Is Ubuntu MATE considered a light distro?

Is Ubuntu MATE considered a light distro?

It’s definitely lighter, and you can run it on a raspberry pi which meets my qualifications for light. There are a couple lighter desktops, but I think Mate is in the top 5 low resource choices.

cheers.
Tim

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Thank you, Tim. I thought it was, but it’s good to get another opinion.

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Something else to put into the equation: Ubuntu MATE as the complete package or just the desktop environment, MATE in general.

By “light”, let’s refer to it as a system that uses fewer resources and gives plenty of room for applications.

  • Ubuntu MATE is already fairly light with its out-of-the-box features.
  • Ubuntu MATE Core (by installing ubuntu-mate-core from mini.iso) reduces storage requirements.
  • MATE desktop on its own is a lightweight environment, similar to other DEs like XFCE and LXDE.

So basically, it could be even lighter, storage-wise.

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I’m fine with it the way it is. The reason I asked the question is because I recently installed a rather heavy distro, on a HDD that is rated “Caution” by Crystal Disk, and decided I liked it, but was nervous about having it on that drive. So I was going to move it to another one that is rated OK. Which means I would then need to move either UM or Zorin Lite to the “cautuion” disk. But I decided to just keep everything where it is. I think I may have been overly concerned about the other distro (Manjaro KDE). It’s working fine and I’m not sure it makes a difference anyway to the hard drive. It’s interesting to note that the only time I have trouble with HDD’s is when Windows has been on them. My good drive has only ever had Linux, and it has no porblems. I have lost one drive totally to Windows. WD replaced it. That’s the one that now is rated “Caution.” (Yes, it has Windows on it). The original drive for this computer is rated “bad,” so I don’t keep it in the computer. But it works fine if I put it in. I have Linux Lite on it, in case the Windows partition stops working. I may still be able to retrieve data using Linux Lite.

Once installed, Plasma is pretty light on resources these days… I have had nothing but good experiences with it… Just like Mate and the team behind it. Otherwise I would be a KDE user now.

Cheers,
Tim

At this point, I have three distros that are keepers: Ubuntu Mate, Zorin 12 Lite and Manjaro KDE. There are some others I like a lot, but have a problem with, often involving updating. But these three are my current faves. Actually, Manjaro is so new I will have to wait to see if it works well enough on my system. If so, it will definitely be one of the keepers.

I saw an article (forget where) comparing LXDE, XFCE, and MATE by their Ubuntu flavors (Ubuntu MATE, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu). LXDE came in first for speed, but they said XFCE and MATE were tied and right behind it, and that any of them would run well on older hardware.

Things have changed, on MATE 1.8 you could definitely get as low as Xfce at 280-350MB, but these days?