hello, although my hardware is recent (bought it this year), I'm looking for a lightweight distro. I've used ubuntu, and more recently been experimenting with goodOs. I'm looking for a fast and stable distribution, which boots fast, without useless applications installed from scratch. what do you recommend? I've been looking into linux mint, since it looks like a good solution. thanks!

ps: bare in mind that my hardware is recent, I just don't find a 4Gb+ distro useful.

Hi,
DSL or DamnSmallLinux would be one of the original mini distros at 50MB http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

Slax is a relatively new distro (debian based, I think) which allows you to make a customised installation disk and include/exclude particular packages http://www.slax.org/

Mark

I really love Puppy !
But I think also Slax is a very interesting small distribution.

I think the other small ones (AntiX, CDLinux, Feather Linux, DamnSmallLinux, SliTaz,....)aren't as good as Puppy or Slax. Maybe Slitaz of those is worth reviewing it.

Puppy is small, fast, offers everything you normally need, and workes fine with most hardware.
Slax: at the homepage you can choose which of the modules you like and which you don't like and then the iso to download comes already like you wanted it!

Nearly all of the small ones come just in English.
So you have to change the keyboard settings. With some you do it at the beginning while booting (Puppy) with others you do it later (Slax)

I hope this could help you to decide.

Like another said, Damn Small is good. There's also TinyME, which is a mini- edition.

If looking for fast performance, go with the XFCE desktop environment. Not very 'flashy', but it gets the job done...

Puppy is pretty nice especially if you use wireless. This makes it ideal for laptops. It works very well on desktops too.

There are some really nice derivatives being developed right now with 2.6.28 kernels. This means they will run on newer hardware.

Take a look at Fatdog 111 by kirk, Newyearspup by MU, and unnamedpup by wow.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/ind...69bc83ad373b49

Zenwalk is a nice, lightweight distro that fits on a single CD. Standard version uses the Xfce desktop but a Gnome version is available. Comes with only one application per task but most popular apps are available in the repositories.

http://www.zenwalk.org/

Another good way to get as light or heavy as you want is Arch

If you want something smaller but maybe not so small as DSL and so on.
you could also try openmamba this is a medium sized distribution (one CD) that worked very fine with me.

Two 'lightweight' distros that have just released new versions are VectorLinux and Dreamlinux. Both well worth a look.

hi! thanks for the replys. I'm already downloading dreamlinux with xfce, and been looking into slax.

If you decide you don't like Dreamlinux, you could always give Slackware a try. You can select which discs and packages to install, so just pick Xfce instead of KDE 3.5 and deselect the games and other bloat, too.

I would suggest something with LXDE - it's a great desktop, easy to use, but much lighter than XFCE.

Surprised nobody mention a debian netinst and add only what you want once you have the basic system. This is how I use it.

hey! I've tried arch, but let's just say that was a little bit hardcore for someone who isn't using linux for that long. I'm trying linux mint atm, and it's pretty good actually. fast boot times, it doesn't hang up like gOS did, good features. cheers

Small AND easy >>>> Puppy.
You should try it ( but attention: You may become addicted)
;-)