Arch Linux is an independently developed i686x8664 optimized community distribution, based on a rollingrelease package model and targeted at competent GNULinux.The important things that well look at here are the amount of space needed, how much processing power is required to get the distro running at an acceptable level.Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things.Partner Perspectives.Partner Perspectives. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Crack Fps Fixer on this page. Partner Perspectives.White Papers. 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Twitter Feed.Whats the best lightweight Linux distro Group test There are plenty of reasons for wanting a low resource distro running on your computer.Maybe you have some ancient hardware that you need to breathe new life into.Perhaps you want something that will fit on a modestly sized memory stick.Or it might be that you want to run 2.The important things that well look at here are the amount of space needed, how much processing power is required to get the distro running at an acceptable level, and the effort required to get it to work.Something to bear in mind is that one of the ways in which developers are able to create slimmed down distros is by ditching the scripts and wizards that weve come to take for granted.This can complicate tasks that you might expect to be straightforward, such as installing software.Strict criteria. The simple truth is that youll be getting your fingers slightly grubbier with a low resource distro than you would with a fully featured one.In selecting our shortlist, weve left out some contenders either because they didnt support older processors, they wouldnt install in 4.GB or less of space, they simply didnt work on our hardware or theyre no longer being maintained as is the case for both RULE and U Lite.The one exception to this is Damn Small Linux although it has been over a year since the last release, and the homepage is as quiet as the LXF office at 9.Monday morning, this is still such a widely used and influential project that it was considered worthy of inclusion.Theres still plenty of activity in the area of low resource distros, including Watt.OS, which we hope to cover next time.We also gave Zenwalk a try, but ran into difficulty trying to run it on the low spec system that we permitted ourselves here.But aside from this, its a light and capable distro nonetheless and worth a look if you have the time.How we tested. The main idea of this test was to see how well these distros would run in a restrained environment.To this end, they were tested, where possible, on an ancient Compaq laptop with 2.MB RAM, Vesa graphics, a 4.GB hard drive and a 2.MHz Pentium processor.For the sake of sanity, all distros were then also tested in a Qemu virtual environment with the same limitations, but this time using one half of a 3.GHz Core 2 Duo processor.There were no special tests other than to install these distros which was testing enough and attempts to do some normal desktop tasks.Damn Small Linux.The rise and fall of Damn Small Linux is one of those tales along the lines of a great concept executed well.The idea was to create a Linux distro that was small enough to fit on a credit card sized CD ROM.With a target size of 5.MB or less, this format certainly concentrates the developers minds if they also want to create a hassle free user experience.For the most part, DSL does succeed.Based on the grandfather of all Live CDs, Knoppix, DSL strips out layer after layer of non essential stuff, while leaving a core working system.It might not exactly be replete with applications, but theres enough there to legitimise its claim to the title of a desktop operating system.Look past the rather clunky interface and the tricky to read text and youll be amazed at the amount of functionality included with DSL.Text editors, a PDF viewer, Firefox and other handy utilities provide a workable and stable environment.There are task specific add on packages available to download as well, and its difficult to fault the level of hardware support.DSL may look clunky, but it has an amazing array of shoe horned in applications.Unfortunately, the story of DSL doesnt have a happy ending at the moment.The community developing it seems to have split rather fractiously over demands made by some of the contributors, so its been a year since any of the main contributors has even posted on the projects website.The future of development seems uncertain.Weve included it here in spite of the exclusion of other defunct systems because it still holds up surprisingly well to some of the other options, and remains widely used.If you need further testament, DSL was selected is one of the few systems supported by the boot.BKO project. That said, obviously as time wears on, DSL slowly becomes more and more out of date, and may eventually become something of a liability.Our verdict The original and still one of the best, but getting a bit long in the tooth now.Crunch. Bang. Long before there was an official Ubuntu lite project, the ground had been contested by the likes of Xubuntu and U list.Crunch. Bang, get it, or Hash.Pling as one might decide to call it, evolved some time later, but before there was official support for the Lubuntu project.The head start seems to have worked out for the developers, though, because Crunch.Bang is pretty much there.It comes in more than one flavour, but we decided to test the lite version because it fits in better with the theme of this particular group test.The installer was one of the easiest to use, but it didnt work on our decrepit hardware, only the virtual machine.The graphics driver seemed to be causing difficulty, so your mileage may vary.Although this is a lite version, it still includes useful applications, including the Leafpad editor, VLC and Firefox 3.One of the major selling points is that this distro is built around Ubuntu, to the extent that the included Synaptic Package Manager will happily fetch anything from the Canonical repositories to bung on your box.But as soon as you start installing big things, it comes tumbling down as dependencies spiral into gigabytes of space.Although it looks minimal, Crunch.Bang takes up a lot of space.Crunch. Bang also takes the unusual but welcome step of stuffing a whole load of keyboard shortcuts into the desktop quite literally, because the list is displayed on the screen via the Conky system monitor software.They mostly make use of the special key that should have a penguin on it, so they wont interfere with normal operations.Crunch. Bang is small, stylish and performs well.Itll be interesting to see what happens here when Lubuntu is released publicly, but it seems that Crunch.Bang has a pretty solid proposition ready to go.Our verdict Stylish, compact and plenty of Ubuntu software available.Lubuntu. Early in 2.Mark Space Shuttleworth gave the nod to an Ubuntu project that would create a lightweight variant of the worlds favourite distro.Based around LXDE, Lubuntu was on its way.And it still is. Well, getting a new distro sorted out takes more than a few months, so we shouldnt be too harsh.Its also worth noting that at the time of writing, the current release was still an alpha version, so were giving it extra latitude.As with most of the other distributions here, the install media runs as a live CD first, which is a useful way to check that the system is going to work with your hardware before you go to the trouble of installing it.If you imagine that Lubuntu is going to look anything like Ubuntu, that idea will be destroyed the minute the desktop loads.Lubuntu has more in common with the other LXDE distributions, with the LXPanel running at the bottom of the screen and a more KDE 3.Gnome. The chosen apps arent quite the usual Firefox, Abi.Word and Gnumeric are among those included, which seems to suggest that not everything in this distro is going to be pared to the bone.It might be a shock for Ubuntu users, but the Lubuntu desktop is fast and functional.Of course, the main selling point of this distro is that it will have access to the Ubuntu repositories for easy upgrades and plenty of extra packages to install if you need them.We did have a couple of problems installing this to disk, so the figures in the table on page 3.However, since this is still an alpha release, you couldnt really rely on them anyway.Lubuntu is definitely one to watch for the future.With the backing of Canonical, itll have the developer resources to make the other lite distro projects rather jealous.Our verdict Although it looks nothing like Ubuntu, this is one to keep an eye on as it moves towards a stable release.Puppy Linux. This sounds as though it ought to be based on Yellow Dog, but in fact, Puppy is a built from the base up independent distribution from down under.This is a middleweight offering not as stripped back as some of the distros, but not bloated out to a full CD either.
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