I need light Linux distro, that is amd64 architecture
 

I am searching for Linux distro for my friend. She has got an AMD64 (Sempron, I think), 256MB RAM, 70GB HD, 1024x768 resolution.

Yes, there are lots of light distros out there... But I just can't throw ICEWM or OpenBox in her face. At least LXDE. It should be based on Debian/Ubuntu because she is a total newbie.

Thanks.

Mint ?. Has both a Xfce and LXDE option.
Save messing with codecs and such.

I used to run a full Ubuntu (Hardy ?) on less than that - basically just for browsing and mail though.

Mmm ... I wouldn't say Ubuntu is light. I would recommend Salix, based on slackware, but easier to install and comes with XFCE, which should be quite easy to use.
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/Download

They now have fluxbox or LXDE, which are even lighter.

Debian with LXDE, Lubuntu, Bodhi Linux. All these are Debian/Ubuntu based. If it not has to be based on them I would recommend Vector Linux.
If it is possible I would strongly recommend to upgrade the RAM on that machine, if you can upgrade it to 1GB you should be able to use any DE you want.

I thought, wait! :doh: Is there any Lubuntu amd edition since I can't find it?

I don't think there is.

No, you don't. Due to the wonders of backwards compatibility, an x86 32 bit distribution would be fine for you. You would probably want a 64 bit distro if you had significantly in excess of 4G of ram (under or around 4G, the 32 bit/PAE versions would work fine for you, but you might still choose 64 bits over PAE). As the 64 bit versions can be slightly more extravagant with the sizes of some tables, in tghis particular case, if you can't upgrade the RAM, there is probably an advantage in staying with 32 bits.


Enlightenment (Bodhi Linux??) would be nice, has eye candy, but might just be a bit too odd for her tastes - perhaps cause too many 'support calls', if you know what I mean.

One way of getting a candidate list would be to go to the distrowatch site, their search page and search for distros for older computers
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?ca...&status=Active
out of those Antix, Puppy (and variants), Slitax, Tiny Core and WattOS (oh, Openbox!) would catch my eye, but YMMV. (You could filter down by just Debian/Ubuntu derivates, but I don't see the point...you are relying on the distro to make things 'user-friendly', and there is no guarantee that a sensible Mandriva derivation isn't more user-friendly than a wackoid Debian derivation).

Burn two or three live CDs and see what appeals to her!

There is a clear performance advantage to 64-bit.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...u_32_pae&num=1
and with a low powered computer like that, it may make a difference.

No real other advantages tho. But, you can still run 64-bit flash player and java, etc on 64-bit just fine.

I agree. 256MB of ram is low for amd64 architecture. I think that will have a noticeable impact on performance. I think 32 bit x86 architecture will give better results.

For normal amounts of ram (at least the range 1GB to 8GB, maybe wider) I don't think the amount of ram should influence the choice of 32 bit vs. 64bit.

With very little ram, 32 bit has advantages because it needs a little less ram. With very much ram, 64 bit has the advantage that you don't exhaust kernel virtual memory with all the required data structures. In between, there is little basis for choosing 32 bit vs. 64 bit and ram size should play no part.

Those results are so much in contradiction to what one would expect from the underlying architecture differences, that experimental error is the most likely explanation.

It is easy to make big mistakes when running performance comparisons. It is very hard to control every unspecified variable and really compare what you think you are comparing. Even if you got all that right, benchmarks tend to have little similarity to real use.

Even if you trust those benchmarks (which I think is a silly viewpoint) you can't divorce those results from the ram size. 64 bit will have some performance loss (relative to 32 bit) when running in just 256MB.

More significantly, those benchmarks might be exaggerating some performance effect of the greater virtual memory size of 64 bit. In normal use of Linux, the 3GB virtual memory limit per process has no impact, so its removal in 64 bit architecture has no benefit. But you could easily find/construct unrealistic benchmarks in which removing that limit makes an enormous difference. Since virtual memory is often sparse, you might use well significantly more than 4GB of virtual memory in under 4GB physical. But that effect would not be significant all the way down to 256MB physical. For the context of the current thread, even unrealistic benchmarks over favoring 64 bit, should fail to show such benefits.

Hi TheStefan12345,

I use zenwalk 6.4v on a 1Ghz P3 with 512ram and 40Gb hdd.
It is quite ok for things like email, web (java, java script and flash tuned off) word processing.

Distro info
Slack based.
install is relatively ok,
ISO file is around ~600mb
one App per task policy
They have a quite ok online repo if you want to install more apps

zenwalk so far only have 32 bit version out.




.

CrunchBang runs in 256MB, has a 64-bit version, and is quite nice. Salix might not be so good for a beginner. Vector would do, but it doesn't have a 64-bit version. Xfce would be the best interface: LXDE is still a bit basic.

I doubt that a 64 bit OS for that machine is needed. Any task I can think of that would benefit from 64 bit is simply not suitable for such a low spec machine.

Only if you are going over 256MB of RAM use with 64bit. As long as you dont run out of RAM, 64bit should be faster than 32bit.

You can choose not to trust the benchamrks if you want. I'll admit, some of the differences are pretty huge, but I'm not convinced they are 'unrealistic'. That is without having a good working knowledge of the actual benchmarks though (the ones with the biggest differences are ones I'm not totally familiar with).

The benchmarks I am more familiar with I dont see anything that is shocking, 64bit is generally a lot better at number crunching.
BTW, dont take this as a 'use 64bit on 256MB of RAM' post. I agree, with 256MB I wouldnt bother using 64bit- it might not use much more RAM, but it does use a little more, and with 256MB you are likely to run out of RAM.

click this link to download bodhi, i think its a nice distribution for searching purposes only.
i also want to try this one.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bodh...0.iso/download