Ideas for a lighter desktop environment?

[william.hua]

I am currently running Lubuntu 16.04 LTS on an ASUS Eee PC R101D with an Intel Atom N455 CPU. The OS is still laggy despite LXDE being very light. Any ideas on a desktop environment even lighter than LXDE that is compatible with Ubuntu or possibly even another distro?

[vasa1]

Moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat. If you need support on Lubuntu itself, please post in Desktop Environments as that sub-forum is for official flavors.

[kansasnoob]

Has it already been upgraded to 2GB of RAM? The stock 1GB just really isn't enough to do much of anything with any web browser.

I recently did a bunch of playing with some Dell Latitude 2100 series netbooks which have similar specs and once I had 2GB of RAM in them I could run either Lubuntu, Xubuntu, or Ubuntu w/Flashback(Metacity) if I installed the uBlock Origin add-on in Firefox. Still not good for streaming videos but good enough for light browsing.

The Legacy edition of Bodhi Linux did seem a bit faster:

http://www.bodhilinux.com/

[william.hua]

Yes, I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM.

Do they have support for the Ubuntu Software Center or something similar?

[mörgæs]

If you click the old hardware link in my signature and search the text for lubuntu-core you will find an option for making Lubuntu even lighter.

[sudodus]

I agree with the previous replies.

You can try the ultra-light Puppy Linux or Tiny Core, if you need something lighter than what is possible with Lubuntu and other distros or re-spins based on Ubuntu.

[help_me2]

I agree with the previous replies.

You can try the ultra-light Puppy Linux or Tiny Core, if you need something lighter than what is possible with Lubuntu and other distros or re-spins based on Ubuntu.

I agree with these suggestions. I've always liked Puppy especially. It is lightning fast on old hardware, plus there are many variants of puppy so you can fine tune the OS for your config without too much hassle.

Or you could just do a minimal text install of ubuntu and run openbox on top of it.

[sudodus]

I agree with these suggestions. I've always liked Puppy especially. It is lightning fast on old hardware, plus there are many variants of puppy so you can fine tune the OS for your config without too much hassle.

Or you could just do a minimal text install of ubuntu and run openbox on top of it.

I agree with your tip about running Openbox (or maybe Fluxbox or some other window manager) to get a minimal yet working graphical user environment.

See these links for more details,

help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/UEFI-and-BIOS

...minimal installed system with only a text screen add a light-weight window manager (for example Fluxbox) and the few necessary GUI tools.

[kansasnoob]

I'm currently playing with some old desktops that have ATOM 230 CPU's and I discovered that installing the 'intel-microcode' driver improved performance considerably. I always install 'psensor' when I'm playing with things like this so I can monitor system temps as well as CPU & RAM usage. I mention the importance of monitoring temps because I've found on the P series Intel core 2 duo mobile CPU's 'intel-microcode' causes extreme increase in system temps - enough so to do real damage! But with these ATOM 230's the improvement in CPU response to activity (or end of activity) is vastly improved with no noticeable change in temps.

[sudodus]

Lubuntu and the other Ubuntu community flavours have support for the Ubuntu Software Center and something similar. I would suggest that you learn using the Synaptic Package manager and the text mode tool apt.

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt install synaptic

Puppy Linux and Tiny Core have their own tools to update, upgrade and install program packages.