2021-11-24

Quick Survey of Some Lightweight Linux Distributions

On an ASUS E203M

Busenlabs Lithium

Installed fine but kernel (4.9?) would immediately shutdown after decrypting the root volume due to incorrect thermal readings. Was not able to disable this via thermal.nocrt=1 boot param

 

AntiX 21

Live system did not have working mouse. Did not proceed to installation as I didn't want to be stuck with having to fix the mouse issue.

 

bodhi linux HWE 6.0.0

Mouse works in the live system, I like the Enlightenment lineage. No GUI setting to disable tap-to-click on the touchpad, resolved via synclient MaxTapTime=0 so not a deal breaker. However despite being lightweight there was noticable GUI lag when running the installer. 

 

Q4OS Gemini, Trinity

I like the idea of Trinity Desktop and they are using a decently recent kernel as well (5.10). Installed fine but wifi doesn't connect to the 5G network. Worked fine on 2.4G. Had an annoying issue where Alt-Space didn't work, giving me ISO_Next_Group. Fixed it by setting via xkb options to use "both ctrl at the same time" to switch languages which then allowed alt-space to work as intended.

Systems feels really snappy and the retro look is not bad. Sticking with this one for now.