’s wrap up with a few recommendations.
Puppy
Linux and VectorLinux have very low system requirements and run
on P-III’s or better. Both give you a full selection of bundled apps
and are easy to use. They
offer nice CD mastering systems for creating your own customized
versions. Their enthusiastic online forums get my highest marks.
Puppy is very fast because it runs entirely from memory by
default. Lucid Puppy gives you access to the huge Ubuntu repositories,
while Slacko Puppy taps the Slackware software libraries. Wary Puppy is
specifically designed to support older hardware.
VectorLinux is a fast, bloat-free distro you can build up
into your own tailored system. VL offers a nice range of editions
to satisfy all tastes. The benefit is that you can stay within the
Vector family even if you have varied needs or if your needs change
over
time. VL’s paid support option distinguishes
it from competitors. VectorLinux is a good choice for those who
want a
Slackware-based distro with a long history and strong track record:
Vector’s proven itself since 1999.
Lubuntu
is a good option for those who want to stay within the Ubuntu family
but need a lighter distro that
requires less CPU and memory. It’s also an alternative for those
fleeing Ubuntu’s Unity–HUD–Dashboard design. Lubuntu has none of
these because it runs LXDE instead of Unity. Lubuntu keeps you in the
Ubuntu family with a more
traditional, resource-light interface.
Damn Small Linux should be your choice only if you have really old hardware you’re geeking around
with — like a P-II, P-I, or 486. DSL is excellent for that one
specific purpose. If you have newer hardware, Puppy, Vector, and
Lubuntu are all better choices from the standpoints of currency,
support, user-friendliness, and range of apps.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who
supports databases and operating systems. You might also be interested
in his OS News article The Sins
of Ubuntu. Read more of his articles here.
Lightweight Distro Specs
| Distro & Website: |
Download Size: |
Installed Footprint: |
64 bit too? | CPU: |
RAM: |
| Lubuntu 12.04 LTS |
1 CD |
4.2G |
Yes |
Sys Reqs state P-II minimum but a P-III or P-IV is probably the practical minimum |
Sys Reqs state 128M minimum but the 12.04 download recommends 384M or better for the Live CD |
| VectorLinux 7.0 Standard Edition |
1 CD | 3.4G |
In Beta |
Sys Reqs state a P-III @750mhz or better for Live CD |
Sys Reqs state 256M or better for Live CD |
| Puppy Linux 5.x |
130M |
0.5 – 1G * |
As Puplet |
P-II or better works best |
128M minimum required to install, with 256M it runs it entirely from memory |
| VectorLinux 7.0 Light Edition |
1 CD |
3.4G |
In Beta |
Sys Reqs state a P-I @166mhz minimum, works best with P-II or better |
Sys Reqs state 64M minimum, works best with 128M or more |
| Damn Small Linux 4.4.10 |
50M | 200 – 300M * |
No |
Sys Reqs state a 486 minimum |
Sys Reqs state 16M minimum to run GUI, with 128M it runs entirely from memory |
The numbers in this chart are
approximate rather than precise.
* For a full disk install.
DSL has evolved into Tinycore, you should have tested that instead.
DSL and Tinycore have different goals though… I don’t think tiny core is pushing the I can run on a 486 bit as much.
That said slitaz is pretty nice.
“The reviews all cover current releases (except for Lubuntu, which is now at version 12.04).”
The last Damn Small Linux release was in late 2008.
Uhhh…and wouldn’t it be kinda , you know, unsafe to run a distro that hasn’t had a single update in 4 years? Frankly I don’t think I’d trust ANY OS that hadn’t had so much as a single update in 4 years, who knows how many bugs that have been patched are still present in DSL. Sure if all you are doing is futzing with an old machine and not allowing it to hook to the Internet then fine, but if that’s the case then that Win95 or whatever is on it would do just as well.
It just seems a little crazy to me to even entertain something that has been for all intents and purposes abandoned as a viable OS for use on the net. I mean you can still download those last releases of Xandros Community Edition, like DSL their website is still up, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Salix OS would have been nice to test also for a lightweight distro!
If you tested VectorLinux then I thing Slackware would also qualify. Although Slack is as small or big as you make it
VectorLinux has two distinct advantages over pure Slackware: Speed and native dependency checking.
Unfortunately, you give up Slackware’s extremely stable nature, and ability to customize the installation down to the individual packages. As for dependency checking, you can always use slapt-get. Personally I prefer building and maintaining my own packages via pkgbuilds or just compiling from source. I have to take the extra time to seek out dependencies, but I learned more about how GNU/Linux works using Slackware than with all the other distros combined. Edit: And of course I forgot that Slackware can still be installed on as low as a 486 with 64MB RAM! You can’t beat that for old/low specs.
Still, I do prefer Arch these days for the bleeding-edge packages and excellent support community. I can still build and install from source if necessary, and my system is built piece by piece so there’s no cruft. I realize Arch is far from newbie-friendly, but I would definitely say it can be considered a “lightweight” distro given how bare it can be if you want.
Edited 2012-06-18 07:10 UTC
I think you can ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution – admittedly, large part of them based on Slackware, even if on its old versions).
Though… that would be one unusual 486, with 64 MiB, me thinks. Still, it points to what the article barely addresses (worse, it seems to focus more on CPU generations for demarcation): for most “daily usage” scenarios, RAM tends to be more important than CPU power.
Lubuntu is moderately decent on a PII that I keep around (well, dual, but OTOH only 266 MHz), with a relatively large for its era 384 MiB of RAM.
The problem I’ve found with any of those “old systems”, not talking about some 486 that someone found in an attic but what you’d normally find, those P3s and P4s that seem to be everywhere? yeah their power usage was just awful compared to even a cheapo Atom or AMD E series or ARM, those things just blew through the power, especially anything to do with netburst.
So while I can appreciate playing with the old stuff just to goof around I have to wonder if keeping anything like that for an actual purpose would be smart or if you’d waste more in electricity than you’d save just getting a small ARM box or one of those $100 E350 kits where they draw like 8w on average. I can tell you when I finally got around to replacing my boys Pentium Ds for an AMD Hex and Quad the power bill dropped pretty dang quick. I hadn’t thought about how much power and cooling them old units took, just as tossing their CRTs for LCDs a few months later caused another decent sized drop. You don’t realize how little they cared about power draw back then until you actually change them out for something modern but its a pretty big difference.
That is why the only older machine I’ve kept is a 754 Sempron, it only pulls 35w or so and makes a nice nettop, I’m sure it’ll be even better when i get around to tossing the Sempron for a Mobile Athlon with better thermal controls.
When all the overall resources and energy consumption are taken into account, the total cost of manufacturing and shipping new electronic thingy tends to eclipse the energy usage from continuous operation of old machine – at least within the limits of sensible usage patterns (not turned on 24/7 and such; well, and perhaps not if that’s some Pentium D or smth). It might be often not directly apparent because all externalities are virtually never accounted for in retail prices.
P3s were moderately decent BTW, comparable to that Sempron you keep, certainly in the most popular Celeron (not pushing things) or even Celeron Tualatin variants (0.13 – nice those ones, and quite fast; unfortunately, Intel marketing was too often succesful in convincing that in fact slower Netburst Celerons were “better” with their much higher clock and so on…).
Many budget AMDs similar – and I even keep around an Athlon XP Palomino which, according to my back-of-the-napkin calculations, uses at most as many Watts as your Sempron (it’s underclocked and undervolted – slight performance loss doesn’t matter in how it’s sometimes used; it’s more a “cool, I have a decade old PC which is still perfectly comfortable in ‘daily’ tasks” thing)
Edited 2012-06-19 16:07 UTC
I once tested two of these lightweight distros for an old Pentium II laptop with 128 MB of RAM. I found them to be inconvenient and also somewhat outdated, starting with the distro’s organization, but also in terms of what software is available.
I then tried Archlinux, because I also use it as my main system. I found it to be a perfect fit for the old laptop. The system was quite responsive and I could even watch videos on Youtube with epiphany+Flash.
So my experience is that it is not worth it to watch out for especially slim distros like DSL and puppy, if you can just take a slim-by-design major distro like Archlinux.
Same hear. A build-your-own distro like Arch or Debian-businesscard is probably a better way to go for most people. They don’t even require much experience, just the patience to read documentation.
I’d personally take Slitaz over Puppy or DSL/Tinycore if I was on the lookout for a ready-made slim distro, though.
I just installed Vector Linux on an IBM Thinkpad. It’s a 2.4 Ghz Pentium IV and 256 MB RAM. It seems to run fine.
Don’t forget to physically clean a computer. It may not run faster from it, but it does look much better!
To me Puppy, DSL are somewhat a mess. They’re way too chaotic, unpleasant experience.
Vector is somewhere between being usable and messy, while Lubuntu is almost perfect here.
Of course, Lubuntu has its own drawbacks, but still it just beats crap out of the other ones when it comes to “user experience”.
I like the fact Vector is based on Slackware, but to me Lubuntu seems to be more organized distro. I actually use it as my “make-a-backup-from” OS.
Seems like the big distros are dupming the support to pure window managers lately. I think it is a big mistake as they are quite good on many cases.
I like openSUSE and kde4 but I also like a lot my configuration with openbox/fluxbox enhanced with some neat additions like:
compton – https://github.com/chjj/compton
nitrogen – http://projects.l3ib.org/nitrogen/
tint2 – http://code.google.com/p/tint2/
wbar – http://code.google.com/p/wbar/
volumeicon – http://softwarebakery.com/maato/volumeicon.html
netwmpager – http://sourceforge.net/projects/sf-xpaint/files/netwmpager/
fbxkb – http://fbxkb.sourceforge.net/
Perhaps, I should write a little article on how to build and configure them and post here on osnews for the sake of documentation.
I can’t honestly call any of those distros (except DSL) lightweight. Only DSL and VectorLinux light edition even boot on my _main_ computer (and VectorLinux light edition only barely). I run SliTaz on my computer. (I used lowram-cdrom flavor cd to install it.) It is distro I can call lightweight. (After switching to plain openbox of course. Currently I don’t use X11.) Something like Lubuntu is not lightweight. At most I’d call it not as horribly bloated as some distros.
Edited 2012-06-18 13:15 UTC
Your 64 MiB were on the low side even in the times of that Pentium III of yours… hell, my Pentium II 266 has six times as much RAM.
Stop doing this to yourself, go though some scrapyard or something and get for nothing a much better PC (or at least surplus RAM)
Why not run something like OpenBSD/FreeBSD
My thoughts initially, but I suppose someone looking for a slimmed-down distro (rather than configuring one themselves; Linux, BSD or otherwise) probably wouldn’t have the patience to read the documentation for maintaining a BSD install, even though ports and pkg_foo are much simpler in essence.
Edited 2012-06-18 14:29 UTC
TBH if you are going to go to this amount of effort you already know what you are doing (or one should hope so).
Probably because BSD is not Linux.
Not really a good reason but I’m guessing it’s a pretty likely one.
Gentoo can be quite difficult to install: it takes a steady hand, strong familiarity with underlying Unix concepts, and the time it takes to compile everything.
However, if you only install what you need and you’re willing to tweak the kernel to support just the hardware you need, Gentoo is incredibly lightweight. I’ve run a full Gnome 2.30 desktop with Banshee playing music and a few Epiphany tabs open – all with less than 200MB RAM in-use.
On the plus side, Gentoo includes incredibly comprehensive documentation that explains just about everything to less-experienced users.
Puppy — megacool, worth a look by anybody
Vector — anybody use this?
DSL — obsolete, why cover it?
Lubuntu — hardly a lightweight, at least on my system. But I like the idea in the article that it is an alternative to Unity. Never thought of that.
I have used Puppy to restore literally hundreds of computers over the last decade or so. It is flexible and versatile, and improves with every version. There has recently been a step back from really older hardware with version 5, but I’ve installed Puppy 4 on a P133 with 64MB of RAM and a 256MB swap partition, and that worked well enough. It also has more built in wizards than any other distro I’ve seen, so its ideal for new computer or new Linux users to cut their teeth on.
Just moved from Ubuntu to Lubuntu using
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purelubuntu
on yesterday and so far I like it. Less CPU fan, same usability, and same programs available. Although so far I’ve only installed Firefox.
I’d suggest users who left Firefox more than 6 months ago in favor of Chrome that retry Firefox now. It has received many sensible optimizations at different levels since then: more UI speed, less disk load time, less memory usage, more resistance against problematic extensions, etc.
I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with Lubuntu. Didn’t feel that lighgweight at all. Probably my favourite lightweight distro I’ve used recently was CrunchBang (I wrote a short review of it for Computerworld Australia early last year: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/377096/review_crunchbang_li… .)