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Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#11

Post by imensia »

Darmody wrote: post #6

I see a lot of people asking for a light distro and then they are disappointed because the performance is not what they expected. When you use a modern browser, your lightweight distro doesn't matter anymore. The web stack is heavy, even if sites are coded with performance in mind.

Definitely this, htop shows the pain.

I repurposed an old laptop for occasional video watching, running a small debian. Firefox or chrome are huge compared to everything else.

The other factor is that high video resolution eats the machine.

youtube-dl (480px) + mpv is much nicer than streaming in a browser.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#12

Post by pipeline_peak »

Gentoo is the fastest Linux distro and penguin, (hence the name).

It has a BSD style port system with useflags for optimizations. A very technically precise installation process, and it also boots up faster than anything I’ve seen.

Otherwise, use LFS with either Portage or Pkgsrc.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#13

Post by DantesKite »

Darmody wrote: post #6

I see a lot of people asking for a light distro and then they are disappointed because the performance is not what they expected. When you use a modern browser, your lightweight distro doesn't matter anymore. The web stack is heavy, even if sites are coded with performance in mind.

That's a good point. Maybe I'll try Mighty. Looks promising.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#14

Post by avl999 »

Most linux distros would fit the bill for that.

Very often it is the desktop environment that kills resources on your machine. So if you have a slow computer make sure to pick a desktop environment that is lightweight (Gnome likely won't give you good results). XFCE would be great. I used stock Ubuntu + Xfce for years on an slow chromebook level computer for Youtube videos, social media, Netflix and so on without issues. The machine had 4Gigs of ram and a crappy dual core cpu. Go with Ubuntu + XFCE.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#15

Post by avl999 »

Darmody wrote: post #6

I see a lot of people asking for a light distro and then they are disappointed because the performance is not what they expected. When you use a modern browser, your lightweight distro doesn't matter anymore. The web stack is heavy, even if sites are coded with performance in mind.

OS/Desktop environment does matter. It is going to be the single biggest thing that competes for resource if you only intend to use the machine for what the OP wants.

Most websites still work OK on slow machines (my travel laptop was one and it could handle 90% of the websites just fine). OS/Desktop env is often the biggest sink. That machine for example would hit 75% CPU on windows 10 just idling which didn't leave enough room for anything else. Wiped it with Ubuntu + Gnome and it went to ~25% CPU usage while idling. Switched to Ubuntu + XFCE less that 3% while idling.

The only website I had a problem with was Patreon.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#16

Post by galfarragem »

vmoore wrote: post #3

I don't use it, since I like a beefy setup, but lubuntu is a lightweight Ubuntu flavor you could try: https://lubuntu.net/

From the top of my mind, on standby, Lubuntu uses 500M of RAM, Xubuntu (XFCE) around 750M and Ubuntu (Gnome) 1G.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#17

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #12

Gentoo is the fastest Linux distro and penguin, (hence the name). It has a BSD style port system with useflags for optimizations. A very technically precise installation process, and it also boots up faster than anything I’ve seen. Otherwise, use LFS with either Portage or Pkgsrc.

Not if you have to compile it yourself(on a slow computer).

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#18

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Try Antix. They have just released a new version. It's a so called 'live-distro' able to run from usb-stick/keychain, or in RAM if have enough. BUT you can also remaster it, and write that customized image back to your stick.

[+] https://antixlinux.com/download/

I've been too lazy to install/remaster the already downloaded image so far, because mine runs since 76 days 24/7 in RAM :-)

If you're crazy you can even integrate

[x] https://trinitydesktop.org/ and remaster that into your image, but apart from the very customizable look&feel it doesn't make that much sense. OTOH it's not that fat either, very compact, rather.

It also has convenient scripts(via menu) for populating /etc/HOSTS with adblocking lists, similar to pi-hole. That alone makes many sites much less heavy. Otherwise use alternative clients? Like nitter for twitter, and using youtube-dl(g) with mpv for videos like other posters have written? Also installing uBlock-Origin for the parts which aren't covered by hosts-based adblocking. How much RAM do you have?

Re: Ask HN: What’s the fastest Linux OS for a slow computer?

#19

Post by throwaway123x2 »

galfarragem wrote: post #16
vmoore wrote: post #3

I don't use it, since I like a beefy setup, but lubuntu is a lightweight Ubuntu flavor you could try: https://lubuntu.net/

From the top of my mind, on standby, Lubuntu uses 500M of RAM, Xubuntu (XFCE) around 750M and Ubuntu (Gnome) 1G.

Any idea how Kubuntu is?
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