Mint "Lite"?

[exploder]

The Fluxbox GE might be just what you are looking for. Shane did a good job of building the last release to install on older machines like you are describing. I have tried Chrunchbang and it uses a lot of resources in my opinion, it used as much memory as the main edition! Take a look at the Fluxbox CE, you will be pleasantly surprised!

[AK Dave]

Easiest way to make a "mint lite" is to uninstall compiz. Do a full normal install, and then completely uninstall compiz.

Guess it all boils down to how "lite" you're talking.

MoonOS is only "mint lite" in the sense that it uses e17 instead of gnome. Its questionable if it is any lighter than regular Mint, especially Gloria. I find both Gloria and Jaunty (the Ubuntu base for Gloria) to be low-footprint once compiz is disabled or removed (better removed).

If you really want lightweight for some ancient P2/P3 hardware with a handful of ram, you don't want Mint at all. You want something like DSL (Damn Small Linux) or Slax. You want something built intentionally for slow old computers with minimal ram. Or give up on linux entirely and convert the old computer into a standalone appliance like a firewall, router, or NAS using BSD.

[nitehawk]

I've got an old HP Vectra that I've successfully run different Puppy Linux versions on,...as well as Vector Linux 6. There's also such distros as "TinyMe",...(altho I've never tried that one)....and others. Check over at Distrowatch.

EDIT: I see that your ISP has a "Fair Access Policy",..and downloading would be a problem. I hear that Slitaz is only about 25 or 30 Mb! I'm on slow dialup,..and that would take me a little over an hour to download. (some of the Puppy Linux versions are also pretty small).

[nitehawk]

Compiz is now uninstalled (completely removed, via Synaptic)

That's great! Hope that helps...(AK Dave is right about that!)...And I don't think you can beat using Linux Mint for friendliness. Actually, I'm using Gloria with LXDE,......
OK,...I would REALLY recommend the LXDE "official" version of Mint,...(and not my "put-together" stuff). But I couldn't be happier with it. BTW,....I removed Compiz too.

[AK Dave]

Screensavers are all bogus. If its animated, its garbage. If you want to "save" your screen, you want to turn it off or have it go black (not quite the same).

The idea of keeping something animated or moving on a screen dates back to the ancient days of phosphor cathode ray tube monitors and the idea that, on particularly ancient hardware, you could "phosphor burn" an image pemenantly onto the screen. That doesn't happen with LCDs.

Some applications do depend on there being minimal compositing available in gnome, because compiz is so commonplace. But compiz is not the only compositor available. You can get minimal compositing out of xcompmgr.

The reason to uninstall compiz, rather than simply "disable" it, is because even when disabled some of the libs still get loaded. Thus, the minimal ram footprint of the entire system is slimmer (reduced) if you completely remove compiz. This is true whether you observe any speed difference or not. You should observe a memory difference in conky. So, yeah, you weren't USING compiz before but it was still there whether you wanted it or not. Now its gone entirely.

You want to trim Gloria down further. In what way? How are you measuring this? How will you know if you have succeeded? What are you measuring?

[Pierre]

why not wait until your isp policy is dormant ( a week maybe?) & then download flux-box ?.

while your are at it, a copy of puppy is a good cd to have lying around .

[AK Dave]

Puppy or Knoppix belongs in everyone's toolbox.

[Zwopper]

Debian netinstallwould probably do the trick as well!