Lightweight Distros

Review of lightweight Linux distros

Over the weekend I reviewed the following Linux lightweight distros:

Lubuntu, Manjaro, Madbox (all from the respective stable build repos)

My requirements were quite unique, wanted to setup Linux pc mainly to enable my 50inch Panasonic Viera LED TV 1080p to go Smart! needs to be quick, should have a bare minimum software pre-loaded, should be based on Ubuntu with community support, important when we look at Open-source software.

Well... finally I unleashed a mean, quick Smart TV thanks to Madbox Linux which is based on Ubuntu.

The PC is very old P4 age, with 1gb ram, NVidia video card with 128MB almost redundant with VGA output to TV's HDMI works okay.

Getting the resolution right was quite a painful experience with Manjaro or Lubuntu with the latter 13.04 version which used LXDE desktop.Though I chose the right drivers for Nvidia but still was not enjoyable it was relatively slow to load.

The problem was not the drivers it helped to output to what it thought the right resolution for a 1080p screen but my couch is quite far from the TV at least 13-14ft I just couldn't read from that distance (works well for YouTube or movies though), so my goal was to lower the resolution and for that add a specific resolution of 1280x720 to the settings.

With Manjaro I went with XFCE edition getting the screen resolution right was even more painful, Manjaro is based on Arch Linux which is a lightweight build. Tried https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xrandr but just could nail it to load when the system boots. Finally loaded ARandR which is great little tool by this man http://christian.amsuess.com/tools/arandr/ worked wonders.

I gave up with Manjaro when I lost sound all I did was I tried to control volume on the remote keyboard!

We all know Linux is not for the impatient.

Finally Madbox Linux, it's unbelievably quick, it's lightweight openbox desktop is the thing you need for a OldPC with TV! with ARandR the resolution is all sorted now, it's loaded with Chrome(ium) which is good but you can load Firefox.

Would recommend this distro more specifically for the ease of use and openbox, have the advantages of Ubuntu.




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