Do you have an old PC lying around gathering dust? How about a small-capacity USB flash drive sitting, unloved in a drawer? You can reuse your old computer and a USB flash drive by installing a tiny Linux distribution.
Mini Linux distros are great as they require fewer system resources than other options yet still deliver a whole operating system experience, and we have nine of the smallest Linux distros for you to choose from.
I think one of the smallest yet fully up-to-date distros around is Alpine Linux.
It might not be a perfect desktop because of Musl incompatibilities but hey, it has a ton of apps in the repos, if your usecase it’s simple it might be enough.
Honestly, just use Debian. It can run under 200MB of RAM (default install), so it beats all distros on the list except for TinyCore and SliTaz, and it actually has packages.
Reminds me of the fli4l project. Floppy ISDN for Linux. It used to be an entire Linux installation to use as a router that fit on a 3.5" floppy disc. I had it breath new life into an old 486 PC I had lying around.
The reason why I gave Linux a serious look was due to how lightweight it can be and how it can make crappy hardware run fast.
It’s like taking a 0.66L 3-cylinder engine from a big SUV (Windows) to a motorcycle (lightweight Linux distro). And then it does 0-60 in under 4 seconds (the system runs super fast).
Don’t use Tiny Core Linux. The wiki is a mess of articles for two different versions, neither of which is the current one. Sign-up to the forum has been broken for years and the owner seems to like it that way because the same happened when he created Damn Small Linux.
Hey this is just what I need. And exactly when I needed it.
I have an old enterprise tower I’ve been trying to set up for my bedroom tv (I believe from 2009 or so) that only has 4gb ram but 12 (!!!) usb ports, and mint with xfce is still much too heavy for it, despite it being able to run win 10 fairly well.
All it needs to be able to do is run my vpn, torrent client, and web browser for media playback (Plex web, hosted elsewhere on my network).
I didn't care for PuppyLinux as it didn't run well with even just Firefox open. I also didn't care for the updating structure that seemed to be the idea that you just don't update packages between releases. I could be wrong on that, but that was what I got from reading on how to keep things up to date. I did like how small it is and how it loads into memory on boot.
AntiX wouldn't let me install any packages or update. It would keep telling me I needed to wait a few hours to access the repos. I did like how you could swap between several desktop environments easily.
The lack of systemd was something I couldn’t get over. I mean the alternative service managers are good but a few apps I really need have a strong dependency on systemd and the adapter packages just weren’t working. Otherwise I highly recommend AntiX. It made my old netbook feel useful again.
AntiX wouldn’t let me install any packages or update. It would keep telling me I needed to wait a few hours to access the repos. I did like how you could swap between several desktop environments easily.
Just manual change the repo and problem solved…
And I need to clarify this because AntiX IMO, under category Permacomputing for low power consumption without too much sacrificing the function than others [in my experiment].
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