Favourite light guest distros?

[ivar]

interesting thread;

I found an old HP Netbook at work, so compact its almost kinda cute But limited on computing power with 1GB ram and Intel Atom CPU.
Planning to use it as a ssh / web config console for work on switches etc. 1
I installed the Raspberry PI OS for x86 on it, thinking it should be pretty light. But it can't handle 1 instance of chromium before things grind to a halt, lol!

I'll check out some of the distro's here for sure when I get back from vacation.

I also got a tip that LXLE works good on these netbooks- a "remixed", lighter Lubuntu

[Kev]

Yes; the OS is only part of the picture, and typically not even the biggest part compared to the application(s). In many cases using a lightweight one can make very little difference indeed. That is one reason why I'm a little less evangelical than some about Linux running on near potatoes, as it tends to be taken too generally, though for specifically lightweight applications it is certainly still very helpful.

It is particularly amazing how once-humble browsers have now shot up in weight, in recent years. Light browsers can be used on some sites (likely including switch and modem interfaces), but on others the compatibility and general user experience can suffer. Trialling those (for the sites I visit) is also on the to-do list, to see what is actually needed.

[Kev]

Well, my plodding guest-distro trials have reached the end. After a certain lightness the benefits begin to diminish, paling into insignificance compared to the task in hand. So it turns out there isn't really much point in getting obsessed over saving tiny amounts of weight, and using ever more limited OSs or DEs.

For my hardware and purposes Debian with OpenBox is slightly lighter but performs about the same as MX-Linux with FluxBox. There isn't actually much less responsiveness using MX-Linux-Xfce or Linix-Lite, but there is some. Either way, I've been quite enjoying MX's Fluxbox implementation so am more than happy with that as a sweet spot. In fact after some customisation.. I may prefer it to some full DEs, which is quite a revelation. Plus of course there is still the option to boot into Xfce instead if wished - very nice to have both options available out of the box.

In fact it works so well that I may use MX-Linux as the host OS too; that makes a pretty light combo, whilst still being fully featured and convenient enough for me to like using. It looks like KVM might possibly benefit from system-d being enabled in MX, though so far I've just tested VirtualBox so can't really say, as yet.

Anyway, I'm unexpectedly happy with that result - not too bad to use at all

[ivar]

It is particularly amazing how once-humble browsers have now shot up in weight, in recent years. Light browsers can be used on some sites (likely including switch and modem interfaces), but on others the compatibility and general user experience can suffer.

I'd think bloated web pages are just as much the culprit as the browsers themselves. Web developers taking for granted that the end users are all on modern hardware and high speed connections.. ?

[Joss]

Web developers taking for granted that the end users are all on modern hardware and high speed connections.. ?

This.
Plus soy devs.

[Prsman]

My take,, nothing more. The lightest distro I found is ArchBang. I know you said no Arch. But the learning curve could be fun. It comes with a live mode, runs in VB, has a terminal installer. The bad. I had to install twice because grub would not install so I went with SysLinux as bootloader. Using it as a single app computer works great. As a daily driver, you would have to install a lot of apps.

Because its Arch you have to setup pacman after install, installer sets your local mirrors. Installed on a Acer Aspire One netbook.

[Kev]

Yes, I can see that would be a good solution, and probably quite rewarding too. Unfortunately though, I'm not up to the task... so I'm 'very' thankful that diminishing returns have kicked in (for my use) to save me from going there.

Though as a learning process that could be an entirely different picture, and a VM would be the ideal way to try it... Maybe one day.; there are quite a few Linuxy steps for me to take before reaching that point, really.

[Tolayon]

It might already have been part of those distros you've tried so far, but I still would like to give it a separate shout-out:

Raspbian X86, in recent editions renamed to "Raspberry Pi Desktop", is the standard-PC adaption of the Raspberry Pi's default OS. And since the oldest and lowest-spec RPis are on par with Windows XP era desktops, the X86 version of Raspbian should be perfect for older Hardware or lower-spec VMs.

Only thing to keep in mind is that so far it's really just a 32-Bit system, but 4GB maximum ram should be enough for the tasks to be fulfilled in this case.

[Kev]

Now that is an interesting idea; thanks for the suggestion! I'd not realised (or remembered) that there is an x86 version available now. Not sure if it is going to be just standard Debian with the Raspbian desktop, or if they've slimmed down more aspects of the OS too.. the download seems to be over 3Gb so perhaps the former.

Of course, either way it won't be able to lighten the internet (etc.) any more than other ultra-light distros. But I have a soft spot for Raspbian, after many hours playing with Raspberry-Pis, it would be fun to try it out as a VM!

Thanks again,
Kev

[ivar]

Not sure if it is going to be just standard Debian with the Raspbian desktop, or if they've slimmed down more aspects of the OS too.. the download seems to be over 3Gb so perhaps the former.

didn't look too deep into it on myy HP netbook but looks like it has the same software base as the regular ARM version. Kernel was 4.x , cant recall the exact version

[Tolayon]

Raspbian is despite all changes very close to standard Debian. It even displays the Debian swirl in Neofetch and identifies as version 10 Buster (which disappointed me a bit, since I hoped to see an Ascii Art raspberry).
Anyway, the current Kernel of Raspberry Pi OS is 4.19, the standard for Debian 10.

[Kev]

Thanks, thats good to know. I installed it on a VM and yes it did seem quite like Debian behind the raspbian desktop, rather than some massively lightened version. It turns out that whilst I like the raspbian desktop on a headless raspberry-pi, it doesn't fare quite so well on a more capable laptop where the competition is quite stiff. So I've pretty much settled on the debian-based MX-linux and Fluxbox, although Linix-Lite is working rather well for me, too.

I've also been trialling KVM/QEMU, thanks to the suggestion higher up. It is a lot more complicated to set everything up (than with VirtualBox) and it is a similar story for general usability. However, I'm finding the guests run rather better in it (on my hardware) so it is worth the investment in my case. It even does a fair job with Win10 guests, which I wasn't expecting; very pleasing.

[Kev]

What about a network install of Debian 10 and during the installation choose to add only something like openbox or fvwm, both Window managers and not full DEs. Doing that you can keep the installation very light and simple though you may need to learn how to use a WM rather than a full DE.

I have such an install of Debian 10 Testing using openbox but have also added a taskbar/panel to make it look more like a proper DE; it works very fast and effectively so is definitely worth looking at, though I have to tell you that I use KVM/QEMU instead of virtualbox, KVM being much better in my, and many other users' opinions.

Just wanted to say thanks again for these suggestions. I installed Debian Bullseye in KVM/QEMU with no desktop at all and then added openbox and a few more bits and bobs. It is about half the size in RAM as many 'light' xfce-based alternatives, and even quite a bit lighter than MX-fluxbox, but (much more importantly for my laptops) it is noticeably less taxing on the CPU when doing comparable tasks.

So, if I take the time to configure the GUI to something more usable than a blank screen, it is probably going to become my new go-to option for creating simple VMs. In fact for just running a browser or some other app(s) in isolation from the host system, I probably need do no more than add them to the right-click menu.

Great stuff.
Cheers,
Kev

[ajgreeny]

I am delighted that I could help you; Debian 10 is certainly something that I could live with if the Ubuntu family and all the other distros based on Ubuntu such as Mint, etc, etc, should disappear.

I have over the past 16 years of using Linux tried many different families of distros, eg OpenSuse, Fedora, Arcolonux, (an Arch based distro) but I always return to the Debian based ones, usually either Mint-Xfce or Xubuntu which work, not surprisingly, very similarly.
Debian itself is slightly more difficult to use as it is not quite so easy, (though it can be done), to add proprietary packages, but I can very easily manage everything I need to do in Debian, even using sudo with my user password instead of the root account/password which is the default.

[Kev]

Yes it has been very helpful, thank you! KVM/QEMU isn't as easy (for me) as VirtualBox so I may never have given it a fair go. But nor has it been too difficult to get working, and it looks like there is a lot that can be done with it as experience grows.

Similar story for Debian really; it isn't as easy (for me) to use as some, so I've not previously done much with it beyond basic installs with mainstream DEs - that then get left running unchanged. However the responsiveness and reliability have always been quite impressive, and looking into things for this little project has opened my eyes to more of its potential - and other possibilities for it too, were I to learn how.

No doubt doing so will (once again) renew my appreciation of Mint's contribution to usability, but that'll be staying firmly as my main OS so all good.