Fast and light distros

Mayank Sharma hates that he has more PCs in his attic than on his desk, so he’s finally doing something about it…

We have the technology to rebuild him… Faster. Lighter. Smarter. Dive inside the distros that use less memory, less processor time and still support 32-bit systems all

Acouple of years back Linus Torvalds rejected a patch for dropping support for 1995-era EISA-based platforms. He argued that it wasn’t broken and didn’t adversely affect the other parts of the kernel. But while the kernel can afford to support legacy hardware as long as they have even a single user, distributions and individual projects can’t afford that luxury.

To make efficient use of their finite resources, distros through out 2017 have been dropping support for 32-bit platforms.

Popular Linux distribution Elementary OS doesn’t even have a 32-bit version. Newer projects like Solus didn’t even bother to release a 32-bit version. It’s the same story with niche projects like the privacy-centric Tails Linux. Even mainstream projects like Arch and Ubuntu have ceased to spin installation ISOs for 32-bit machines. This really isn’t surprising since machines based on this architecture were taken off the shelves back when Gordon Brown was residing in 10 Downing Street.

Mainstream Linux distros are designed to appeal to a large number of users, a majority of whom run modern hardware. As a result they’ve become too bloated for older machines. Without a dollop of system memory and an extra core or two, these distros will never deliver the best performance on your old workhorses.

But thankfully, you can still put those old machines to good use. And it really isn’t surprising that a large number of open source developers are working hard on making obsolete hardware usable again. In fact, the recent advent of feature-rich, resource-hungry software has reinvigorated efforts to breathe new computing life into those underpowered workhorses. Over the next few pages, we look at some of the best distros that are designed from the grounds up to use the meagre resources on your old hardware judiciously. We’ll also look at the individual components that make up a distro and help you prune them for performance. These lightweight programs and distros help you make sensible use of the limited supply of the computing resources on these machines and have them whizzing again in no time.

“A large number of developers are working to make obsolete hardware usable again”