SPECIALIST DISTROS LEVEL 5
JUST CAN’T BE BOTHERED? “If you don’t have the time to follow our advice, you can still enhance your Linux experience by switching distros.”
We’ve already said that mainstream distros are put together in such a manner so as to appeal to a large number of people. The downside of this approach is the obvious bloat and lethargy. If you don’t have the time to follow our advice in the previous pages to scrape off the excess from your installation, you can still enhance your Linux experience by switching distros.
When you are out looking for a fast distro, you’ll find a good number of options designed for older computers. Since they are developed to perform within the limited resources of an older machine, they are an ideal choice for accelerating the desktop experience on modern hardware.
Lite speed
One of the best options for accelerating regular desktop Linux tasks is Linux Lite. The latest version is built using packages from the Ubuntu 18.04 release, and uses the Xfce desktop with aesthetically pleasing modifications. The distribution offers a good compromise between speed and functionality, and exposes all useful desktop features while still being responsive and fast. The distribution will work blazingly well on anything with a processor faster than 1.5GHZ and 1GB or more of RAM.
Linux Lite looks and feels like a regular mainstream distribution. Its list of pre-installed programs doesn’t include any of the traditional lightweight apps and is instead brimming with the usual suspects such as
GIMP, Firefox, VLC and Libreoffice. On top of this you can also easily pull in other popular programs such as
Kodi, Skype, Steam, Spotify and more using the custom Lite Software application. In fact, the distribution includes several homebrewed Lite-branded tools for interacting and customising various aspects of the desktop and the installation.
There’s a welcome screen that enables you to install updates and drivers and set up a backup restore point, a program to help upgrade to the latest release, and another to manage users. One of the most useful ones is Lite Tweaks, which helps you with common admin tasks. You can use it to free up memory, remove older kernels and install new ones. It also includes some performance-enhancing tweaks that we’ve discussed in the previous pages, including ZRAM and Preload.
In our opinion, Linux Lite isn’t really suitable for dated hardware. However, we’ve found it to be one of the snappiest distros on more recent machines.
Antix antics
If, however, you do want to use a distro that prides itself for its judicious use of system resources, there’s antix. The distro is content on a computer with just 256MB of RAM, which was one of the many positives that helped it top the charts in our recent Roundup of lightweight distros (LXF255 and reviewed on p23). The Systemd-free distro comes in various editions, including a core edition that has just enough applications to help you build your desktop from scratch. The full edition of antix uses ICEWM, together with the Rox file manager.
The Debian-based distro boots into a pleasinglooking ICEWM window manager with icons on the desktop. At the bottom of the screen is an application menu, task switcher and system tray. It uses a custom installer that’s verbose enough to be operated by inexperienced users, despite the fact that it uses
Gparted for partitioning.
Antix ships with plenty of applications including mainstream applications such as Firefox and
Libreoffice, but complements them with lightweights like GNOME MPV, Claws email, the Dillo web browser and then goes one step further by packing esoteric but useful applications, such as the Droppy network filesharing webserver. You can use the streamlight-antix application to stream videos with very low RAM usage.
One of the interesting aspects of the distro is the metapackage installer that helps make it more accessible to new users. The tool is so extensive that you really don’t need to use a package manager unless you need to install a particular library.