Why all the desktop's?

[A.Scotchmer]

Hi

I've just install BeaFanatiX (BFX) Linux on an old Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT and what a great little distro. The .iso image comes in at just 180mb.

Sadly its no longer supported, the developers moving to Debris linux (sadly Debris cannot load the GUI on this old spec laptop), however it has got me wondering why we have all these lightweight ubuntu distro's with enlightenment, fluxbox, XFCE etc as there desktop?

You see BFX uses Gnome as its desktop and it absolutely flies. I have tried many lightweight linux's including fluxubuntu, Zen Walk, Xubuntu (which is midweight really) Alinux, Dream Linux, SAM 2007, and a host of others and BFX with its genuine gnome desktop beats them all. Its as fast as XP use to be when I had it installed on the machine.

So why can someone not develop a light Ubuntu distro that uses Gnome?

Andrew

[Koori23]

Put quite simply.. The terms "Lightweight" and "Gnome" are never put into the same sentence. It's a matter of memory usage, Gnome weighs in at about 110MB+. You CAN do things to lighten that load up but you can't get rid of all of it.

The term "lightweight" has much to do with memory usage. With Gnome and KDE both, you have your work cut out for you if you want to make a lightweight DE.

It's this reason that many choose alternative enviroments to work with.

You can shave all the hair off an 800lb Gorilla, but at the end of the day, it's still an 800lb Gorilla.