Presenting a nice assortment of lightweight yet fully functional Linux distros for all occasions. All of these are full distros that do not depend on cloud services; four for x86 and two, count ’em, two for ARM hardware. (Updated Feb 2016.)
![]() Elementary OS
Elementary OS is a beautiful, fast, lightweight Linux for 32- and 64-bit x86. It is built on an Ubuntu core, and Elementary’s desktop environment, Pantheon, started out with some stripped-down GNOME 2 elements. But, it is more than an Ubuntu respin or GNOME fork — a lot of custom development goes into Elementary OS, including apps and its development toolkit.
Both Quora User and Akshay Anand give great answers. Android uses Linux at its kernel, though it is most decidedly NOT a GNU/Linux distro. Far too much proprietary software, and the User Interface is not GNU-based. Tikken Grey points out that.
Elementary OS has a Mac-like feel with a sleek, elegant appearance, subtle highlighting cues, minimal clicks to get from one place to another, and lots of useful super key shortcuts. I expect that even inexperienced Linux users could start using Elementary OS and be productive with just a little bit of poking around. One feature that sets Elementary OS apart from other distros is the extensive documentation for contributors. It covers interface design, coding style, building apps, and everything else you need to know.
There are currently $6,055 of cash bounties available for bug-fixing some applications and base libraries. If you can’t code, putting a few bucks in the bounty kitty is a great way to support Elementary OS.
LXLE
LXLE takes Lubuntu LTS (long-term support), customizes the LXDE desktop, adds proprietary codecs and drivers and a thoughtful selection of default applications, and advertises it as a drop-in replacement for Windows. Me, I think anything is a good replacement for Windows, including an Etch-a-Sketch. But LXLE (Lubuntu eXtra Life Extension) really is an excellent choice for users who want to swap Linux for Windows.
LXLE is not an amazing new revolutionary technology, but rather an excellently crafted and refined enhancement of Lubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 optimized for older, less powerful PCs. (The newest release is 14.04.3.) The last 5 percent of any project is the hardest, and LXLE goes all the way and finishes that last 5 percent. Installation is fast and simple, and it boots up very quickly — in under a minute. LXLE has five desktop looks to choose from: Unity, Windows XP, GNOME 2, Mac OS X, and Netbook. Its most fun feature for me is the 100+ included beautiful wallpapers, and the Random Wallpaper button to cycle them automatically. Windows refugees, or any casual user, will find their way around easily. It also includes the full capabilities of Linux for power users. That is why I love Linux: we can have it all. (32- and 64-bit x86)
Arch Linux ARM
Arch Linux is the choice of fine nerds everywhere who want a simple yet versatile, up-to-date, lightweight rolling distribution. It is always among the first distros to package new software releases, such as PHP 7 and KDE Plasma 5.5. Arch calls itself simple because it comes with a minimum of bells and whistles, and it is for users who want maximum control of their systems with no backtalk from “helpful” utilities.
Arch supports x86 and also has an excellent ARM port. ARM devices are everywhere thanks to single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard, and Arduino, smartphones, tablets, and netbooks like the Samsung Chromebook. Arch is extremely customizable, so you can pare it down to fit even the smallest SBC and make it into a router, a special-purpose server, or even a tiny but useful portable desktop computer. Just like x86 Arch, ARM Arch is well-documented and has active community support.
Point Linux
Point Linux is going on three years old and is still under active development, which is good for a newcomer. Originally, it was based on Debian 7 and the MATE desktop, which was originally forked from GNOME 2. Now, the good Point Linux people also support the Xfce desktop. It has a traditional system menu and panels — nice and clean, and everything easy to find with no dancing icons, no hidden things that appear only when you luck out and hover your cursor over exactly the correct spot, and virtual desktops that stay put.
It runs well on old feeble hardware and now offers multiple download options: 32- or 64-bit x86, and full or minimal core versions. Point Linux is based in Russia and has good comprehensive localization. If you miss the Ubuntu of old, when it had the best GNOME 2 implementation of any distro, then you might like Point Linux.
![]() Good-bye Porteus, Hello Android-x86
Porteus is nice Slackware remix that runs from a USB stick. However, it hasn’t had an update since 2014, so I’m replacing it with Android-x86. Android-x86 ports Android to x86. It originally began as a set of patches for the Android Open Source Project and is now a complete Android operating system for x86. You can download the live ISO to either run it as a live image or install it to hard disk, or you can get the .img download to run it from a USB stick. Android-x86 is great for x86 tablets, netbooks, and ultra-portable laptops.
Android-x86 is 100 percent open source. If you’re looking for an active, important project to contribute to, consider this one.
Fedora ARM
Fedora’s ARM port was promoted to primary architecture status as of the Fedora 20 release, so it tracks the Fedora x86 releases. The current release is Fedora 23. In typical Fedora fashion, ARM support is broad and pushes into the bleeding edge with support for 64-bit ARM, all the popular ARM SBCs, and a nice selection of unofficial remixes for unsupported devices including the Samsung Chromebook. Which I keep mentioning because it looks like a perfect travel notebook once you clear the Google gunk off and install a good proper Linux on it. Visit the Fedora ARM wiki page to learn everything.
The ARM platform is exploding like a mad wet cat out of the bath. Here are four good distros cram-full of ARM fun.Linux has had ARM support since forever, but it’s been bumpy. There are hundreds of vendors of ARM devices (see for a sampling), all shoving their own personal hacked code out the door as fast as possible.
This made Linux support complicated and unwieldy, to the point that Linus Torvalds threatened to stop accepting ARM changes in the mainline Linux kernel.So, in classic Linux fashion, vendors and developers banded together and coordinated and consolidated their efforts, formed the non-profit engineering organization, and performed a sizable cleanup of redundant and bad code. Jonathan Corbet, editor of Linux Weekly News, “ARM will take its place as one of the primary Linux architectures” in 2012.
This seems a safe prediction as ARM-based mobile devices are going to continue to sell like ice water in hell.Android is also expected to harmonize, over time, with the mainline Linux kernel. So this confluence of ARM events means that we who like to play with stuff will have a little easier time of it. Me, I dream of embedded and mobile devices being as friendly to experimentation as the x86 platform. Don’t laugh, it could happen. So which Linux is best for ARM? Why, lots of them.There are a lot of different ARM processors, so should help you sort them out. Wikipedia has an invaluable table that, so when you see terms like ARMv5TE or ARM9TDMI or Cortex-something, consult this table to know what the heck these are.Arch Linux ARMis based on the excellent Arch Linux distribution.
It’s an active, fast-moving rolling release that is compatible with Arch, and in fine Arch fashion has good documentation. It’s a complete Linux distribution with thousands of packages. This is the one I recommend to ARM noobs; it’s lightweight, efficient, and the community support is quite good.Arch Linux ARM runs on any processor that supports ARMv5TE or higher, which includes fun cheap boards and gadgets like Pogoplug, SheevaPlug, TonidoPlug, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard, CuBox, PandaBoard, and TrimSlice. Adventurous users have installed it on various smartphones. Ubuntu ARMUbuntu is everywhere, including.
Like Arch ARM, Ubuntu ARM is a complete distribution with thousands of packages, both desktop and server. For example, you can install a on a PandaBoard.UNR, the Ubuntu Netbook Remix made an early attempt at an Ubuntu ARM netbook spin. One of its most promising features, in my un-humble opinion, was using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to power a beautiful 2D user interface with similar features to its 3D desktop. This made it possible to have a rich environment on ARM, which is plagued with licensing hassles for graphics hardware.But UNR went away with Ubuntu 11.04. Or rather, it was “unified” with Ubuntu Desktop, and the UNR ARM port went away. The current Ubuntu ARM port supports ARMv7 and up, and targets the Thumb-2 instruction set, which is the modern.
So this targets the newer higher-powered devices that support good video, audio, networking, and decent processing power for running applications. Debian ARMDebian has always supported more hardware architectures than any other Linux distribution, including ARM. The nomenclature is a bit confusing until you understand that it’s specific to each ARM version. The first Debian ARM port was arm-linux-gnu, which supported ARMv3.
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Arm-linux-gnu packages are in the arm section. The last arm packages appeared in Lenny. These were replaced with arm-linux-gnueabi in Lenny in the armel section, supporting ARMv4t and up.
Armel has been replaced by the arm-linux-gnueabihf port, in Wheezy. Armhf is ARMv7 and up, with the Thumb-2 instruction set.The Debian documentation is rather shy of installation and hacking how-to’s. This page in the Bodhi Linux forums, is a good starting point. Fedora ARMhas lagged behind Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch ARM, though it found new energy for Fedora 17, and it should be pretty solid for Fedora 18.The interesting bit is a to a primary Fedora architecture, from its current secondary status. Just as the names imply, a secondary architecture (SA) doesn’t have to meet the same standards as a primary architecture (PA). All of the packages in a PA must build and work correctly, while an SA can sit on the back burner and not get a lot of attention.
The proposal is looking to a future of 64-bit enterprise ARM servers, and ARM becoming the dominant hardware architecture over x8664.Fedora needs to get moving, because Canonical has already been grooming their original design manufacturers (ODMs) to make Ubuntu the first operating system ready to run ARMv8. There are two interesting PDFs to read on: Ubuntu-ARM-knowledge.pdf and Ubuntu ARM Roadmap.pdf. These have a lot of useful information on ARM and Canonical’s roadmap.The trusty old x8664 platform has served us well for many years now, but its dominance is being challenged by ARM. As always there will be hurdles to openness, such as patents and loony experiments like. Maybe someday technological progress will be limited only by our ingenuity, rather than by lockin and lockdown.
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