CrunchBang vs Damn Small Linux vs Puppy

[linuxyogi]

Hi,

Besides Ubuntu 10.10 I am using CrunchBang 10 openbox on the old Celeron computer (see my sig. ).

CrunchBang is running well but even a little multitasking is making my pc slow. For example, if I run FF alone it performs well but if I try to listen to some music using vlc or smplayer it becomes very slow.

Now, has anyone here used both CrunchBang & DSL or CrunchBang & Puppy ?

I am trying to know which one of these is the lightest & can be installed to hard drive ?

Please confine your choice within these three.

Thanks in advance.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

DSL is dead; hasn't been updated since '08 (I think).
Replace it with Slitaz.

From all the above mentioned, the lightest is an Arch linux install with Openbox stand alone (or any other feather weight window manager).
My 2 drachmas.

[mips]

^^

[Hur Dur]

Crunchbang - The only thing light about it is the window manager. It has programs that are meant for newer computers.

Puppy - Not as light as DSL, but it is actively being updated, and has a lot of programs.

DSL - Not actively developed, but it runs like a champ on 10+ year old hardware. I've heard that it flies on 32mb RAM with X.

Personally, I would go with Arch + IceWM or Openbox, or go for Slackware. Or, if you prefer the complete package, SliTaz is good.

I had the same specs on my older laptop, and there really isn't a limit to what distros you can and can not use on it. I had a pretty good experience with Linux Mint Debian on it.

Kick Firefox for something lighter. I really liked Dillo, and Netsurf, but you could always go for a more feature-rich browser, like Midori.

[mips]

From all the above mentioned, the lightest is an Arch linux install with Openbox stand alone (or any other feather weight window manager).
My 2 drachmas.

For that Archbang could be an option.

[mips]

For example, if I run FF alone it performs well but if I try to listen to some music using vlc or smplayer it becomes very slow.

FF is a hog, maybe try a different browser.

[jerenept]

Hi,

Besides Ubuntu 10.10 I am using CrunchBang 10 openbox on the old Celeron computer (see my sig. ).

CrunchBang is running well but even a little multitasking is making my pc slow. For example, if I run FF alone it performs well but if I try to listen to some music using vlc or smplayer it becomes very slow.

Now, has anyone here used both CrunchBang & DSL or CrunchBang & Puppy ?

I am trying to know which one of these is the lightest & can be installed to hard drive ?

Please confine your choice within these three.

Thanks in advance.

Your processor is not stopping you, it seems to be the RAM. I like Puppy, SliTaz, Tiny Core. (and FreeNAS, I will never stop recommending FreeNAS and a couple big HDD's.) You might want to check out XBMC Live distro, it runs fairly well on the specs you give (provided you have a decent graphics card, mine is a GeForce 6600, and it flies.)

Also try a lighter browser. Midori, Dillo, Chromium, Epiphany, even Opera.

Try using mplayer from the command line. It's really not that much more effort than using smplayer or vlc, although you will miss a lot of features.

[tgalati4]

Celerons have a small cache and generally don't perform as well as Pentiums for desktop use. I agree with jerenept that freenas will run fine and provide many services without taxing the processor and celerons use much less power than Pentiums.

So although it's fun to play with these light distros, as soon as you find better hardware, you will quickly switch the Celeron to server use and then you will look at freenas.

[andras artois]

CrunchBang is definitely not light.

Go with what everyone else is saying. Arch, OpenBox, and Tint2 would be a fairly simple but still nice setup. Midori is a nice lightweight browser and PCManFM or Thunar are lightweight file managers. I think it's XMMS that's a commandline music player so should be fairly lightweight. Might be worth checking the Arch forum and searching for low spec builds.

[linuxyogi]

Presently Downloading Puppy. In case I don't like Puppy I will try Arch.


I have used both Chromium & Opera & I like them both. I am still with FF because of its security features. In FF I have added Addons like Adblock Plus, No Script, Better Privacy.
I have no other issues about replacing FF with another browser other than security. What about security ?
Can browsers like dillo, Chromium offer the same amount of security as FF (with all these addons)?

I will write back about my experience with Puppy.

Thanks to all you guys.