Hello, I need something user-friendly, just works out-of-the-box and for beginners. I have an old eMachines T3256 with XP 32-bit and 2 GB of RAM with an Intel® Celeron CPU 220 @ 1.20GHz and VESA: 6330 for graphics.(meaning Pinguy and Mint are great distros but way too much for my old desktop). I was thinking something Ubuntu-based but am open to anything. Can someone explain the differences/pros and cons of these distros? This is what I have so far:

Lubuntu: for a Linux newbie LXDE can be a challenge
Kubuntu: KDE coming from Windows, you will find Kubuntu a little easier to work BUT generally slower on lower end/older hardware
Xubuntu: lightweight and extremely efficient Xfce
Linux Lite: see above
LXLE: LXDE easy-to-use lightweight, but still new meaning not much community

Can anyone add to or elaborate any of them. As far as I can tell they are basically the same with a different desktop environments- meaning Xfce, LXDE and KDE. This is a big decision, I suppose I could try them all via live USB? I do have enough flash drives.lol But can you help me narrow it down? Any suggestions and input would be very much appreciated. And feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

Grateful,

X

Edit: so far it's a tie between Linux Lite and PCLinuxOS.
elementary OS isn't bad either.

AntiX

None of the *buntu are 'lightweight' compared to some other distros. :lol:

Tiny Core / SliTaz

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My oldest computer has a Pentium M 1.4GHz and it runs Xubuntu perfectly, although I do need to use Midori rather than Firefox. Xfce is almost as light as LXQT and a lot easier to manage. My graphics is probably better than yours, so if you find Xubuntu sluggish, you'll have to drop down to a simple window manager, like Ice as provided by AntiX. I don't think you'll need to wrestle with Tiny Core, though.

just in case that wasn't loud enough:
AntiX it is!

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@ondoho,


You seem to have developed a tendency today to post a few harsh jokes, in this thread as well as over here, https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...6/#post5899793


Please remember the forum rules: Quote:

• Do not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, hostile or insulting.
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It's not just about being lightweight, I also need easy to use.

Thank you all for the input!

This is coming from a newbie, but... as someone explained to me once on this forum, the "lightweight" quality is determined mostly by the desktop environment. In my case I was recommended Linux Mint XFCE

A Lightweight Distro would be a small distro that uses a Window Manager as GUI, to go lighter would mean a text based system.

XFCE is a lightweight Desktop Environment, but heavier than most Window Managers - whilst KDE & GNOME are regarded as heavyweights because they include lots of little extras.

(The amount of ram used by the system also determines if it is lightweight.)

mostly.
every now and then i stumble upon a distro that also took care of speeding up the boot process, and reduce the number of services/daemons etc. running all the time, and it's amazing.

XFCE: in my book, it's "middleweight". definitely much snappier than gnome or unity or even cinnamon, but...
when you come from windows on an older machine, it's amazing that programs launch in half the time on the same hardware. but i have gotten used to programs launching in almost no time at all. for this you need to go the way fatmac pointed out.

of all the desktop environments, LXDE is still the lightest by far.

How lightweight a distro is depends on much more than just the desktop environment. If you read all the posts above carefully you will notice that the specifications of your system is 1 of the few bottlenecks. You can run a lightweight distro, but if your system lacks the needed resources/capacity even that lightweight distro will run with problems. You can face issues with RAM or with the graphic card/onboard GPU not being sufficient enough. And beside that, do not forget the applications you want to run on your old(er)/ancient system. The lesser RAM capacity, the lesser GPU/Graphic card capacity, the more difficult it will be to run the latest applications.

Just keep this in mind, all distro's and applications require a certain amount of (system) resources (read onboard system RAM). The lesser resources available, the more a distro will struggle on your system to run smoothly.