back to article Five lightweight Linux desktop worlds for extreme open-sourcers

Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X. That's great for the average user looking to make the switch from either platform to Linux. Indeed distros like Ubuntu, with its Unity desktop, make switching relatively painless. All of the common tools most users want in Windows are also available in Unity, GNOME and other …

  1. tshirtkings
    Thumb Up

    Smed Malak

    Really It's so helpful article for Linux Desktop User. Thanks for sharing with us.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge

    Bad marketing El Reg

    <rant coming up, you are warned>

    Please, please, please will everyone trying to push linux stop displaying "empty desktops" or worse still stop display Sysinfo......

    If you want to push an OS at least show it doing things that people are familiar with or are likely to do.... Word Processing, a Browser pointing at a common site, contemporary games ( why not steam), Facebook, Twitter whatever the social media buzzthing is..

    Honestly no-one is doing any favors advertising like this, it is a compelte turnoff... Ok as IT people we dont care about the bells and whistles as much as some of the other nitty gritty stuff but Joe Public needs to see and find what he cares about and none of what was portryed in this article filled in that job....

    If the linux crowd want Linux to be more readilly adopted stop behaving as though everyone comes from the IT world...and I say that as someone that has been in IT for more than 25 years.... Stop pushing linux to people that already know what it is and already use it.....

    </Rant over>

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bad marketing El Reg

      But "ManagementMemo.doc open in Abiword" looks pretty much the same in all desktops, and he's trying to show they differ from one another. If you don't like Linux, don't read articles like this. The title gave you plenty of warning. It's not trying to advertise to anybody, but convey useful information to the already-convinced.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Bad marketing El Reg

        @Anon Coward,

        First please do not surmise about me disliking for linux, I am currently running 4 desktops and 2 raspis.

        >But "ManagementMemo.doc open in Abiword" looks pretty much the same in all desktops

        Be carefull with what you are saying here. It actually negates what you are bout to say in th next line

        >, and he's trying to show they differ from one another

        Ok please explain whats different about these distros and I mean honestly different.. apart from the fact that "ManagementMemo.doc open in Abiword" will look the same in them all. Themes do not count as differences....

        >"It's not trying to advertise to anybody"

        If that's not advertising then what do you call it, it certaintely wasn't an in-depth review of the differences between extfs and fat32...

        >but convey useful information to the already-convinced.

        WTF is the point of relaying information to those that are already convinced... It's not liekk linux users do not know how to get to distrowatch.com

        And you were warned that I was going to rant so why bother reading my comment.

    2. Grifter

      Re: Bad marketing El Reg

      >>If the linux crowd want Linux to be more readilly adopted

      While I can't speak for the crowd, though I am part of it, I don't want it more readily adopted. It has managed fine all these years without being readily adopted, and it'll continue.

      My beef with the article is the same as with all these articles, why in the fuck would you keep treating a whole distro as if it was the user interface? The article even mentions that you can just install whatever WM or DE you want on any distro, and while the dependencies won't run into "Ooo thousands of packages scary", there might be some packages, and that's what dependency calculation is all about, has been all about! That's why it was created OVER A DECADE AGO.

    3. goldcd

      I'm with you

      and could I add "It's using X amount of RAM" is NOT going to sway my opinion either.

      I have loads of the stuff, it's coming out of my ears - exactly what demographic are we targeting who has 2 gigs of RAM, and wishes to deal with Linux?

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: I'm with you

        2 gigs of RAM - looked at a chromebook recently? Loads of us out here using chromebooks with 2 or 4 gigs of ram and very little storage - but with a Linux installed one way or another rather than using the ChromeOS directly.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        exactly what demographic?

        People with otherwise useless dual core machines that came with Vista, which is crap to begin with and which will be in EoL before long. There are plenty of Dell and HP lower-range Turion64 X2 laptops from ~8 years ago that can never hold more than 2x1GB, and I can still use one of them-- comfortably.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          correction

          Late update to that: turns out they *can* go for 4GB, it's just that the particular modules you try might not work due to number of banks involved. Once upon a time I got a pair of G-Skill SODIMMs and they didn't work in a friend's AMD machine but they worked in another friend's Intel 945 notebook. So, somewhere along the line I started believing said Turions were limited that way. I'm adding this only because recently I tested some different RAM in two of the old machines because the manuf. specs for the one stated 4GB max, and both machines (same TL-56) rather liked these Samsung PC2-6400 2GB modules. Sorry for the fiction.

          My own laptop doesn't seem much faster now with 4GB when booted to Linux, mostly because 2GB was already enough for most of the usual. Win7 seems to get by in 4GB just fine "for now" while using the former 2GB was like it had asthma and trying to do anything in the 1GB in some other laptops I've worked on was like they had carbon monoxide poisoning.

      3. frank ly

        @goldcd Re: I'm with you

        "... exactly what demographic are we targeting who has 2 gigs of RAM, and wishes to deal with Linux?"

        My 10 year old Acer Travelmate 8000 has a 1.8GHz Pentium-M with 1.5 GB of RAM. I've had it running Mint-13 with the LXDE desktop for just over two years and it's just fine. (Currently using 427MB of RAM and over half of that is Firefox with a shedload of plug-ins.) It's what I use the most for websurfing and "wordprocessing" because it has a 15" 4:3 matte screen. It does run MATE quite well but is a bit sluggish doing that and LXDE is more than good enough for what I want to do.

        There are lots of people out there who have an old laptop who might want to know that. I wish I'd known that four years ago when I bought a new 16:9 glossy screen laptop with 4GB of RAM, and quad core i5 running Win7. I don't use it much nowadays because I' ve put Mint-13+MATE on my old desktop (with two 17" 4:3 matte monitors).

      4. Herbert Fruchtl

        Re: I'm with you

        > I have loads of the stuff, it's coming out of my ears

        Can you tell me where I can find your ears, so I can place a collecting basket under them?

        I have a bunch of perfectly good laptops that were top of the range 10 years ago. A couple of project students every year, but no budget. They basically need a terminal (in the old days, we called it a thin client): something that runs xterms to ssh into a remote server, and an X server to look at remote graphics. Doesn't hurt if they can collect data in a spreadsheet and a write it up locally. Should I spend 500 quid that I don't have on each of them, so they can have translucent windows and the ads in their browser move more smoothly?

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm with you

        My home 'emergency fallback' PC is a refurbished one. A very old one that I bought years ago, and until recently was still using as the PC in my bedroom. It has a wopping 1GB of RAM, and something like a 1 or 1.5GHz CPU. And with Linux Mint 17 and an Xfce desktop, it's still absolutely grand for emailing, browsing the web, watching videos. It's likely to end up being donated to someone needier than I.

        Poor people who can't afford shiny new PCs - those wanting/needing an inexpensive fallback PC - they're the demographic.

        1. Measurer

          Re: I'm with you

          My P.C is coming up to its 10 year anniversary:

          AMD X4200 (64bit, 2 x core)

          1GB RAM

          Parallel ATA 80GB hard drive (Mint Mate)

          SATA 80GB (Win XP)

          2 x Nvidia 6600 GT in SLI config

          I've just upgraded from Mint Mate 17.1 to 17.2 and it flies along on bootup (grub menu to logon screen in 2/3 the time of my XP installation installed on a separate SATA drive). Running Compiz etc. presents no problems, overall really slick for everything other than gaming.

        2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: I'm with you

          Poor people who can't afford shiny new PCs - those wanting/needing an inexpensive fallback PC - they're the demographic.

          There are also some of us rich people who don't feel like throwing away perfectly good machines, or have better things to spend money on.

      6. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm with you

        Well some of us still have perfectly adequate desktops (for Win98SE, that is) with 512K RAM and motherboards that will accept no more, nor disks bigger than 60GB (large enough for ALL your storage needs said Compaq when new). Faced with nerds who consider anything less than a squillion is smelly and just dropped off their shoe and therefore should not be catered for, is it any surprise that Win98SE still has its followers?

      7. Selden

        Re: I'm with you

        I am running Ubuntu 12.04 LXDE via crouton on an old Samsung S5 Chromebook with an Atom processor and — GASP — 2 Gb of memory, which is the maximum supported by that processor. This setup uses a minimal amount of storage and RAM, and performs very nicely on this low-spec hardware.

      8. etaion

        Re: I'm with you

        I have for many years, and still do, run linux on 1Gb or even less.

      9. Bill Stewart

        Re: I'm with you

        Who uses small machines these days? Other than the Raspberry Pi hobbyists, it's people using virtual machines. I'd really rather not have to burn 8GB of disk on a vanilla Ubuntu for each VM, on a server where I'm using a large pile of them, and I'd rather not use as much RAM as Ubuntu needs if I'm running a Linux VM on my Windows desktop.

      10. Avatar of They
        Happy

        Re: I'm with you

        Erm, 2 gigs is not that old a requirement or rare for pensioners, dabblers, cheap kids laptops and all those other machines that get bought to shut up the relative at christmas? (Can we say Pentium chip)

        Or anyone that currently has an old XP machine, someone that didn't jump into Windows 8, upgraded hardware to windows 7 and have been waiting for Windows 10. Then suddenly saw the train wreck that is windows 10. And might want to use that old machine for something useful.

    4. Antonymous Coward
      Holmes

      Re: Bad marketing El Reg

      Erm, It was an article about the desktops. There were even some helpful clues to this in the title:

      Five lightweight Linux desktop worlds for extreme open-sourcers

      Need a slim-line work environment? We recommend the best

      If you want to look at pictures of wordprocessors or mackerel or whatever then perhaps you should look for them somewhere appropriate? Perhaps Inshore Anglers' Monthly has an article to interest you?

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Bad marketing El Reg

        I very much doubt that "extreme open sourcers" would ever come here to read such an article... this article if anything is for newcomers. I believe that there are far more dedicated and "enlightened" sites than this one. .

        I read a comment recently, that Trevor Potts wrote, about the current ( new/newish) El Reg readers and I am now beginning to grasp what he meant...

        I'll leave it to the "extreme open sourcers " wget/pipe/grep afficianados to find the article hidden amongst the latest copy of Inshore Anglers Monthly or alternatively to look back a few days on the El Reg site using their new Lightweight Desktop Power User Open Sourced Environment Browsing Application...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bad marketing El Reg

          I'm one of those "extreme open sourcers", I guess, and I'm here. Ok, I admit I just skimmed the article, and I ditched my bare bones Debian+Openbox setup for Mint 17.1 (thanks for the tip, El Reg) because Linux in general is going downhill rapidly and I just want something that works ok with no major changes until it becomes practical to use a much simpler OS.

          Openbox is decent - I might go back to it at some point - but it's a bit bloaty for a "minimal wm", and that XML config file, deahhh gahhhd....

        2. Fibbles

          Re: Bad marketing El Reg

          I read a comment recently, that Trevor Potts wrote

          I think I've spotted your problem.

          The man is stuck so far up his own arse he'd make ouroboros jealous.

    5. ChaoticMike

      Re: Bad marketing El Reg

      Erm... but I didn't think the Reg was indulging in any kind of 'advertising ', and as far as communication with Joe Public, do you really think there are many non-geeks reading a fairly focused web-site's extremely focused article on the minutiae of the smallest usable Linux?

      (End of *my* rant... sorry...)

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Bad marketing El Reg

        >do you really think there are many non-geeks reading a fairly focused web-site's extremely focused article on the minutiae of the smallest usable Linux?

        As I mentioned above, people that already know linux don't come to El Reg for anything Linux related there are far too many dedicated forums for that.

        >article on the minutiae of the smallest usable Linux?

        This was certainely not an article about the smallest usable Linux. If you know Linux you would know fine well that Puppy, DSL etc are 50mb distributions that will run with an "extremely" small footprint and still provide a GUI.

        Again as I mentioned above Trevor wrote a comment recently about how the level of El Regs readers has really fallen and that there appear to be more and more numpties that have spent their lives being spoonfed rather than actually learning anything about their trade... That appears to be the demographic here, the spoonfed X,Y,Z generations...

        A minimum of 2 Gigs to run linux, FFS, only the Ubuntu/Neophyte crowd would believe that. But then again they also believe Unity = Linux...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bad marketing El Reg

          The 2GB is needed to run Firefox. Regardless of desktop/WM/OS...

          1. Chemist

            Re: Bad marketing El Reg

            "The 2GB is needed to run Firefox. Regardless of desktop/WM/OS..."

            That's total borax. Although this laptop has 8GB, my other machines have 2GB and indeed one is a 1.4GHz Celeron with 1GB. All of them run the latest Firefox on top of a full-fat OpenSUSE 13.1/2 KDE desktop. All run Firefox well. Currently this laptop is using 380MB for Firefox with 9 tabs open - the highest I've ever seen is ~800MB.

            I can see that you'd need to be anonymous BTW

          2. Glen Turner 666

            Re: Bad marketing El Reg

            "The 2GB is needed to run Firefox"

            You'll excuse my doubts, given that I'm posting this from Iceweasel (aka Firefox) on a Raspberry Pi 2 (1GB RAM).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bad marketing El Reg

          It wasn't about smallest but lightweight environment, which some needs or like for example me :-). openbox, tint2 on debian unstable is great for me and I use it on 10" netbook with 512MB as well as on 16GB Macbook pro. I don't want to waste my memory for things I don't use and save it for programs I need.

          To author: Thanks for the article.

    6. Hud Dunlap
      Boffin

      Re: Bad marketing El Reg @Khaptain

      Wow. I haven't see a firestorm like this in a long time.

      I have to agree with you. I am thinking about moving over to Linux and I can't say that this article helped me at all.

      Preaching to the Choir is not very useful.

      1. Chemist

        Re: Bad marketing El Reg @Khaptain

        "I am thinking about moving over to Linux and I can't say that this article helped me at all."

        My advice for what it's worth - get a few Live-CD/pen-drive distro - try them out (without needing to install) to check the hardware and UI. They'll run slowly but that's not the point at this stage.

        For example http://software.opensuse.org/132/en and chose "Click here to display alternative versions" to get live-cd of KDE or Gnome versions

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Pookietoo

        Re: I am thinking about moving over to Linux

        It's not an introduction to Linux for the prospective new user, it's a brief survey of lightweight desktop environments for people who fancy extending their Linux experience to some of the crufty old hardware they have gathering cobwebs. I'm going to set up such a machine soon, mainly as a music player (for the room where I tinker with mechanical things) but with the occasional need to display a web page or PDF - this sort of setup sounds good for that.

  3. druck Silver badge
    Happy

    Mate is yur mate.

    While not as lightweight as those mentioned, the Mate desktop is well worth a look. It's at best on top of Linux Mint, but can be installed many other distros. I've just updated my Raspberry Pi2 from Debian wheezy and XFCE to jessie and Mate, and while a fraction slower and a touch more memory hungry, the experience is far more polished, and the visuals are far more pleasing.

    1. goldcd

      and I'm sure you're right

      but is this all driven from your requirement to *only* use a RaspberyPi, or merely your excitement that you can?

    2. druck Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Mate is yur mate.

      Oops, I was running LXDE not XFCE on wheezy, Mate compares even better against XFCE.

      Yes; I was very pleased to run Mate on the Pi, and I gave the example as it is the lowest powered machine I'm currently using. Although I do have a couple of original EEEPC 701s under the sofa, which I always intended to put another distro on, just might get around to it now.

      1. nematoad Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Mate is yur mate.

        " Although I do have a couple of original EEEPC 701s under the sofa, which I always intended to put another distro on, just might get around to it now."

        Yes do.

        Crunchbang works well on a 701. I did upgrade to 1GB as I found 512MB made it a bit slow but otherwise it does all I ask of it. Which isn't a lot given the 7" screen but it's handy to take away on holiday.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. asdf

      oops

      Darn missed this post. Sorry to step on this obvious idea below.

  5. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    Tinker and tucker

    @Khaptain: Upvoted for the quality of the rant.

    My favoured light weight window manager is most unphotogenic. To (mis?)quote an American author, 'there is no there there'.

    As others must use the testing laptop now and again, I compromise with an unsung workhorse: IceWM. Ugly as sin as installed, with a decent theme and some configuration you get a bare bones panel-at-the-bottom XP work alike. Throw in PCManFM as mentioned in the OA and the result is quite usable. No notifications, raging calm.

    Google "Old-School Desktop" - my fixed gear bicycle for the mind.

  6. naive

    Great article

    Thank you for the info, i soon try it on an old dell 755.

    Perhaps there is even room for a follow up, for instance a list of 2000-2005 laptops where it will run on, i am sure these distros run fine on IBM Thinkpads and the likes with 1.6-2.4 GHz pentiums.

    1. Rumournz
      Linux

      Re: Great article (@ naive)

      they do. I'm running mint 17 xfce on a thinkpad R60e and it runs like a cut cat - having an SSD does help, but spinning rust storage is also quite snappy. its my goto for windows upgrades for the great unwashed hordes - aka people who want their ancient windows machines updated / repaired - when windows is no longer an option

  7. sisk
    Thumb Up

    Ah, memories

    I started with Debian Minimal and grabbed the packages I needed for many years. Eventually I got tired of the headache and switched to Mint, but for older systems nothing beats the Debian Minimal approach. I used Fluxbox rather than Openbox though. They're pretty similar. At one point not so long ago I had a desktop running on a P2 system with 64MB of RAM. Granted it didn't do anything except browse the web and play music, and not even those at the same time, but still...

  8. i1ya
    Linux

    Only two "desktops" mentioned here

    ...are Openbox and LXDE (XFCE mentinoned very, very briefly). Author surely knows that, thus the term "5 desktop worlds" instead of "5 desktop environments" or "5 window managers". Not a single word about DWM, i3 (has much buzz in Arch community, aslo I heard Google uses it), xmonad or englightenment. As for Openbox, I use it as a window manager in XFCE, since, once you overcome a disguist related to need of editing XML files, it has great multi-monitor commands - while not being "tiled" WM. You can assign bindings to move window to next/prev montor, make it fill designated quarter or half of current monitor, etc. I can't imagine my 3-monitor setup in the office without it. Lack of panel, launcher and a bit of control panel - that's why I use it with XFCE. As for LXDE, I never seen LXQT option (QT-based, as you can guess), but Lubuntu team (I'm not sure that LXDE team, not Lubuntu team, should be credited for it) is very, very sane in term of keyboard shortcuts: any Windows convert will appreciate Win+<buttons> that do the same actions as in Windows, i.e. Win-E to launch file manager. Regarding both three, XFCE, OpenBox and LXDE: you should be warned that setting up multi-monitor, volume control (mute/volUp-Down/switch to HDMI when it is plugged) or multi-language is a pain for non-programmer. (Should be; can't insist on that, since I'm a programmer). Also XFCE, while calling itself "light", is short of one thing: keyboard support. I mean, XFCE panel is completely un-accessible with keyboard, it's a mouse-only thing (even Gnome 2, Gnome 3 to some degree have that, not mentioning Unity with first-class keyboard support). No workaround available to make keyboard work with XFCE panel, it is described as bug or feature for last 4 years in their tracker. Enlightenment is sexy, exotic and claims to be light on resources, but I never tried to use it longer than 2 hours, so can't tell much.

    P.S. There are also several "boxes" which share same ancestor with OpenBox (fluxbox, blackbox, possible others), OpenSTEP, "pure X11 session", and several others I which don't rembemer.

  9. Phuq Witt
    WTF?

    Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

    What does that even mean?

    1. i1ya

      Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

      I re-read this sentence twice and came to conclusion author means that for average, non-technical user who sits in the browser most of the time and using office programs not too deeply, top Linux distributions can provide experience not worse than one of Windows or MacOS. I have live example: my collegue replaced winXP of his wife laptop with Fedora, and never received complains from her. I'm not sure same can be done if you don't have a Linux-savvy spouse

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

        I tried that with my girlfriend's pc. Up until the point where she and her children need to use Microsoft Word (no substitutes), it worked fine. However, getting MS Word installed meant I had to re-install Windows 7.

    2. Displacement Activity

      Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

      Looked like this was going to be an interesting article till I read the first line. What total bollox - "chalk long ago reached parity with cheese"?

      I've been using Unix, variants and descendants, for 30-odd years, and I use Linux day in and day out. In all that time the only half-usable "desktop world" that I've had, and that I would seriously consider as a replacement for a modern working Windows desktop, was Solaris. I've spent a year with Unity on my laptop and every time I turn it on I remember that I need to get on to the internet to figure out how to remove it. 'Parity' my ass. And I'm still waiting for a usable file explorer.

      Linux is great for what it does, which is by no stretch of the imagination the same as what Windows does.

      1. JEDIDIAH
        Devil

        Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

        The only thing Windows has going for it, the only thing it really had going for it, is the fact that it is the monopoly legacy platform. This goes back to the days of DOS.

        If you aren't fixated on some WinDOS only program, Windows itself is highly optional and very interchangeable. Even the example of "needing" msoffice is bogus for most people. Although the notion that you can't get away from it is a nice triump of the trolls.

    3. GrumpenKraut
      Boffin

      Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

      It means that all these operating systems are odd.

    4. Pookietoo

      Re: Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X.

      > What does that even mean?

      It means that you have a functional "desktop metaphor" from which to launch programs and organise windows, which you can customise to some extent to suit your preferred appearance and behaviour. Coupled with the programs you need to create/modify/display various file types and interact with networks in various ways. All in a mostly pointy-clicky sort of way.

  10. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    Another minimalist here

    For years I've run debian minimum with openbox and Rox filer. However now I'm getting old(er) and lazy(er) I tend to just let debian do it's stuff but with the xfce desktop.

    KISS

    1. i1ya
      Pint

      Re: Another minimalist here

      Have an upvote, sir! I never understood the guys who are afraid of Debian. As for me, it's like Ubuntu, just minus Canonical :)) My way was 2 years Ubuntu, 2 years Debian, then Arch. The only reason I replaced Debian with Arch is that I like having all latest and hottest, also their Wiki is better.

      1. Ruli Manurung

        Re: Another minimalist here

        Agreed... the reason I switched to Arch was also due to the fantastic resources available on the wiki and forums.

        I finally realized my dream of an ultra minimalistic setup with Arch, i3, and nowt else :-)

    2. asdf

      Re: Another minimalist here

      >Another minimalist here

      Bah if your full distro iso (not boot only) is more than 40 meg its not minimal. Slitaz ftw.

    3. SMOKEING

      Re: Another minimalist here

      A rare breed ROX user, kindred soul! I have been with rox since 2008, over two laptop upgrades, two kids, half a dozen jobs. Been scared when gentoo folks threatened to drop it, but some kind person like you has stepped up to keep it in.

      ROX Filer, your ultimate file manager after all other options have been tried.

    4. diodesign Silver badge

      Re: Another minimalist here

      Rox! That's a good choice. Basically, there are so many Linux desktop environments to choose from, I think Scott did a grand job recommending the best for most people. Millions of people read The Register, everyone's going to have an opinion :-)

      I've always been an evilwm-level user, personally.

      C.

  11. Mage Silver badge

    Painless?

    Ubuntu USED TO BE the best.

    " Indeed distros like Ubuntu, with its Unity desktop, make switching relatively painless."

    Unity stinks. I have it on a desktop 64 bit install with 8G RAM.

    I have Mint with Mate on a laptop. Mind you, with a fresh install on old Travelmate I STILL have to edit Grub for "noacpi" like 2 years ago.

    A server in the attic has Debian. I've forgotten what desktop I put on it as the local GUI isn't used.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Painless?

      How do you keep it alive in the attic? If I did that, I'd have to tap into one of the A/C ducts and pipe it into the chassis.

      1. Simon 15

        Re: Painless?

        Are you perhaps living in a warmer climate than the original poster? :) If so lucky bugger..

        In the UK the temperatures average at around 26C (78.8F) in summer with the maximum currently recorded as 37.4C (99.3F).. I too keep a cheap server (Fujitsu Primergy TX310) in the loft (attic) and it runs 24/7 without problem. All the temperatures are always well within tolerance and considerably lower than my high-performance desktop system with the fancy graphic cards etc.

    2. Teiwaz

      Re: Painless?

      > "Unity stinks. I have it on a desktop 64 bit install with 8G RAM"

      Which beggars the question, Why? if you dislike it so much. The Ubuntu repo has plenty of alternatives to pick from in the repos, not as good a selection as in the Arch repos

      Ubuntu runs well enough on an old Acer netbook with a single core N450 atom and only 1GB RAM (much, much better with 2GB, which eliminates sluggish dash and hud). I do tend to use i3 more often, but Unity looks better for when non-IT people are looking over my shoulder, commandline leaning interfaces seem to scare them (they think I'm 'hacking' (the misnomer term)).

    3. Chika

      Re: Painless?

      @Mage

      Ubuntu USED TO BE the best.

      I wouldn't get too hung up about that. There seems, over the years, to have been a severe Ubuntu fanboi plague within the realms of El Reg which I have raged against myself with such phrases as Linux is NOT Ubuntu (or whichever other distro is being favoured).

      One of the nicest things about many distros, Ubuntu included, is the fact that you do not have to be locked into a specific GUI. It has been many years since I first commented on such things and yes, I still use KDE3.5 on all my Linux systems, partly because I like it and partly because the direct replacement displeases me. I have that choice. And no, I don't use Ubuntu on any of those systems (though I sometimes try out new distros on Virtualboxes).

      Actually the oldest install I still have would be my NetBook which I mentioned here some years ago following its upgrade to openSUSE 11.4 with KDE3.5.10. Guess what it runs now? Not bad for an £170 end of line Aspire One with an annoyingly slow 16GB SSD.

      Oh yes, whoever it was, and it runs Firefox too.

  12. asdf

    can't resist BSD way to go

    If you want a minimal no thrills desktop why not run OpenBSD (fvwm2 default). You get the added advantage of true POSIX (and many would argue better security) well into the future as well. Plus any default install that doesn't include the hairball bash shell gets bonus points in my book.

    1. tempemeaty

      Re: can't resist BSD way to go

      BSD does deserve some love.

    2. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: can't resist BSD way to go

      "... why not run OpenBSD (fvwm2 default)"

      A default OpenBSD install comes with an interesting window manager called cwm as well as fvwm2, you have to edit the .xinitrc (I recollect) to use it when starting X. The Calm Window Manager is quite interesting and now in Debian Jessie. Very keyboard-centric non-tiling with search based program launching a la dwm/dmenu.

      1. asdf

        Re: can't resist BSD way to go

        Yep played with cwm but I have been a sucker for the Motif look for 20 years. But yes without even going to ports or packages the base system gives you quite a few options. Still my daily driver wm is Lumina (fast, light, modern and best of all guaranteed not to be Linux centric).

  13. Simon Brady

    When size really matters

    For even more resource-constrained environments there's Tiny Core Linux (http://tinycorelinux.net). A basic FLWM LiveCD image weighs in at 15MB and it'll run happily in 64MB RAM. Obviously that doesn't give you a lot of functionality, but it has a nice fine-grained package system that you can tailor to get exactly what you want and nothing else.

    I'm not sure I'd be game to use it for my primary work machine (mostly because security updates are ad-hoc, AFAICT), but for special-purpose boxen it's hard to get more lightweight that this.

    1. asdf

      Re: When size really matters

      Tiny Core though unlike Slitaz isn't a viable desktop directly off the iso without further downloads. Its why its smaller.

  14. Dr. G. Freeman

    Raspian on my work desktop, with libre office, sumatra and the epiphany browser, does everything I need work wise.

  15. pyite

    WM2 is the ultimate lightweight window manager

    The sideways title bar is annoying though, apart from that it's perfect.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WM2 is the ultimate lightweight window manager

      My .xinitrc

      exec xterm

      Its all you need. Seriously though when it comes to functionality vs size jwm really can't be beat. Configuring it can be a pain but for three meg of memory can't beat the functionality.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: WM2 is the ultimate lightweight window manager

        Back in the day1 I used to not-infrequently log into one of the workstations I used and run a script to bring up X11 with just an xterm and bare-bones window manager (uwm or the one I'd hacked together myself out of sources in the X contrib directory), or just an xterm and no window manager at all, when I really wanted to save resources. Or just X and xtrek, when I wanted to waste them.

        uwm let you arrange and resize windows, and put no decorations on them. No icons, no title bars, no system menus. No screen real estate wasted on point-and-drool UI controls.

        1Pretty much any weekday in 1990 or thereabouts.

  16. Ruli Manurung

    While I'm always happy to see exposure to lightweight solutions for Linux GUIs, I found this article rather confusing as it mixes and matches window managers (OpenBox) with distros (Crunchbang++, SparkyLinux), strategies (DIY Debian/Arch), and a bonafide desktop environment (LXDE). I'm not sure if the decision to present these 5 different beasts as a list is a helpful one, especially to those who are unfamiliar with the difference between a window manager, desktop environment, and distro.

    Other than that, agreed with most of the points!

  17. Tom 64

    Archbang FTW

    Surprised the author didn't mention this one:

    It's Arch linux configured much like crunchbang with Openbox

  18. This post has been deleted by its author

  19. Teiwaz

    5 Lightweight Linux Desktops

    Here is my take on : Lightweight Desktops

    LXDE/LXQT, XFCE, Mate, Enlightenment

    Some of my favourite Window Managers:

    Openbox,Fluxbox, FVWM - check out FVWM-Nightshade, i3,xmonad, Subtle, Goomwwm, Herbstluftwm, dwm, Clfswm.

  20. Shannon Jacobs
    Holmes

    Financial models matter

    Gosh, I should get persistence points at some point. Let's try a slightly mathematical form:

    (Mediocre Software = MS) + (clever financial models) = Success!

    (Good software) + (lousy financial models) = Failure!

    What if the programmer actually got PAID for the work he agreed to do? Imagine there was a reasonable project description of the work to be done, the resources required, and how the project would be assessed, and potential donors could buy 'charity shares' until the project is funded or abandoned.

    Support is a pain in the butt. What if there were a support project to PAY someone for doing it. Basically the same basis for the charity shares, but more like a support contract to be shared with other people up to the limit of the amount of support everyone agreed to.

    The same basic approach can be applied to some of the ongoing costs like running servers required for specified features.

    Anyway, the current models are basically unchanged, as is the continuing failures and abandonment. Sorry, I do NOT want to put a lot of my time into programming it myself, but I'd be willing to chip in some money if there was a balanced system.

    1. Will Stephenson

      Re: Financial models matter

      All of this happens, and has been doing so successfully for 18 years now. Let's take SUSE, my employer, for example. Customers with money and an aversion to risk buy support licenses from us, we give you assurances that your bugs get fixed, we pay employees to fix the bugs and provide the features, and we in turn support the underlying communities like KDE and GNOME in various ways: cash sponsorship, hosting events, loans and donations of hardware and services like hosting. Other commercial distributions do the same, and a flock of smaller support and development houses fill in the gaps for customers' more specialized needs.

      Sounds like a balanced and successful if fairly unglamorous financial model.

      There isn't as much scope for individual users to directly pay for individual features, there have been more or less successful crowdfunded efforts eg the Calligra illustration tool or the Geary email client. The more organised projects gladly accept donations: https://www.kde.org/community/donations/ , https://www.gnome.org/support-gnome/

      1. Chemist

        Re: Financial models matter

        Thanks for that Will. I've been a long term user & advocat for Suse/OpenSUSE since V5. Excellent trouble-free distros

        1. Chika

          Re: Financial models matter

          Excellent trouble-free distros

          I'd probably argue the toss as I only got into SuSE at version 6 and not every distro I ever used from SuSE/openSUSE was brilliant but when they were good (11.1 and 11.4 come to mind, for example) they were fantastic.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. Richard Lloyd

    I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

    I really don't like Gnome 3 *at all* in its various guises such as Classic, Unity etc. Despite having a beefy PC (i7, 32GB RAM, PCIe SSD), I want a functional desktop with multi-years of support, so there aren't many choices out there - I settled on what perhaps got the closest to my ideal - CentOS 6 (Nov 2020 is the support end-date!).

    The fact I can avoid the "downgrade trio" of Gnome 3, Grub 2 and systemd for a few more years is a bonus, though I'm training myself up with a CentOS 7 VM to get used to them (Gnome 3 is highly unpalatable without the MATE Desktop to smooth the transition). I could never get into KDE myself and I never understood why Linux couldn't settle on one desktop and only a few distros (250+ distros is sheer lunacy).

    1. Chemist

      Re: I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

      "I could never get into KDE myself and I never understood why Linux couldn't settle on one desktop"

      I like KDE - if there was just one Linux desktop I'd want it to be KDE . So I'm happy that there are a number of both desktops and distro. esp as changing desktops is easy.

      If you're arguing there should be an 'easy' distro with one well-supported desktop I might agree but multiple desktops and distros are one of the main strengths of GNU/Linux and I wouldn't want that to change at all. If people want to develop a distro then so be it.

    2. i1ya

      Re: I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

      > I could never get into KDE myself and I never understood why Linux couldn't settle on one desktop and only a few distros (250+ distros is sheer lunacy).

      Consider that as mutations that, in perspective, may lead to evolution. Who knows, maybe after 10 years, one of exotic projects like NixOS (like the idea, by the way) will be the most popular OS.

    3. pogul

      Re: I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

      >I could never get into KDE myself and I never understood why Linux couldn't settle on one desktop and only a few distros (250+ distros is sheer lunacy).

      You might as well say "I like Fairy liquid, so why doesn't everyone use that, why so many brands?" or "I don't like Ecover, so no one should use that".

      There is no Linux - at least not in the sense that you're getting at. People will create software that suits them, hence the many differing window manager, distros etc. For there to be one definitive Linux distro we'd need some sort of bizarre legislation making all other distros illegal - please, let's not.

    4. Chika

      Re: I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

      The fact I can avoid the "downgrade trio" of Gnome 3, Grub 2 and systemd for a few more years is a bonus,

      Lucky you, though if I had the time and patience to remove all the functional changes that openSUSE put into versions since 12.1 to integrate systemd in such a way as to make it difficult to remove, I'd do it.

      though I'm training myself up with a CentOS 7 VM to get used to them (Gnome 3 is highly unpalatable without the MATE Desktop to smooth the transition).

      Good luck with that. I liked earlier versions of CentOS/RHEL though I haven't dabbled lately.

      I could never get into KDE myself and I never understood why Linux couldn't settle on one desktop and only a few distros (250+ distros is sheer lunacy).

      And there you answer your own question. Personally I like KDE (well KDE3 anyway) so I have kept going with it since I stopped using Linux as a CLI only solution. The reason why there are so many distros out there is because people build distros to suit different requirements. I preferred openSUSE partly because of its ongoing mainstream support for KDE as well as its flexibility but that doesn't suit everyone.

      If there was one group or company that produced versions to suit any given situation or requirement, then all might be a little more organised but the nature of the beast is that each distro has a different situation in mind, whether it's the ultra lightweight Openbox, Puppy, Umbongo or heavyweights like SUSE or RHEL. If anything, I view this scalability as a strength.

      1. present_arms

        Re: I have a beefy PC, but still run ye olde GNOME 2

        "Personally I like KDE (well KDE3 anyway) so I have kept going with it since I stopped using Linux as a CLI only solution. The reason why there are so many distros out there is because people build distros to suit different requirements. I preferred openSUSE partly because of its ongoing mainstream support for KDE as well as its flexibility but that doesn't suit everyone."

        There is Trinity which is an updated KDE3 that is still being maintained and can be used on many distros; I use it on PCLinuxOS and made my own remaster that I publish monthly (I know I'm kind of advertising here) however it is light and fast on my systems (single core atom through to a i5)

        and can be found http://trinity,mypclinuxos,com as I said it;s available for Debian based distro's too.

  22. Richard Wharram

    Peppermint?

    Light and pretty.

    Or Puppy. Very light. Not so pretty :)

  23. asdf

    mandatory reading

    Its a little bit dated but if you really want to get a feel for a lot of the smaller more minimal wm/de out there this is the source.

    https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/a-memory-comparison-of-light-linux-desktops/

  24. themainliner

    Lightweight in what sense?

    Functionality light? Including a 'buntu in any lightweight list is ridiculous. Putting a lighter DE face on Ubuntu does not a lightweight distro make. Crunchbang is very credible inclusion, but In terms of small size and low resource use you'll have to go a long way, further than this abysmal article, to beat Puppy or antiX Linux.

    If you want to have a truly lightweight environment try building one with only the components you really need running background services and eating system resources. See Arch and antiX Linux 15 Core if you really want to free system resources for your applications.

  25. AJ MacLeod

    I've recently switched back to the newly re-maintained WindowMaker which I used extensively back around the turn of the century and have been delighted with it all over again. The usual configurations are ugly by today's standards but it's highly configurable (with a GUI to handle it whilst retaining sensible, readable plain text config files unlike the otherwise excellent Enlightenment) and with a little bit of effort can easily become pretty whilst remaining incredibly fast and responsive even on old hardware.

    It just seems to fit my way of thinking and working perfectly; nothing else is quite as efficient in terms of keystrokes / mouse strokes / RAM / disk space. My main work machine has been slowly getting more and more minimalistic over the past year or two, partly as a reaction to the overcomplicated mess that has been made of the open source desktop in general. KDE was the first to go, the semantic desktop fiasco killed KMail and with that the rest of the desktop for me. GDM was next (I preferred it to KDM but later releases were a complete rewrite which removed functionality) - XDM is as minimal as anyone needs whilst retaining all the important features of a login manager and can be astonishingly pretty though you'd never believe it from the default config!

    I've also ended up switching back to several old stalwarts of utilities like xcalc - again, though they're pig ugly by default, they're amazingly configurable and themeable and a few choice lines in .Xresources soon makes them pleasant to look at.

    I realise that not everyone wants to work this way and it's great that there's such a wide range of novice-friendly open source software out there... but I'm not at all convinced that much of it provides a real benefit to those of us with a modicum of technical nous who like an efficient platform to "get stuff done."

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So is 2015 now officially the year of Linux on the desktops?

  27. Alan Bourke

    " Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X."

    *wipes away tears of laughter*

    Yeah, even more so if you run business software or games ....

    AHAHAHAHAHAAA

    (I'm an Ubuntu user so shaddap)

    1. JEDIDIAH
      Mushroom

      Re: " Linux long ago reached parity with Windows and OS X."

      > Yeah, even more so if you run business software or games ....

      ...which MacOS is certainly no good at.

      If you want to pay for commercial software, Windows is pretty much it. MacOS is the same kind of ugly redheaded stepchild that Linux is. All of the effort put into marketing it (MacOS) hasn't really changed this much.

      It's stupid when idiots try to lump MacOS in with Windows. It's more appropriately lumped in with Linux because of market share and 3rd party support.

  28. Ozzard
    Boffin

    twm? Old-school, I know

    Am I the only person who still runs a raw X server and twm with the config file I wrote in the early '90s? I love the backwards compatibility you get from open-source software!

    (Aside: what, no "old fogey" icon?)

    1. asdf

      Re: twm? Old-school, I know

      Nostalgia is nice but its not worth continually using a desktop that looks like GEM (ie ass). That second generation step up to Motif and its ilk made all the difference in the world.

    2. GrumpenKraut

      Re: twm? Old-school, I know

      Now can i consider myself (using ctwm with config files from the earliy '90s, continually edited) an early adopter?

      Thanks to all commentards naming your favorite window manager(s)!

  29. phil dude

    missing the point....

    In Linux there the the login manager - you can autologin and get the desktop, but that is not the default on most modern distros.

    The "display manager" has a drop down list of what session you would like - KDE, Gnome, Openbox etc etc...

    You can have any desktop, anytime you like, as can any user.

    I run KDE on my workstation (2 monitors 6400 x 2160) , which allows multiple "activities" to be configured so you can have desktops setup with different applications , browsers, multimedia etc....

    I run kubuntu on my laptop.

    Comparing desktops is a somewhat antiquated look at modern systems. The applications are what make it usable, and for productivity Linux has really grown-up.

    Who wants parity with Windoze, just want it to *work*.

    P.

  30. CFWhitman

    Lightweight Environments

    I have an old (at least 8 years) laptop on my desk that I use for testing the company Web site from outside the firewall, for serial port access to some machines, and other odds and ends. It currently has 768MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. It is running Debian 8 with Xfce, and I generally have no problems doing what I want on it.

    I have a 2003 IBM Thinkpad at home with a 40GB hard drive in it now (I think it started with a 20GB one). I was running it with the 256MB of RAM that I got it with using the Salix OS Fluxbox version. However, opening certain pages, regardless of the browser used, would crash the browser with that little RAM*. Mostly for kicks (and because memory for it had finally dropped in price to something very cheap) I upgraded the RAM to the maximum of 1GB. That helps mostly with Web related activities. You can run YouTube videos with a specialized app like smtube.

    If you want to try and use a window manager unassisted by a panel application and other pieces, Fluxbox or IceWM is a good choice. Of course if you want to piece together your own desktop environment, there are many components you can mix and match.

    If you want a nice looking and pretty lightweight distribution with the Ubuntu repositories available, LXLE (using LXDE as a desktop environment) can fit the bill. I have it on a netbook, and it works the best of any Ubuntu based distribution I have tried on that system.

    *The memory demands of the modern Web are more about the pages taking a lot of RAM than about the browser itself doing so. Of course, some browsers won't try to load the flashy features on those pages, so you can compensate that way, but even "heavy" browsers work OK for pages without Flash and HTML5 special effects or video.

  31. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Wasting time?

    the time you lose working without a drag-and-drop interface to manage your files

    I've been using and developing software for GUIs since 1988. I've seen a lot of drag-and-drop file managers, and I've seen a lot of people use them.

    I've yet to see anyone do anything with one that I couldn't do faster from the command line using a decent shell - ksh or bash, say.

    Hell, I've rarely see anyone do anything non-trivial with one that couldn't be done faster with ISPF.

    1. Looper
      Stop

      Re: Wasting time?

      Fine for an easily grouped or well defined selection of files, but when you need to view and select many ad-hoc files from a directory of hundreds of files, then the GUI beats the pants out of any command line. It depends on what you need to do.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Wasting time?

        when you need to view and select many ad-hoc files from a directory of hundreds of files, then the GUI beats the pants out of any command line

        Not in my experience. What mysterious criteria determine which files get selected in this hypothetical exercise?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Wasting time?

          That seems to be just their point- the criteria are a mystery until you come up with it at the last moment. Say you're looking for things to delete and whether you care about a thing is in no way related to any of its path, name, or attributes. Whenever wildcards and tab completion don't cut it, there's always mc (Midnight Commander) with much to like. All text, no BS-- you don't need a GUI to have a good FM.

  32. Peter da Silva

    WMX or Windowmaker

    My favorite X11 window manager is Windowmaker, a very clean recreation of NeXTSTeP but without the annoying menu boxes.

    My favorite lightweight window manager is WMX ( http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wmx/ ).

    Also, where's the "chuck" icon?

  33. eddiejames

    I use jwm on a sony vgn-n110g, Slackware 14.1. No systemd and the kit performs admirably for everything I use it for ie watching videos, websearch, gnubackgammon. it has 512Mb ram. if it were not for Linux, the kit would have been retired to the landfill long ago

  34. Glenn Booth
    Mushroom

    OK, I'll say it...

    Since we've gone from 'lightweight' to 'miniscule' through the thread, I feel the need to go all the way and mention Linux From Scratch.

    This is not a recommendation.

  35. mikey100tv

    I have to admit, I've tried most of the above distros; and there's only one that really works for me.....and it's not in this list.

    Puppy Linux.

    I have an elderly, 13-yr old Dell laptop; an original Inspiron 1100, from 2002. It came with a 'Netburst' Celeron, and 128 MB of RAM, originally.....and ran Windows XP like molasses. It now has a 2.6 GHz P4, and 1 GB of RAM (maxed out, at that).

    She now runs Puppy Linux 'Tahrpup'.....released at the end of last year. Even at full throttle, it doesn't take more than about 250-300 MB of RAM; and that's with Chrome open, (a dozen or so tabs), Skype connected, and maybe Libre Office running on another desktop.

    That's efficiency.....and I run a fairly heavily-customized version of the JWM window manager, including a mini-Conky. Can't beat that. I cannot understand how XFCE uses so much RAM, doing nothing.....and it's supposed to be 'lightweight'?

    Puh-lease.

    1. rkarolak

      I agree I wouldn't necessarily call xfce "lightweight". It's more lighter on resources then environments like Unity, Gnome, or KDE, but more heavier than IceWM, OpenBox, or Windowmaker. I guess it's "relatively lightweight", but I wouldn't put it on something with limited resources.

  36. rkarolak

    Personally, I also like WindowMaker as a lightweight window manager. It along with the GNUStep put together a nice suite to get started.

    CDE is now also open-source, and can possibly be another good alternative for a lightweight system, although you'll have to compile it from source, so it'll take up more time getting up and running then most environments out there. I've used it on an older netbook with Debian, and with a bit of configuring it works well as a lightweight environment. Some people may not care for its dated Mosaic look, but then again, most lightweight environments aren't going to be eyecandy.

  37. rkarolak

    Another good lightweight environment other than the ones listed and the ones I mentioned earlier is IceWM. It's very easy on resources and is also relatively easy to get going and configure, making it perhaps a bit more friendly to new users.

    I've ran IceWM on a Pentium 1 before (with Slackware) and it was as responsive as if I ran it on a modern PC. It's a nice choice if you want something that's mostly ready to go and an X environment that has a minimal impact on resources.

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