Super Light-weight linux

[msparsons]

So my sisters lappy is pretty much dead (Acer Aspire 5100)...at the moment I have got JoliOS running on it to play videos (SD) with VLC with moderate success (odd freeze). I'll start running some tests on it this evening probably, but it's getting on a bit so not expecting miracles!

I was wondering if anyone could think of anything any lighter? Or is there a decent media centre distro? I've had a little look but don't really know much about it. Oh also I have a lil USB IR remote which I would like to be able to use.

Cheers!

[joker3327]

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=damnsmall

[uyr]

as above, puppy is very light :)

[DoubleTop]

ubuntu netbook edition rocks :)

[iGoD ReLeNtLeS]

http://xbmc.org/

XBMC is a dedicated distro to multi-media. I believe someone here was making a custom build using it. I'm not to familiar with it myself.

[jointhedotz]

another vote for puppy here, simple and light

there is xbmc lite as the above poster mentioned, if it's purely to play media then that should be ok, no proper os access though apart from through terminal, may be better to use puppy and add the xbmc program

[msparsons]

thanks for the ideas guys! will be running a few liveCDs tonight...should probably see what's up with the thing first...but that doesn't sound as fun xD

[Bat]

http://xbmc.org/

XBMC is a dedicated distro to multi-media. I believe someone here was making a custom build using it. I'm not to familiar with it myself.

The live version is based on Ubuntu 10.04.
But it's also an app for Windows, Mac, Linux, AppleTV and iPad :-)

[Ice Tea]

puppylinux

or if you want a modular approach where you choose what linux programs you wish to have installed without having to compile them or configure them.

http://www.slax.org

[msparsons]

hmm had a little play with XBMCLive last night :) didn't have that much time, and I'm not sure if it offers the kind of features I want. UI is nice and simple, videos play fine and all but I was wondering if there is capabilities for online video sources (iPlayer and the like). Will have to have more of a play, but seems like a positive start. I'm also tempted to either take the screen off (it's pretty much unusable) or get a lil media centre case for it (or make one xD )

[Dukey]

get a lil media centre case for it (or make one xD )

Make one! and post a log of the project here! :)

[msparsons]

I don't think I could seriously make one...unless I somehow discretely pretended it was stuff for work and do it here xD Don't really have the tools needed...If I was gonna do something though, It would be awesome to mount it on the back of the monitor as a all in one media screenamabob! XD

[superlattice09]

either puppy or ubuntu netbook version works fine.

[sb89]

Arch linux is lightweight if you want it to be. You basically start off with the base packages then add anything else you need on top of them.

Not really a suggestion if you're a beginner with Linux though, as it can be quite frustrating.

[Ratty]

ive used Slax linux cos its pretty light and works on most computers ive tried it on (you can also make it live on a USB/Sd card)

[Superewza]

Slitaz? Arch if you're competent enough.

But looking at the specs i wouldn't have said that's really the sort of machine that needs a lightweight distro. Dual core and 1GB RAM? Should be able to handle pretty much any flavour of linux nicely :)

[Burn-IT]

I use Puppy Linux. The latest ones are built fro the Ubuntu packages and can happily use those as well as it's own.
It is designed to be as light as possible yet still have full features. It is also designed to run as a "live" system (from disk as well) and can be "installed" on a Windows partition if need be as well as pretty well any other device.
I use it on my emergency USB stick and as a host for Virtualbox - so I can use a complete stand alone XP from USB without touching any hard drives.

[Rune]

I cam across one recently that may be worth a look:

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

'CrunchBang is a Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window manager (http://openbox.org/), it is highly customisable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance.'

When I tried it out I added both lxde and kde to see if itwould break, ran fine on each of the three DE's

[Ozzy Powers]

I use it on my emergency USB stick and as a host for Virtualbox - so I can use a complete stand alone XP from USB without touching any hard drives.

Thats amazing! I just stumbled upon your post :D I been asking about a related issue in the windows area and this could be the answer! Thanks:thumb:

[Burn-IT]

I do a lot of multibooting and trying different devices.
I am really a Windows (well actually long before PCs, but that is a different tale) person who does a lot of support and I needed a machine that I can take to clents premises and check different OS's and devices.
I have many different set-ups here including at least three 98se installs.
Puppy is nice to use as a Host for VirtualBox as it can easily be tested using a hard drive and then easily transferred, the way I use it (Frugal Install)
The disk that I mentioned is a 30Gb Asus Eee USB hard drive (about half the size of a smart phone) that is partitioned as a 12Gb NTFS for the virtual drives and 18Gb Fat32 for Two Puppies with Vbox and Wine, Hiren Boot CD on USB, loads of Windows drivers, Utilities, Portable Aps and my personal files.