Lightweight OS system (Ubuntu 12.04 LXDE Desktop)

[Mopar1973Man]

So I got bored a bit today and figure I would challenge myself to how lightweight I could make my PC without losing any function to it. I'm proud to announce I'm running everything on less than 512MB of RAM out of 4GB. Like right now as I type this message I'm using 472MB of ram for FireFox, Conky, and the Linux OS.



Now thats running lightweight compared to Windows OS.

Here is there web site...
http://lxde.org/

Now I feel like I've got a Racing CPU in this beast now with all the extra RAM and CPU horsepower...

[ezoliver]

I run ubuntu on a few older laptops also. I love it!

[Rogan]

Damn, Mike! That IS lightweight!

[Mopar1973Man]

Let me breakout the DSL (Damn Small Linux) and we'll get down below 16 MB to operate. Been there done that but everything is non-standard then browser, file manager, terminal is very limited.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

From DSL site...

• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
• Boot from a USB pen drive
• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
• Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
• Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
• Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

But there is a operation system out there for all those older motherboards. I've got a few parts laying around I could build a awesome DSL Linux box...

What's truely amazing is that I'm up to date with current softwares, and capable of trimming the fat off the system and making it as lightweight as possible still got all the horsepower for games. So far in the entire summer of running Ubuntu now I've not had to use the swap file at all Everything always fits in RAM compared to bloated Windows that creates a 4-6 GB swap file and all the RAM is soaked up for caching or other BS functions that are not needed.

OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LXDE Desktop
CPU: AMD 2.7 GHz (clocked down to 1.0 GHz)



What turely amazing is my CPU is not fully clocked up. I'm running the AMD Cool & Quiet so my CPU is running well below max at about 1.0 GHz and no slowness or nothing. Very quick and and cool on CPU temps. More or less light the Cummins the lighter you make it the less fuel and Cooler EGT's are... So with Linux its just the lightest software around bar none...

Now with Guild War, FireFox and Conky running...

[Mopar1973Man]

Update... Aug 22 2012 I've made it even lighter weight and even more powerful than Windows... (Evil Laughter!) All the CPU power I want only using 271 MB of RAM booted to the desktop and absolutely ZERO swap file everything is ran from memory...

[Rogan]

Last night, I finally converted my wife's Acer Aspire laptop from XP to Ubuntu 12.04LTS.

The BCM4311 wireless was a little bit of a chore, but I got it working..

[Mopar1973Man]

I'm back at it again... I'm going to convert a friend here from Windows to Ubuntu. I got him fired up with Ubuntu software install disk so he can load it and play with in the CD. He's also getting rather tried of the crashing Windows 7 problems and virus problems.

[ISX]

I'm back at it again... I'm going to convert a friend here from Windows to Ubuntu. I got him fired up with Ubuntu software install disk so he can load it and play with in the CD. He's also getting rather tried of the crashing Windows 7 problems and virus problems.

I don't get that. I have never got a virus that I didn't intentionally get (opened email attachment once..). As far as crashing, I have never had windows 7 crash.. When I put linux on the same computer, it froze up a lot. So either it's his misunderstanding of windows and my misunderstanding of linux causing all the issues, or they both have equal issues.. I cannot see myself switching. I have tried....but I can get more done on windows. Someone said the same stuff about windows 8 a week ago. I installed the preview release (free) and used it for I think 3 days. What a piece of crap. I will never, EVER, switch to that thing as long as I live.

[Rogan]

Last night, the wife said "This is so much faster than Vista."

Last week, I switched my son's laptop over to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

He had a couple programs (Autism stimulation stuff) that were Windows-based. I installed them and got them running under Wine app and he's good to go.


Ryan, I think you just had a little bad luck with it.

[ISX]

Last night, the wife said "This is so much faster than Vista."

Last week, I switched my son's laptop over to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

He had a couple programs (Autism stimulation stuff) that were Windows-based. I installed them and got them running under Wine app and he's good to go.


Ryan, I think you just had a little bad luck with it.

Ehhhhhhhh, I had ubuntu and fedora on 3 computers, sucked every time. It's not for me lol.

[Rogan]

Tonight, I dug out an old Toshiba L55 Satellite laptop that I've had for a few years. It originally came with Vista Basic. In about 40 minutes time, I now have it up and running on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (I'm posting this from it, as well.)

I'd like to explore this Conky stuff, but I've not really the evening time to get it fancy like Mike has proven to do..

My Prodigy...

[Mopar1973Man]

Here is a few others...

[Mopar1973Man]

So Rogan anything I can help you with on the Conky Adventure?

[Rogan]

I never did get it to work properly. And last night, I didn't even touch the laptop. Maybe this weekend, if I have time after working.

When I was running the lm-sensors command, it just took for-ev-er, and never did finish before I went to bed. I had to cancel out, as there are many "user inputs" needed during the search for repositories or something..

[Mopar1973Man]

Might have to selectively pick through the lm-sensors command might be hanging the system probing for a sensors that may not exist.

On laptops the most you'll get is the CPU temperature any ways as for the battery level feature that comes from the APCI so you might have to add appropriate packages for the battery level feature to work.

Like I told you on the phone that last time you create a Linux monster... Even when the web site got hack I knew all my high powered web tools are over on the Windows side. I refused to even boot it up. I hunted around for Linux software to do the same task. Funny how a simple app like Gedit or Leafpad is just fine for HTML editing.

[Rogan]

It's funny that I got you started on Linux, and now you run circles around me with it.. Maybe has something to do with the fact that I work on them as a job, and not a hobby..
Once I get home, I don't really care to bang away much on the bash$. LOL

Here's what I'm currently running.. GKrellM System Monitor..

Notice the amount of processes in the near "out-of-the-box" configuration on this Toshiba L355 Notebook...



- - - Updated - - -

I think I told you (or youve already learned) about "top", which is an equivelent of sorts, to Windblows' task manager..

Well, go to terminal:

sudo apt-get install htop

Install that, then run

htop

I think you'll like that much better than 'top', if you use that.

[Mopar1973Man]

Hey Rogan next time wrap CODE tags around it then I can just cut and paste to the terminal. Lazy man's way...

Thanks for the tidbit...

UPDATE:

That's sweet compared to top thank you!

[Rogan]

My bad...