Bundled apps
Are they ready to use right off the bat?
This is one aspect where the distros take a different approach. True to its name, Tiny Core bundles just a terminal, a text editor and an app launcher on top of the lightweight FLWM window manager. If you need anything else, you’ll have to pull it in using the distribution’s package manager – including the installer itself if you want to install Tiny Core to your hard disk.
Similarly, Q4OS doesn’t offer much besides the Konqueror web browser and a handful of utilities. Bunsenlabs is a little better as it ships with several of the usual applications you get on a mainstream desktop, including some mainstream feature-rich ones such as VLC and Libreoffice Writer.
All of these distros fall considerably short in comparison to antix and Bionicpup. antix features many mainstream apps such as Firefox and Libreoffice, and complements them with lightweights like MPV and Claws. It then goes one step further by packing esoteric but useful apps such as the Firetool GUI for the firejails application sandbox, and the Droppy network file-sharing web server to offer a rounded desktop experience.
Bionicpup too will amaze you with its default cache of apps. You’ll find an app for virtually every task you can perform with a desktop computer. Interspersed with the mainstream apps like
Firefox, uget and Homebank are its own custom apps – primarily to ease administration tasks. For a miniscule distribution, Bionicpup has some apps that you wouldn’t find even in fullfledged distributions, including a softphone for internet telephony, a file image joiner, a personal organiser, an ad-blocker and lots more.