I have UM 16.04 on my old Acer One Netbook. It runs but is slow. I am searching for a light weight 32-bit OS that will speed up the netbook. After Googling, Lubuntu, Linux Lite, and Linux Mint Mate come to the top. Can’t tell which is the lightest. Are there any other OS recommendations?
I’m using Point Linux which comes with either MATE or Xfce. MATE uses 300mb on boot, but it’s based on Debian oldstable (MATE 1.8) and development has stalled.
I think any Debian base with a lightweight desktop environment would suit your purpose. Or there’s Window Managers you could try. Bunsenlabs is very lightweight, also heard good things about MX Linux on your hardware. Or check out Puppy Linux. Good luck with your search.
2 Likes
I recommend antiX Linux, but you might want to try its partner distro, MX-Linux, first. MX calls itself “medium weight,” but it’s no heavier than many other distros, which tout “lightness.” antiX is certainly lighter, but for just a bit larger footprint (and no loss of snappiness on my N455 Atom Netbook) you get a few more frills with MX-Linux. I’ve even run antiX on an anchient PIII Compaq laptop and it worked well as a dedicated Shorewall firewall host.
Last I looked, MX was #2 in the Distrowatch user rankings FWIW, not counting the dedicated firewall distro in the #1 spot.
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
Fantastic community support with both antiX and MX too. They overlap quite a bit (in both users and devs).
1 Like
Thanks. MX-Linux definitely looks intriguing as it is still supported.
FWIW, last I looked MX was #4 and Point #2 again, and it only took a single irrational review to knock it from the #1 spot after holding it for a quite a while. 
scnr
Well so it is, but both Slackware in the #3 spot and MX at #4 share a user review average of 9.63, ATM so I’d say they are tied for 3rd. 
I don’t really count IPFire in lead position though, because it’s not a complete desktop (or even server) distro. Thus I consider Point to be in the lead but I liked MX’s features and communitry support and settled on it for my 32-bit Atom netbook several months ago after also trying antiX on it. BTW, the advanced live boot features of antiX and MX are unmatched (resulting in incredibly fast boot times into a persistent system), but some of the many options and tools can be very complex and difficult to learn. Watch Dolphin Oracles videos and forum member Bitjam (an antiX / MX dev who works on live boot and other stuff) is very responsive on the antiX and MX forums.
My Mac Mini is running UM (one of the few distros with lingering support for it) and there aren’t all that many left for 32-bit x86. I installed Ubuntu Gnome on it shortly after I bought it in 2005 and it’s run 24/7 for most of the years since then as a media file server and firewire HDTV recorder…
Funny how my Atom is absent from Intel’s Meltdown and Spectre impacted CPU list and, from my research, the Mac Mini’s 7447a CPU is probably not impacted either so these are the machines I plan to very shortly use exclusively for online banking, shopping etc…
I was very intrigued by Point, but as you said, development has seemed to stalled with the last release in June 2016. I assume this means no security updates as well.
Nah, it’s just pure Debian & pure MATE set up with a few custom built packages and sudo already set up. A lot of people who’ve given up hope in the project just delete the Point repository and successfully upgrade to Stretch or Buster. So it effectively is similar to what Antergos or Manjaro are to Arch Linux.
At least that’s my understanding of it. Anyway I keep getting updates for Jessie every week. Some packages are a bit old but the stability is legendary.
1 Like