Best lesser-known distribution/DE for low-end machines?

I know Debian and others can breathe life into older machines. But i wonder if there are any distros with serious optimizations that I haven’t heard of. I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian.

Update: thanks for the great suggestions. Forgot to say many distros feel zippy and fast until you open a web browser. Appreciate your thoughts on which web browser to use too. So far I’ve had a positive experience with Thorium and Chromium.

ipsirc,
@ipsirc@lemmy.ml avatar

Try: github.com/marmolak/gray386linux <– It was designed for really old hardwares.

I’ve already tried MX Linux on an old Thinkpad SL400, and didn’t see any difference from plain Debian.

Because it’s the stock Debian + custom themes/skins + some crappy useless minitools. The 99% of packages come from the official Debian repository, the rest are only the rice.

If you have newer machine than a real 386:

hollyberries,
@hollyberries@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Puppy Linux is what I shove on old Atom netbooks

mfat,

Can I run regular browsers on Puppy? Or have to use their own apps only?

hollyberries,
@hollyberries@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m afraid I can’t answer that, It’s been quite a while. I think qutebrowser is the one that ships with it?

nyan,

Subject lines on their forum suggest Firefox and Chromium are both possible.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I guess it depends on what comes with the distro. If you start off with a basic Linux install and add a DE that is low on system resources, like LXQt, you can breathe life into a machine.

Bodhi, antiX and Linux Lite come to mind.

You can also start with a minimal base, Arch, Debian, Alpine, anything, and then add packages.

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

Alpine is very lightweight. I think it was built so that it would run well inside docker containers, which means it should be fairly easy for low-end computers to run it.

Afaik, it doesn’t come with a DE out of the box, so it won’t be very user-friendly

lemmyvore,

It has a script called setup-xorg-base that will install the basic graphical support, and you can add a specific DE on top. For example.

WalrusByte,
@WalrusByte@lemmy.world avatar

Oh ok, cool!

Grant_M,
@Grant_M@lemmy.ca avatar

Bodhi! Another I’ve found to be lean is Zorin Lite

ipsirc,
@ipsirc@lemmy.ml avatar

*buntu can’t be counted as lightweight.

atomkarinca,

alpine and void linux are pretty lightweight.

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