All about Technology: 10 of the most popular lightweight Linux distros

Introduction

Toutou intro

Modern Linux distros are designed to appeal to a large number of users. As a result, they have become too bloated for older machines or systems with limited resources. If you don't have several gig of RAM to spare and an extra core or two, these distros may not deliver the best performance for you. Thankfully, there are many lightweight distros that you can use to breathe new life into older hardware.

But there's one caveat when working with lightweight distros – they usually manage to function with limited resources by cutting away just about everything you take for granted, such as wizards and scripts which make everyday tasks easier.

That said, the distros themselves are fully capable of reviving older hardware and can even function as a replacement of your current distro, if you're willing to adjust to their way of working.

Absolute Linux

Based on Slackware, Absolute Linux is a lightweight distro designed for desktop use. Unlike its parent distro, Absolute tries to make configuration and maintenance a breeze. Available as an install-only ISO for 32-bit machines, the distro feature a wide host of everyday applications such as word processors, browsers, email clients, multimedia players, and various others split across well-defined categories.

Despite being text-based, the installer is incredibly straightforward and simple to follow. At over 700MB, the distro is one of the heaviest in our list, and the installation appears slow in comparison with other distros.

But once installed, Absolute is incredibly fast and nimble and the choice of IceWM window manager, along with alternatives for most popular apps such as Abiword, makes it suitable for older machines. There's plenty of documentation accessible from within the desktop to assist new users.

Toutou Linux

This lightweight French distro measures in at a hair over 180MB and features alternatives for most popular apps. Toutou is configured for French by default, so the first thing you must do is to set your language and time zone.

The distro launches a graphical wizard to help you configure the system after booting you into the default OpenBox window manager. Unfortunately, the distro is a bit flaky and despite setting English locale, most of the interface is still in French, which makes navigating a bit of a bother.

Toutou also doesn't ship with any browsers out of the box, but it does provide you the choice of installing from among six, including Opera and Firefox. You can configure every aspect of the distro, such as installing fonts, a printer, scanner, flash and wireless drivers, and so forth by clicking the Parameters icon on the top left of the desktop.

CorePlus

Tinycore

The most minimal and tiniest of Linux distros ships several variants. The lightest edition clocks in at a mere 15MB, while CorePlus measures about 75MB. The TinyCore variant ships with only flwm window manager but CorePlus provides users the choice of flwm, IceWM, JWM, FluxBox, Openbox and Hackedbox.

The latest release features a number of useful updates over the previous edition such as legacy-BIOS/UEFI multi-boot support in the TinyCorePure64 variant.

This minimalist distro doesn't feature many apps, providing only a text editor and a terminal and the means to configure your network connection. The Control Panel provides quick access to the different configurable parts of the distro such as display, mouse, network, etc. The barebones distro doesn't provide multimedia codecs but the graphical package manager called Apps makes installing additional software a non-issue.

Lubuntu

This is the lightweight variant of arguably the most polarising Linux distro of all time. Lubuntu is ideal for those who're looking for a distro which requires fewer resources than most modern distros, but doesn't compel users to compromise on their favourite apps. Not all of them, anyway.

Designed primarily for netbooks and older machines, the distro runs LXDE and features a plethora of office, internet, multimedia and graphics apps along with a wide assortment of useful tools and utilities. Being a lightweight distro, Lubuntu focuses on being fast and energy efficient. It features alternate and less resource intensive apps where possible, such as Abiword for word processing and the Sylpheed email client.

The unique selling point of Lubuntu is the compatibility with Ubuntu repositories which gives users access to thousands of additional packages that can be easily installed using the graphical software management tools.

LXLE

Based on Lubuntu, LXLE is another distro that favours LXDE. Each release is based upon the LTS release of the parent, ensuring long-time hardware and software support. Aimed at reviving older machines, the distro is designed to serve as a ready to use desktop out of the box. Its design philosophy is to be a ready replacement distro for Windows users.

The developers spend a considerable amount of time making all the necessary mods and tweaks to improve performance, and aesthetics is also a key area of focus as evidenced by the several dozen wallpapers which are available.

The distro boasts full featured apps across genres such as internet, sound and video, graphics, office, games, and more. It includes plenty of useful accessories as well such as the Weather utility and Gigolo, the latter of which manages remote connections. Available as Live installable images for 32-bit and 64-bit machines, LXLE offers plenty to please everyone.

MX Linux

Based on Debian Wheezy and a result of the collaboration between the Antix and MEPIS communities, this blazingly fast distro identifies itself as a middleweight. MX Linux strives to simplify configuration and offers a streamlined desktop experience. The distro provides two ISO options, PAE and non-PAE for 32-bit architecture. The latter is recommended for machines with less than 3GB of RAM.

Powered by the XFCE desktop environment, the distro also incorporates several innovative and independently designed components such as Whisker Menu, Qupzilla browser, and more.

Although the desktop does appear to be dull and drab when compared with some of the alternatives, MX Linux more than makes up for it with a large selection of default apps. It even provides several utilities to install codecs, edit Flash settings, install Nvidia drivers, and much more.

Porteus

This Slackware-based distro is designed for installation on removable media like USB sticks or CDs, but can just as easily be installed to a hard disk. The distro is incredibly fast as it runs from system RAM.

The unique selling point of Porteus is that it exists in a compressed state and creates the file system on the fly. Besides the pre-installed apps, all additional software for the distro comes in the form of modules, and the modular nature of Porteus makes it small and compact.

Available for 32-bit and 64-bit machines, the distro provides users the choice of KDE4, LXQt, MATE and XFCE when downloading the ISO image. When building a custom image, users can also choose to include drivers for Nvidia, AMD graphics cards, along with the browser and word processor of their choice, and so on. The distro also provides plenty of documentation to help users get the most out of Porteus.

Slitaz

Designed to perform even with just 256MB of RAM, this distro uses OpenBox window manager to provide an enjoyable desktop experience. Slitaz relies on several custom tools such as TazPanel, which provides a one-stop control panel for administering various aspects of the distro.

TazPanel lets you manage software, configure various hardware components such as printers and scanners, modify bootloader settings, and more. Each of the configurable elements are divided into different tabs such as Settings, Hardware, Boot, etc. It's a remarkably simple tool and one that should please most new users.

The distro is available in several variants, the lightest of which can be run with about 20MB of RAM, but doesn't provide a graphical environment. Slitaz offers a ready to use FTP/web server, includes FTP and email clients, browsers, and all the usual tools you'd find in any modern desktop distro.

Vector Linux

This distro uses the KISS formula – keep it simple silly – to great effect. It allows users to mould the distro to serve just about any possible purpose – Vector Linux can be a lightning-fast desktop for home users, and can just as easily be used for running servers, or as the gateway for your office computer.

While the last stable release rolled out in 2012, the project isn't dead and RC1 of Vector Linux 7.1 was released in 2014. Although the news section on the website hasn't been updated in some time, for now the distro seems to still be alive and kicking.

Powered by XFCE, this install-only Slackware-based distro tends to favour GTK+ apps, but you can use the graphical Gslapt package management tool to fetch and install additional software. Although originally only offered for 32-bit machines, since version 7 the distro also provides a release targeting 64-bit machines.

Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux is a lightweight distro aimed at making older machines and systems with low resources usable again. The project has been turning out slim, sleek and fast distros for over 11 years now, and they are offered as live installable images at a hair under 200MB.

Despite its small size, the distro is full of apps, some of them quite unconventional, such as Homebank, to help your manage finances, Gwhere to catalogue disks, graphical tools to manage Samba shares and setup a firewall, among others.

The TahrPup edition of Puppy Linux is based on Ubuntu, and is thus binary compatible with Ubuntu's repositories, giving users access to the parent distro's vast software collection. The thoughtful QuickPet utility can be used to install some of the most popular apps.

The unique selling point of the distro is its collection of custom tools that provide graphical wizards to configure your network, display, printer, etc.