Light Distro for Home Use

[striker07]

Hi there!

I have here a small netbook to install a Linux distro. It have a 700MHz processor with 512Mb of RAM memory and - the problematic point - 2 Gb of disk (flash memory). I tried to install the 'light' versions of Ubuntu - XUbuntu and LUbuntu - and the netbook remix. The XUbuntu installed ok, but remains only ~50Mb on disk. LUbuntu and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix don't install due the disk space.

I want some suggestions for a light distro to be installed. It will be used for basic home tasks - Internet surf, instant messaging, PDF Reader, play music (maybe video) and basic text editor. Can someone suggest a distro for me?

[MASONTX]

With low resource laptops I have had good luck with Legacy, AntiX, and Puppy linux. You can go to distrowatch.com and search for netbook oriented linux distro's, older computers, etc. Also, you can research the choices more fully by going to <Linux> - Google Search, and typing in the distro you are interested in. Good luck, and if one doesn't work, keep searching.

[rokytnji]

Md5sum

AntiX 11 base i686 iso

AntiX

I am recommending the base iso which comes with Flux box Desktop, AntiX is based on Debian Testing with Mepis 2.6.36 kernel. Should fit fine on 2 gig flash, Plus has synaptic and all the tools you will ever need from Debian repositories also. Good Helpful forums at mepis lovers and AntiX . So 2 forums for one distro Good Solid Distro (I am prejudiced of course) . You can also move /home from /
to a external flash drive if you have a SD slot available in your laptop.

My EEEPC 900 install

Another honorable mention Welcome to Swift Linux | Swift Linux which is a spin on AntiX also.

Been running my eeepc 701 with AntiX 8.5 as a rolling release for about a year now also.

:~$ inxi -Fr
System:    Host antiX1 Kernel 2.6.38-3.dmz.1-liquorix-686 i686 (32 bit) Desktop IceWM 1.3.7 Distro antiX-M8.5-686-update 27 July 2010
CPU:       Single core Intel Celeron M (-UP-) cache 512 KB flags (nx sse sse2) bmips 1795.42 clocked at 897.712 MHz 
Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 X.Org 1.9.5 Res: 800x480@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer Mesa DRI Intel 915GM GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2 GLX Version 1.4 Mesa 7.10 Direct Rendering Yes
Audio:     Card Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller driver HDA Intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Version 1.0.23
Network:   Card-1 Realtek RTL8187SE Wireless LAN Controller driver r8180 port d800 bus-ID: 01:00.0
           Card-2 Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet driver ATL1E port ec00 bus-ID: 03:00.0
Disks:     HDD Total Size: 8.1GB (-) 1: /dev/sda ASUS 8.1GB 
Partition: ID:/ size: 7.4G used: 3.4G (48%) fs: rootfs 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 60.0C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 1430 
Repos:     Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
           deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
           deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
           deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free
           deb http://liquorix.net/debian/ sid main
           deb http://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/liquorix.net/debian sid main
           deb http://eeepc.debian.net/debian sid main contrib non-free
           deb-src http://eeepc.debian.net/debian sid main contrib non-free
Info:      Processes 99 Uptime 1:38 Memory 197.3/1000.6MB Runlevel 5 Client Shell inxi 1.5.0

So no need for a reinstall when running as a rolling release. This unit runs the full iso with /home sitting in my 8gig ssd drive, I have the room for this on this unit. If i had the 2 gig eeepc surf model. I would be running base and running /home from a external 8gig SD flash card formatted as ext2 file system.

[striker07]

I've installed Puppy Linux. It surprised me: I created a 400Mb partition for swap - remaining 1.4Gb for the system. It installed ok, and after I installed Opera and Pidgin messenger. After all, it remains with 925Mb of free space in the disk!

Very very good!!!

[glene77is]

Striker,

(1) Puppy Linux uses 128 Megabytes for OS. Runs in RAM. Comes with some default native applications.
Applications (like OpenOffice) are downloaded as squash files to your Data partition.
Runs nicely even if only via the Live-CD, deposits applications to your Data partition.
Very secure.
(2) TinyCore Linux, uses 10.3 Megabytes for OS. Runs in RAM. Contains very few native packages.
Applications (like OpenOffice) are downloaded as gZip files to your Data partition.
Runs nicely even if only via the Live-CD, deposits applications to your Data partition.
Very secure.

(3) Ubuntu Linux uses 1.5 G for OS and default packages.
Applications (like OpenOffice) are downloaded to be within the OS partition.

I run all these and more on a single computer HD.

glene77is