Off-Topic > Off-Topic - Tiny Tux's Corner

What's the best lightweight Linux distro?

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lucky13:
The details offered about the demise of DSL are inaccurate. It's ridiculous, too, that DSL(no longer under active development and which is going to be increasingly marginalized due to lack of modern hardware support) gets a higher score than TinyCore and that Puppy (a single-user -- root -- system) gets the same score as TinyCore. What? At least the review didn't blather on and on about aesthetics.

It's a shame the reviewer didn't add in a comparable mix of TinyCore extensions and use that as the baseline from which to judge -- more apples to apples. After all, that's part of what makes TinyCore so unique, you get to choose how and what rather than have a lot of stuff given to you that you may not want -- a problem hinted at with using some of the repositories of the others in the review. The "problem" of bloat when adding things from repositories encountered with Ubuntu-based light remixes (CrunchBang is currently moving to Debian, fwiw) isn't such a problem in TC. Speaking of that, why is CrunchBang's score higher than and Lubuntu's (an alpha version!) the same as TinyCore's if the two Ubuntu-based distros have such an issue with bloated repo packaging? Most users are going to switch some applications around. Once you start doing that and start to make your system more Ubuntu and less CrunchBang, you're losing every bleeping advantage of using the "lighter" sub-distro.

My verdict: The article is complete crap. 2/10.

danielibarnes:
The article states:
"The important things that we'll 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." It would be nice to know the weight given to each metric and how it contributes to the overall score. The absence of quantifiable scoring leads one to consider this article lacking.

SliTax, with its select bundle of applications, scored higher. Sure, you can load the same applications in Tiny Core with very little effort using the AppBrowser, but the author is evaluating the out-of-the-box experience. We place more importance on "the amount of space needed" than the author does.

So how do we address this? Remember, even if the author appears misguided, it means Tiny Core is perceived as requiring effort. The best step we as a community can take is to address the final words of the author: "it may have made things easier to aim for a slightly higher target to begin with."

The recent TinyCore for all - Remastering and Flavors thread is a step in the right direction. Identify a SliTaz-like bundle for Tiny Core, remaster it, and provide it as a download for new users. Then, there can be no complaint! :)

bmarkus:

--- Quote from: danielibarnes on April 14, 2010, 01:05:35 PM ---The article states:
"The important things that we'll 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."

--- End quote ---

IMHO in this term article is correct. Remember, how much time it took for you to understand different installation modes, cloud, PPI, backup, etc.

sandras:
True. It seems simple when you know it. but it's very difficult when you don't. I was aware of TC almost from the start of my Linux quest, but only after living some time with Ubuntu and actively reading about Linux did I understood more things about TC.

Now I don't want to be one of those "let's attract Windows users" guy, but Windows users, who try to shift to Linux often have a hard time understanding even the concept of mount which is a commodity in Linux.

tclfan:

--- Quote from: Sandras on April 14, 2010, 02:01:33 PM ---Now I don't want to be one of those "let's attract Windows users" guy, but Windows users, who try to shift to Linux often have a hard time understanding even the concept of mount which is a commodity in Linux.

--- End quote ---
It is already too late and too little has been done to attract Windows users to Linux. It was perhaps possible early on but then Linux went to the dark side of bloat, slow and inefficient, not speaking of user-friendly.

Some bad strategic decisions were made such as Gnome and KDE huge cumulative libraries instead of keeping linux modular, fast and efficient.

Even more importantly, fragmentation of Linux into 207 distros makes attracting Windows users not likely. Such potential convert would have to do quite a research to determine which distro to pick. This is unlikely to happen and user will prefer to stay with Windows.

If there was a unified Linux strategy and effort was not wasted on 207 distro but rather to focus on one - efficient and user-friendly, then an OS would emerge far superior to Windows and provide a clear choice to users.

This time and opportunity has been lost.  Now the only chance is a new revolution, such as system completely componentized, modular, user friendly such as new trend emerging in Linux world (TinyCore+, Igelle), but this needs to reject the past bloat legacy, such as bloated libraries and applications need to be self-contained modules...
I think TinyCore and Igelle are going in the right direction, each focusing on separate parts of this strategy...
This is unless it is too late for this too and such revolution will be Web OS, which will make underlying core system core irrelevant...

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