Do you have an old PC lying around gathering dust? How about a small-capacity USB flash drive sitting, unloved in a drawer? You can reuse your old computer and a USB flash drive by installing a tiny Linux distribution.
Mini Linux distros are great as they require fewer system resources than other options yet still deliver a whole operating system experience, and we have nine of the smallest Linux distros for you to choose from.
- Parodper ( @Parodper@foros.fediverso.gal ) galego14•5 months ago
Honestly, just use Debian. It can run under 200MB of RAM (default install), so it beats all distros on the list except for TinyCore and SliTaz, and it actually has packages.
- utopiah ( @utopiah@lemmy.ml ) 3•5 months ago
Indeed was my first thought when I didn’t see on the list.
- Sina ( @Sina@beehaw.org ) 2•5 months ago
Chrunchbang or Bunsen are exactly this, vanilla Debian with stuff set up with openbox. The vast majority of ppl don’t need anything more lightweight than this. (maybe conky should be removed, but that’s it.)
If the old PC in question is a small laptop, such as an EEEpc, then I would use vanilla Debian with i3, because I really would want tiling on that…
- Apathy Tree ( @ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English7•5 months ago
Hey this is just what I need. And exactly when I needed it.
I have an old enterprise tower I’ve been trying to set up for my bedroom tv (I believe from 2009 or so) that only has 4gb ram but 12 (!!!) usb ports, and mint with xfce is still much too heavy for it, despite it being able to run win 10 fairly well.
All it needs to be able to do is run my vpn, torrent client, and web browser for media playback (Plex web, hosted elsewhere on my network).
- Molten_Moron ( @Molten_Moron@lemmings.world ) 1•5 months ago
That sounds really odd; Win 10 should be way more intensive than Mint with XFCE. Something else seems out of wack then.
- SuperSpruce ( @SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip ) 6•5 months ago
The reason why I gave Linux a serious look was due to how lightweight it can be and how it can make crappy hardware run fast.
It’s like taking a 0.66L 3-cylinder engine from a big SUV (Windows) to a motorcycle (lightweight Linux distro). And then it does 0-60 in under 4 seconds (the system runs super fast).
- peterf ( @peterf@lemm.ee ) 6•5 months ago
“9 Linux Distros that don’t even pretend to work”
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English1•5 months ago
They likely worked when this article was written.
- LiveLM ( @LiveLM@lemmy.zip ) English5•5 months ago
I think one of the smallest yet fully up-to-date distros around is Alpine Linux.
It might not be a perfect desktop because of Musl incompatibilities but hey, it has a ton of apps in the repos, if your usecase it’s simple it might be enough.- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English2•5 months ago
Keep in mind that it doesn’t have good out of the box support for broadcom. (Broadcom is the old Nvidia and is a pain to get working under Linux)
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English3•5 months ago
I used AOSC retro on a Pentium machine with 32mb of ram.
https://wiki.aosc.io/aosc-os/retro/intro/
Not terribly well documented but it has systemd and is Debian based.
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English2•5 months ago
This article is pretty old and some of the distros suggested are no longer effectively maintained.
- Björn Tantau ( @bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ) 2•5 months ago
Reminds me of the fli4l project. Floppy ISDN for Linux. It used to be an entire Linux installation to use as a router that fit on a 3.5" floppy disc. I had it breath new life into an old 486 PC I had lying around.