DIGIT-ARC read-only archive · snapshot: July 23, 2026

Lightweight-linux distros

13 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/lightweight-linux-distros.114323/

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sciphi Original post #1
May 1, 2009 at 10:59 PM
Hi, I have an old acer laptop which has a 1.7 celeron processor with 512 mb of ram .It is really slow and I want to install a linux distribution for listening to songs and watching movies mainly.I would also be doing some programming. Support for all common formats(divx/xvid/rmvb) is preferable.Fast boot-time would be great too. Which distribution would you recommend keeping all these in mind ? Thanks !
talktorishav
May 2, 2009 at 8:17 AM
You have a preety good computer. How about Xubuntu 9.04
hullap
hullap #4
May 2, 2009 at 11:03 AM
the best would be slitaz. it has mplayer for all video/songs needs, and geany for programming ones. its 80 mb when uncompressed and should run uber fast
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sciphi #5
May 2, 2009 at 10:33 PM
Thanks guys, I'll try these out...
Liverpool_fan
May 2, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Arch Linux. (but you should be experienced enough in Linux)
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sciphi #7
May 7, 2009 at 2:13 AM
After a bit of trial and error, I've gone with xubuntu 9.04 for now ... it seems to be reasonably fast on my machine.The booting takes some time but after booting it is fairly responsive. I did try slitaz but I got a few errors in mplayer , so I left it.Thanks for the help guys :)
A
May 7, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Use linux Mint it's light easy to use and also contains most of the codecs for playing songs and movie.
MetalheadGautham
May 7, 2009 at 7:18 PM
Good Choice. But you might want to migrate over to Debian Squeeze with Xfce 4.6 if you gain some experience.
nileshgr
nileshgr #10
May 7, 2009 at 10:37 PM
Arch would be a good one... Wiki help available for every problem along with Mailing List and Forum.
4T7
4T7 #11
May 8, 2009 at 9:17 PM
How about Zenwalk
skeletor
skeletor #12
May 9, 2009 at 10:02 PM
I would recommend Arch because I love it...:p
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sciphi #13
May 12, 2009 at 11:40 AM
Ubuntu 9.04 was working gr8 and I had all my hardware detected including my wireless until I found out that my dvd-rom drive wasn't working even with the latest updates:-( I just formatted the drive and installed Windows XP instead which is ok. I am not really that experienced in linux to go with something like arch linux yet guys.