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Im still trying to find what Linux system will suit me. All I really want to do is surf the internet and maybe a little word processing. Im looking for the least resource consuming version out there. Any suggestions. I tried Knoppix and that looks good so far, if I ever figure out the wiresless card issue.
Thanks
John
I run debian sarge with the xfce4 window manager on a bunch of old machines that have very modest amounts of cpu power and ram, and few up to date machines with modern specs, and overall it works great. You can keep the system extremely minimal by doing a tiny initial installation just to get the thing to boot and then downloading packages using apt whenever you need them. The xfce4 window manager is also a favourite of mine. It is very quick and lean and stable. I find gnome and kde far too obese.
Getting debian installed and configured on the different machines, however, was not necessarily as simple a matter of just putting in a cd and pressing "install". It sometimes required looking for extra drivers and re-compiling the kernel depending on the hardware.
I experimented with xubuntu (ubuntu + xfce4) recently. It is debian-based but its software packages are nearly all more recent. Installation is very easy and it no trouble recognising any hardware I was using. However, I did experience weird stuff after it installed, as if everything was not working properly. For example, the Xorg server kept on running amok and hogging the cpu such that machine essentially froze. I didn't make any serious attempt to figure out what was happening.
anyway, to cut a long story short: debian + xfce4 is a great choice for being lean and minimal. on paper, xubuntu should be everything debian + xfce4 is and more. However, I found it to be a bit dodgey.
Check DSL (asommer said it), Featherweight, and Puppy. Also, im trying to start a distro called austrumi, but it was written in Latvia and i want to get it into english. its really amazing in that after inserting the cd, it saves all it takes to operate it to a temp file and allows you to insert cds into it.
check this site out for more distros that what this site offers, but if it is on this site, stay here as I have had a better downloading experience with these iso's for some reason.
This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.
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