what is a light Distro?

[Xbehave]

I've seen this phrase a few times recently and have to ask, what the hell does it mean?

Short of compiled vs binary, how is "distro A" with x,y,z installed any lighter than "distro U" with the same x,y,z? Now i suppose you could look for a disto that comes with less x,y,z by default but that seams like a silly thing to look for as it's much easier to install/remove software on any distro than it is to change it's fundamental strengths/flaws.

[chucky chuckaluck]

suppose you could look for a disto that comes with less x,y,z by default but that seams like a silly thing to look for as it's much easier to install/remove software on any distro than it is to change it's fundamental strengths/flaws.

if you never intend to use x,y and z, installing them and then having to remove them (plus dependencies) is a waste of time. if you wanted just a dish of vanilla ice cream, think how goofy it would be to order a sundae and then have to remove all the chocolate sauce, the nuts and the cherry just to get a nice bowl of ice cream.

[gradinaruvasile]

Its about preinstalled stuff.
For example standard Ubuntu comes with Gnome. Xubuntu comes with Xfce.
Gnome has many components that provide more features, but at the expense of speed/responsiveness/memory usage. Xubuntu has less components and features, but its noticeably faster than Gnome/more responsive/uses less memory. Xubuntu counts as a light distro.

[Pogeymanz]

It's not that simple.

It's often about how the software is compiled. Generally, Ubuntu packages are compiled for the i386 instruction set, while some other ditros compile for i586 or i686 which are more efficient but require slightly newer processors.

Also, with a distro like Gentoo, you can compile out all the option stuff like Gnome or KDE support, Bluetooth support, etc, thus making the binary smaller and possibly load faster.

[MooPi]

I have a very lite Ubuntu install. Non-standard for sure but it is Ubuntu under the hood. I imagine all distro's can be whittled down to something lite and fast. Mine for example loads with just a file manager and terminal on the desktop. No panel, dock or menu. Loads with just 45 mb of ram. But I have the Ubuntu repository and all is good.

[adeypoop]

Xubuntu counts as a light distro.

i believe ubuntu has a smaller memory footprint than xbuntu, xbuntu is not as light as people think.

the lightest versions of linux don't use a desktop environment just a window manager. you are correct though that any linux distro can be stripped down and made very light, or conversely can be bloated. The power of linux is how modular and configurable it is

[unknownPoster]

i believe ubuntu has a smaller memory footprint than xbuntu, xbuntu is not as light as people think.



I definitely agree, Xubuntu's XFCE "spin" has so many gnome dependencies that I find the differences in performance between Ubuntu and Xubuntu to be negligible.

[gsmanners]

I recently tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. Anyone who says that Xubuntu is slower than Ubuntu or Kubuntu either never tried them out or maybe they have a bad video driver. For me, the difference in performance is like night and day. Xubuntu is *way* faster.

The main thing about Xubuntu is that yes it does have a lot of Gnome dependencies, but they don't have to be running all the time. Unless you're constantly looking at System Monitor or some other Gnome app, you're going to get Xfce performance.

[gradinaruvasile]

i believe ubuntu has a smaller memory footprint than xbuntu, xbuntu is not as light as people think.

the lightest versions of linux don't use a desktop environment just a window manager. you are correct though that any linux distro can be stripped down and made very light, or conversely can be bloated. The power of linux is how modular and configurable it is

I used Gnome and now Xubuntu. trust me, its way smaller and snappier.

[Xbehave]

Just to clarify when i see this, it's often regarding different distros not just xubuntu vs *buntu but "arch is lighter than ubuntu" or "pclinuxos is lighter than debian", etc