A personal list of what I think are the best light and easy-on-resources Linux distributions.
Desktop Environment (DE for short) plays a crucial role in determining the distribution's characteristic of being lightweight, however, we should keep in mind that it is not the only factor, in fact, listing every distro that features one of these DEs (which are XFCE, LXDE, LXQt) would result in a plethora of options, most of which has similar performance. The performance varies due to other reasons such as the base distro, kernel-level optimizations, and even UI customizations and other possible tweaks. Thus, I will only include the distros that have the goal of being lightweight and made some special effort to configure it as such.
Xfce (pronounced as four individual letters) is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris and BSD. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use.
It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy-to-use and customizable. Very popular within the lightweight systems category.
The "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment" is an extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment.
is a fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment. Maintained by an international community of developers, it comes with multi-language support, standard keyboard shortcuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing.
Historically, LXQt is the product of the merge between LXDE-Qt, an initial Qt flavour of LXDE, and Razor-qt. It is focused on being a classic desktop with a modern look and feel.
Now we will dive into the best performing candidates:
Peppermint OS is a user-friendly operating system that prioritizes mobility, efficiency, and ease of use, allowing users to quickly connect, communicate, and complete tasks.
What makes Peppermint so unique is the brilliant design philosophy that emphasizes on making the most out of the different Linux DEs out there, so it uses a hybrid DE that is mainly XFCE but replaces lots of its components with ones from LXDE and copies few others from Cinnamon and Gnome. Another great distinctive feature about Peppermint is their focus on making Web-based apps so easy and comprehensive; utilizing a tool they've developed, named Ice SSB that creates an executable-like shortcut for any online web application, pretty much like Chrome OS's approach of implementing their cloud based apps in a native-looking environment for simplifying things and for the convenience of users who are mostly dependent on the internet and live in the browser. Thus, you will find Peppermint mentioned many times as an alternative to
Chrome OS. Here, however, people should not think of Peppermint as merely a direct rival to Chrome OS, as matter of fact, Peppermint provides a plenty of locally pre-installed offline Linux softwares, just like any other daily usable Linux distro. And it still offers 32-bit support.
Linux Lite primarily targets Windows users. It aims to provide a complete set of applications to assist users with their everyday computing needs, including a full office suite, media players and other essential daily software. It is based on
Ubuntu LTS and features the
Xfce desktop. It recently dropped 32-bit support.
MX Linux is an operating system - a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS communities. It is a midweight OS that combines an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability and solid performance.
From my testing, this is the least buggy, most easy-on-resources pure
Debian based Linux distro out there! it comes with an excellent out-of-the-box drivers support. Also features
Ubuntu's official flavor of
Lubuntu is a fast and lightweight operating system with a clean and easy-to-use user interface. It is a Linux system, that uses the minimal desktop LXDE/LXQT.
Puppy Linux is a unique family of Linux distributions meant for the home-user computers. It was originally created by Barry Kauler in 2003.
Puppy is Live OS (can be run from CD/DVD/Flash drive), extraordinarily small, and
Slackware based distro. Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly.
Forked from
Damn Small Linux with a minimal graphical interface, weighing just under 14 MB! The core runs entirely in memory and boots very quickly.
Porteus is a complete linux operating system that is optimized to run from CD, USB flash drive, hard drive, or other bootable storage media. It's small (under 300Mb) and insanely fast which allows you to start up and get online while most other operating systems are left...
Porteus is another
BunsenLabs Linux is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable Openbox desktop. The current release is Helium, built on top of Debian (stable). The project is a community continuation of CrunchBang Linux.
BunsenLabs Linux is a distribution offering a light-weight and easily customizable
Openbox desktop. The current release, Helium, is built on top of Debian (stable). The project is a community continuation of
CrunchBang Linux.
LXLE is a remastered version of Ubuntu/Lubuntu LTS releases, using the LXDE desktop interface. LXLE provides a complete drop in and go operating system coupled with style, speed and capability. It's light on resources and heavy on functions.
Are you so done with your old PC and want to throw it out of the window? Well, hold on, these Linux-based system can breathe life into your crappy computer and turn it into a little retro gaming console (as long as your processor is x86 or ARM). These distributions don't require much of a horsepower as they are optimized to run on older hardware.
Recalbox is a light embedded system created to run on the raspberryPi ,raspberryPI 2 and others!
Recalbox is a light embedded system created to run on the raspberryPi ,raspberryPI 2 and on PC x86/x64.
RetroPie allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite classic games with the minimum set-up.
RetroPie allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite classic games with the minimum set-up.
Batocera.linux is an operating system specialized in retrogaming available for your pc and different nano computers like the Raspberry and the Odroids.
Batocera.linux is an operating system (like Windows 10 and Mac OS) specialized in retrogaming available for your pc and different nano computers like the Raspberry and the Odroids.
Linux is an awesome way to revive and enhance low-end machines and make the most out of them with minimal consumption of resources, giving users an opportunity to have a decently performing experience on their old devices.
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