Greetings! I’ve tried out many light weight distributions in the last four months including:
Absolute Linux
Antix-22
Bodhi Linux
Linux-Lite
Lubuntu
Porteus
Puppy Linux
SliTaz
Tiny Core
Xubuntu
but I’ve always managed to come back to Lubuntu. About 45% of these distros are run on a stick or are not easy to setup or install. The only ones that are relatively easy to set up and install, including Wi-Fi , are Bodhi Linux, Linux-Lite, Lubuntu and Xubuntu.
Even out of these I felt like Lubuntu loaded faster and shut down faster (an ran faster) than Linux-Lite which I just installed a ran for a few days.
When you consider boot-up time, shut-down time, system resources, stability, security, ease of installation and finally support, there is only one clear winner to me and that is Lubuntu. Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point in the future but I have come to this conclusion, not from reading about it (although that too) but by installing the distributions and trying them out. Some of these distributions were so difficult to install that I just stopped wasting my time. I figured if I’m having this much trouble just configuring the hard drive and WIFI then what is the rest of this operating system going to be like? I’m not knocking the other distributions because I know that people worked hard on them and for some people, they work great because they are usually run from USB flash drives. But in the end Lubuntu seems to be more stable and solid than some of these feather-weight distros which seemed to be more interested in a small size or footprint rather than stability.
After Lubuntu my next favorite light-weight distributions are Xubuntu and Bodhi Linux. These are my three favorite because of their stability. You can find distros that are smaller but they usually have a stability problem, anyway, that’s what I have found. Cheers!
Bartman, I had trouble with AntiX and Puppy. Puppy wouldn’t recognize my Wi-Fi card and I forgot the problem with AntiX but I think both of these are usually run from a USB stick and not necessarily installed. I prefer the ones that can be installed and are stable and secure.
I bought $168.00 Lenovo ThinkPad 11 about 6 months ago. It had Windows 11 installed and couldn’t hardly run, so I installed Lubuntu and it is many times faster. I have a few other Linux certified computers that I’m running Kubuntu on (Lubuntu’s older brother) and then run fine. I like Lubuntu for the computers that don’t have a very fast CPU or much memory.
I myself prefer install / update and run OOTB.
Lubuntu has always done that on my old computers.
I like Lubuntu’s simple look and DE and low resource usage.
Yes AntiX and Puppy Linux distros are not OOTB Linux distros.
Both are good Linux distros although not everyone’s cup of tea.
Both can be installed as a frugal to a USB flash drive and run from ram.
I’ve also been trying out a few light/lightish distros recently (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Spiral Xfce, Zorin Lite, Puppy Xfce variants etc), with the hope of having the same distro both on our newer and our older computers.
One key factor why I’ve been sticking with Lubuntu (23.04) so far is that Wifi on my new Lenovo laptop (Realtek 8852ce) works out of the box. I’ve been able to get it working in other distros using drivers and instructions from Github etc, but always with the caveat that every kernel upgrade would disable the driver and I’d have to work to get it functioning again.
(Wifi also worked OOTB with Xubuntu 23.04, but it would go crazy trying to come out of the lock screen.)
But also I love how snappy Lubuntu is! (Admittedly, this Lenovo is my first machine with an SSD. I’ve yet to install on an older machine with an HDD.)
Also, I was wary about not going with a “full desktop environment” like Xfce as I wondered if key features would be missing. But so far Lubuntu’s LXQT seems to have everything I need (although I would love a way to put the file manager in dark mode).
It mentions Lubuntu often and might be worth reading for the curious folks. For those unaware, it’s my site. Though, I suspect most regulars are aware of this.
You could say that I’m a Lubuntu fan, but that’s obvious. While I do sometimes use other distros, Lubuntu has been my preference for many years. I got involved behind the scenes around the time of the transition to LXQt and this has ‘cost’ me many hours and I regret none of it. I consider it time well invested.
