So, as you may have read already for the first time ever I’m really digging in a checking out smaller, more lightweight Linux distributions. This whole experiment was inspired by a friend asking for recommendations on what to do with an older computer, but it has been a fun experiment.

I mentioned in the previous post a few of the distributions I have already tried. Most of these distributions were created from the ground up to run optimally on lower-end or older hardware. Today, I am going to look at the Fedora XFCE Spin. The Fedora XFCE spin is just what it sounds like – Fedora, with XFCE, which in turn has lower system requirements than GNOME or KDE, enabling Fedora to run on less hardware than the default “spins”, however as I’ve learned, XFCE doesn’t have to just be for old or low end hardware, it can be a viable desktop for anyone on any hardware, and I never realized until now just now pleasant it can be to work with.

The Fedora XFCE spin is available as an installable LiveCD. To install, simply download the torrent, burn the .iso to CD and but up the target computer with the CD. There are both i686 (x86-32) and PowerPC 64-bit versions of the distribution, so either a PC would be a good target machine or even an older pre-intel Mac would be a great machine to try out Fedora XFCE on – especially since Apple has now official dropped PowerPC from Snow Leopard – get an awesome free up-to-date and quite speedy Operating System for your older Mac!

The Fedora XFCE desktop is set-up nicely in a single panel design with a single bottom panel. I’ve often found a single, bottom panel – no matter what desktop environment – is easier for a new Linux user coming from Windows to adjust too. Also the artwork is very nice, and the distribution looks very professional.

Looking around the distro, there is an excellent package set installed – including smaller, more lightweight applications such as AbiWord and GNUmeric Spreadsheet in place of OpenOffice.org. Although Firefox is installed, Midori is also installed (along with Firefox). Midori is part of XFCE’s “goodies” package but is an awesome, lightweight web-kit based web-browser. There is easily an appropriate application pre-installed for practically any use an average user would need. The only exception, unlike Ubuntu and many other distributions, Fedora doesn’t include any non-free bit by default, however it’s very simple to set up the RPM Fusion repository, and also be sure to check out Mauriat Miranda’s excellent Fedora Installation Gude which will guide you the rest of the way through getting anything you would ever need.

Lately, I’ve become a real fan of Fedora, and the XFCE spin is no exception. If you’ve grown tired of Xubuntu and want a more lightweight XFCE implementation built upon a solid, innovative Linux distribution, please check out the Fedora XFCE spin – I do not think you will be disappointed.

I had a co-worker stop by my desk yesterday and asked a few questions around what kind of an operating system would be appropriate for an approximately 7 year old computer. I naturally mentioned Linux too him, however the only lightweight distro I could think of on the spot was Xubuntu. I know there are many others available, and I wanted to be able to make a solid and educated recommendation to him, so I decided to use an aging Pentium III/512MB RAM based notebook I have to test out some “lightweight” distro’s that pack a heavyweight punch.

First up – the one I thought of first – Xubuntu. At first thought Xubuntu seems like a solid recommendation simply because it is based on the ever popular Ubuntu, which means should he run into trouble, there is plenty of help and documentation available. The problem with Xubuntu however, is although it is based on the great, lightweight XFCE desktop environment, it seems to have a great many GNOME features/components installed, along with “full” heavyweight applications such as OpenOffice.org. Honestly, I was disappointed in it’s performance on the PIII system, and honestly it really didn’t feel that much snappier than the full Ubuntu GNOME desktop.

After this first failed attempt, I decided to hit up DistroWatch to see if I could find any other lightweight alternatives. After doing a quick search, here is what I came up with. A few of these I’d heard of before, and a few I hadn’t.

Absolute Linux – Small, light-weight Slackware based distro – runs IceWM/ROX for Window/File management.

Puppy Linux Very small, light weight – has many applications, but doens’t seem like a good “desktop” choice for day-to-day use.

SliTaz GNU/Linux – Another very small (independently developed) distro – designed to run well in 256MB of RAM. Uses JWM for Window management, and only takes up 80MB of HDD Space. I really liked this little distro – however I think my co-worker could probably use a little more distro on his hardware, however I’m going to keep this in mind for a project.

Vector Linux – This is another Slackware based distro, and one I had heard of before in regards to being a good “lightweight” distro. Personally, and no offense to anyone, I really didn’t care for it for no other reason than it didn’t “feel” very polished, and the look and artwork felt very amateurish too me. Again…just personal opinion.

Zenwalk – Yet another Slackware based distro (notice a trend?). This felt much more like a default XFCE setup than Xubuntu did, and I like the minimalist philosophy of only having one application per task installed. This distro is definitely in the running.

Wolvix – Guess what? Yup – you guessed it yet another Slackware based distro. Seemed very nice and polished. Definately in the running, however it felt a little out of date. Didn’t try the pre-release Beta – only 1.1.0.

These are all I’ve gotten around to trying so far. All in all, I’ve been really impressed at what was out there in this category. I do have a few more distro’s I want to try – mainly just some mainstream distro’s with light-weight Window Managers and/or application sets. So for I am also plannig to try Fedora, openSUSE and Debian with both XFCE and LXDE to see how they feel compared to distro’s designed from the ground up to be “lightweight”.

As many who have followed this blog for any amount of time can tell you, I’ve been a Linux junkie for years. Recently, while I was under the weather with an illness I simply lost interest – I had no desire to keep up with it any longer. Well, now I’m better than ever, and my old addiction is back.

Please don’t get me wrong, I like Windows 7 – I think finally Microsoft has come up with a true and worthy successor to Windows XP, and I’m no Microsoft or Windows hater by any means; it’s just that I prefer a UNIX style operating system. By day I work on a Mac, and by night, I want a Linux box.

I’ve also been a chronic distro-hopper, however I always seemed to default back to Ubuntu. Before I got sick, and while I still had a little desire to mess with all things Linux, I had started dabbling in Fedora a little, and I was impressed with what I saw. When I decided a few days ago to reload Linux on my boxes here at home, I decided to opt for Fedora 12 over Ubuntu 9.10. Why? There are a lot of reason, but here are a few:

I want to learn the “Red Hat” way of doing things. I’m very fluent in maintaining a Debian style system, and I have a fair amount of experience with openSUSE/SuSE, but my experience with Fedora/Red Hat really stops around Red Hat 7.2.

Red Hat is right up the road from me – just a short 2 1/2 hour drive and I could be in the Red Hat headquarters, so it feels like my “Home Distro” or “Local Distro” (just as French users love Mandriva).

Fedora, from what I’ve seen so far seems to be able to somehow combine “Up To Date” with “Stable”.

Fedora “feels” faster than Ubuntu.

Fedora does a great job with contributing upstream, and also staying true to upstream defaults in it’s packages…GNOME looks like GNOME, for example.

Fedora, using the Nouveau open source Nvidia driver, gives me an excellent experience – The awesome Plymouth boot animation works as expected, and I can configure my dual screen set-up without having to download and install the proprietary Nvidia driver.

I can come closer to having a true “F/OSS” system. I do have a couple of “dirty” packages to give me .mp3 support (I can’t/don’t have time to convert all of my music to .ogg) and I do have the Adobe Flash Plugin 10 Alpha for Linux x86_64 installed.

Everyone I have come in contact with in the Fedora Community during my few very brief experiences with Fedora has been super friendly, super helpful and welcomed me. I look forward to becoming a part of that community as well.

Also, whether your first time trying Linux, or just your first time trying Fedora, I highly recommend   Mauriat Miranda’s excellent Installation Guide.

I’ve only tried Fedora for a few times in the past, and never really for a truly extended period of time, but I have to say, Fedora 12 is not only the best and most polished Fedora I’ve used, it is the most polished Linux distro I’ve used, hands down. I now have it loaded on both my Dell Precision 690 and my new Precision T7500 as well as an older Dell notebook. The T7500 is my main workstation, the 690 is going to be dedicated to hosting KVM Virtual Machines, and the Laptop is just a test box – too old for anything super useful.

It feels good to be using Linux again – - AND enjoying it!