Favourite light guest distros?

[Kev]

My laptops have 8GB or 12GB RAM and 6th gen 2-core CPUs, which are more than adequate for my typical use. But if the resources are then split for VMs, lighter guest distros are helpful - for applications that aren't distro-specific anyway, such as running isolated browsers. (Of course, I could also use a light Host, but prefer Mint for my main OS; and it isn't actually heavy, after all).

Anyway, I've mainly used Q4OS before; looks a bit dated but is nicely solid and even has an auto-installer for VirtualBox's guest additions. But thought I'd experiment with some alternatives and so wondered what other people's favourite light guest distros are?

So far I've lined up FossaPup, Bodhi, Lubuntu, Sparky-Linux and Peppermint to compare - not all of which are amazingly light but moreso than normal, and sometimes excessive lightness can be a false economy. So I'd be interested in how people find those run as guests, but also any good alternatives; I've a little broadband allowance left, so could potentially download a few more to spin up and try.

Thanks,
Kev

[Pierre]

you could also look at MX_Linux
https://mxlinux.org/
as it's based upon an XFCE Desktop Environment.

[Kev]

Thanks! I've used MX-Linux quite a bit before (and like it) but I've not run it in a VM so that could certainly be worth a go. It perhaps isn't a hugely light distro, but certainly more so than many. It'd be especially interesting to compare with Sparky-Linux; many installation options there.

[Flemur]

So far I've lined up FossaPup, Bodhi, Lubuntu, Sparky-Linux and Peppermint to compare - not all of which are amazingly light but moreso than normal, and sometimes excessive lightness can be a false economy.

You don't need a new distro to "get light", just use a different DE (window manager, really) and shut off auto-updates and such; I can make Mint as least as light as any of those (and certainly lighter than Peppermint, Bodhi and Lubuntu cuz I checked!) by replacing the DE with fluxbox (or openbox, or probably i3 and others) - so can you! It take some fiddling to get started, but is still probably easier than a whole new distro and you retain the option of logging in with the original DE, so the "replacing" is temporary. (ps_mem.py shows fluxbox using only 7.5MB memory; a bare xterm uses 6.3M)

Edit: of course it's not "light" in terms of disk space, just memory and cpu.

[Kev]

Yes, I should have mentioned that disk space is no issue (within reason), so that would work in concept.

Though in practice, you're 'much' more skilled than I am. Obviously I can do some basic things without problem, but when attempting to change more fundamental workings I quite often manage to mess something up (including changing the DE in Mint, for some reason). Or else I achieve a tiny reduction in 'weight' at the expense of significant performance, which more than negates it.

So generally I prefer choosing distros that are already well suited to whichever purpose I have at the time; often they don't require altering too much, or removing/installing features that might actually be useful to me. This is a key reason that I'm such a fan of Mint for normal desktop use; it is already so thoughtfully designed and configured for the purpose that even I can simply get on with using it.

That said sometimes guided installations allow one to choose quite a lot of options (before the system is automatically installed), those can work okay for me. Also Sparky-Linux is something of an exception; it anticipates my ineptitude by supplying quite a lot of customising scripts to run out of the box. I've generally had more luck changing default DEs in Debian bases than in Ubuntu ones, which may or may not mean anything.

[linux_trojan]

In the good ole days, SlackWare was the OS of choice if you wanted to go light. You could select only the software that you wanted. I ran linux without a desktop back then, just a black terminal. I havent used SlackWare in 20 years. They may still have those options

[Kev]

Heh-heh, that sounds intimidating.. I shouldn't really be allowed near a terminal even on a good day!

But yes if (somewhat easier) installers have minimal-install options that does work for me. They may as well have a desktop or window-manager though, because I'll be wanting to run normal desktop programmes in any case.

[Kev]

Anyway, I've spent a very tedious several hours today installing various small distros in VirtualBox, ranging between about 1/4GB to 1/2GB of initial RAM use...

As expected, some of them tax the host laptop a little less than others, but when more than just the OS itself is being run the differences are pretty minimal. In fact smaller doesn't necessarily correlate with responsiveness either, as some of the slightly larger distros seem better able to cope with heavier tasks, such as youtube playback (all had the codecs installed). So after all that, it seems I could probably just use any of them with similar results.

But taking the smaller differences into account, so far I think Q4OS+Trinity is my favourite for just running basic apps in a VM with minimal overhead. Tiny, simple and stable and plays quite well with VirtualBox (though the guest-additions prompt that I remembered doesn't seem to appear any more). Especially if just doing something lightweight it really doesn't demand much at all. Bodhi was similarly small but I personally didn't get on quite so well with its desktop and resolution in virtualbox, and FossaPup seemed to be going a bit too far for my purposes.

For more normal desktop use in a VM I'd perhaps want a more fully featured DE, and there doesn't seem to be much to split those that i tried: Mint-Xfce, Sparky-Xfce, Lubuntu, Linux-Lite, Q4OS+Plasma and MX-Linux were all similarly responsive even though they vary a bit in RAM use. MX grumbled a bit about things, but still worked fine. Mint-Xfce insisted on a slightly bigger virtual disk than the others so (depending on how many VMs I want to keep), I may consider it for the Host OS instead.

As an aside, I've been exposed to many desktops and installation + setup wizards in short order. Whilst some of them are even nominally the same, it has reminded me what a good job the Mint team do to customise the interface and other aspects of the user experience.

[JerryF]

I have Manjaro Xfce in a VM and it's light.

[Kev]

Thats a good suggestion, thanks! There's probably no need to investigate further distros just for being light, but almost all those I've tried have been in the Debian family; it could be useful to have other options (without having to deal with Arch or similar).

Cheers,
Kev

[JerryF]

Then Manjaro is out. It's Arch-based.

[Kev]

Then Manjaro is out. It's Arch-based.

Yes, but thats fine. I meant not having to deal with Arch specifically, rather than as a base. I've used Manjaro before, and it was considerably easier (for me, anyway), quite good really. Its really the complicated installation that put me of arch, as it would the above suggestion of slackware.

[ajgreeny]

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.

[Kev]

Thanks for the suggestion! I've never run Debian with just window managers, so that would be something different to try. I don't get on with the keyboard-driven tiling window managers, but the floating style of things could be quite good.

I will have to wait until my broadband quota renews, though. I thought there was some to spare, but of course all the ISOs I'd downloaded then needed updating after install. I swear some of them must have replaced 99% of the original install! The network install would be better in that respect, too.

Cheers,
Kev

[Joss]

Have you tried Puppy Linux?

[Kev]

Kind of, I went with FossaPup on this occasion. It was pretty good, but my hardware is sufficient to allow slightly more without really noticing, so personally I preferred Q4OS. Nothing at all wrong with fossapup though!

[Kev]

...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.

I've been reading up on KVM since you mentioned it; looks like it could be worth a go too. I've only ever used VirtualBox so have nothing to compare it against - possibly aside from Qubes which I used for a while, but thats very different in all sorts of ways.

Cheers,
Kev

[JerryF]

Then Manjaro is out. It's Arch-based.

Yes, but thats fine. I meant not having to deal with Arch specifically, rather than as a base. I've used Manjaro before, and it was considerably easier (for me, anyway), quite good really. Its really the complicated installation that put me of arch, as it would the above suggestion of slackware.

Actually, I found installation of Manjaro quite easy. No harder than Mint.

[Kev]

Yes, that is what I was saying. As a distro Manjaro seems quite distinct from Arch; the user-experience is significantly different in spite of similar underpinnings. So when I refer to Arch I'm not meaning Manjaro or visa versa.

[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.

Thanks again for this suggestion. It reminded me that MX-Linux (which I have already set up) has the in-built option to log into FluxBox (instead of Xfce) from the log-in screen. Obviously that makes it lighter, but by more than I'd expected. I'm not familiar with using FluxBox but it is already fine for launching applications, which is mostly all I'd want from a VM. Plus of course there is still the option to log into Xfce if/when wished.

So I really like the principle and clearly will need to have a play with window managers now, to see what suits me. Plus try out KVM, to see what the differences are with VirtualBox. For testing purposes, I've decided to use a rather modest laptop, with a core-M CPU, which should make performance differences more obvious.

Cheers,
Kev