Newbie question here. I'm overwhelmed!

Anyone has a good recommendation on a light distro that can accommodate KDEnlive or OpenShot for light video editing and light audio editing for podcasts preferably Arch and Debian?

I have old aging computers, 2009 Dell desktop with SCSI drives. A 2011 Dell laptop studio (crappy). I also have a MacBook Air 2011 and an iMac 2009 I would love to morph into a Linux platform.

Thanks for your input.

If you're into audio and video production, try Ubuntu Studio. It's intended to be usable on older computers — it has a 32-bit version — and uses the Xfce desktop so that the GUI doesn't take resources that you need for heavy-duty software.
http://ubuntustudio.org/

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Either will work. Debian's quite a bit less tedious to install if you use pure Arch, but there's some "distro's" out there that are basically nothing more than a pretty installer for Arch (Antegros is my personal favorite).

In my experience, you're not going to see a huge difference in performance if you're running x64 OS between these 2. Arch will have newer versions of software, which COULD be very important depending on features that have been recently added to the software you want to use (I'm not familiar with it). You could run Debian Stretch (testing) to get newer versions as well, although Arch is still likely to have SLIGHTLY newer versions as it's very bleeding edge when it comes to most packages.

In the end, I think either one would work well. If I had to choose personally between pure Debian and pure Arch, I'd go with Debian just because I hate how long Arch's install takes since it's all manual now. But that's a minor issue in the end, and both would work great. IF I had to choose between Debian and Antegros (eliminating the irritating install of Arch), I'd flip a coin since they're both quite capable.

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Depends. Do you want stable, well-tested software with a major update every 2 years (roughly), or do you want a constant stream of updates to the latest and greatest software as it becomes available? Debian for boring stability, Arch for shiny new "rolling release."

For work/productivity on older hardware, I personally would choose a stable, time-based release (like Debian). But that's just me. Your needs might be different than mine. The applications you name (kdenlive and openshot) should run well in any distribution.

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Thank you all, it seems Debian is the best way to go on older computers until I can afford newer ones.

David, I'm familiar with UbuntuStudio and like it a lot. It crawled on that desktop. It a 64-bit machine. Perhaps with a lighter graphic manager? I could also install it and remove all apps I don't use. It's something I can look into.

I appreciate your feedback. I will test Debian and wean myself away from Apple.

I would suggest doing a netinstall if you feel able to. A "default" debian install will have Gnome3, which will also crawl on that machine.

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I'm not sure how to do it but certainly willing to try. I understand the idea. I guess you specify what you would like to install?

You install a base, cli-only system, then boot into that and build your system as you choose. It takes a bit more patience and configuration on your own part, but rewards you by not installing a lot of the extra crap you don't want or need.

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Got it. Does it make more sense than installing the base and then removing the extras? I'm getting familiar with apt-get install and apt-get remove

Crawling before walking!

For my taste, makes more sense to do the netinstall because of HOW MUCH I end up removing. Takes longer to set there and wait for everything to remove so I can install the things I want than it does to type out the list of what I want and walk away. But depending on how customized you want an install, could be much easier and faster to install and remove the extras.

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It's a good point. I need to figure out what makes more sense. I want to dedicate this box as a light video and audio machine. It won't be my daily user. I'll clean up my laptop, currently running Ubuntu Mate.

Removing apps won't help. Windows slows down with more software because of the growing complexity of the registry, but with Linux unused programs just sit on the hard drive and do nothing.

As Timothy said, if Xfce crawls then Gnome 3 will run in wounded snail mode. I think this may be a case for AntiX. That uses Icewm, which is as light a GUI environment as you can get. Since it's only an installation disk, when it's installed you end up with a customised Debian Stable and so you have the vast resources of the Debian repository from which to pick exactly the software you need.

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My Emachine works real well wirelessly as a media center in my motorcycle shop running AntiX linux based on Debian Jessie.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d-deliver-174/

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Wow, thanks. AntiX picked my interest. I'm checking it out right now.

It is one of the probably 4-5 most recommended distro's for older/slower hardware.

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