Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Xfce is the best bang for your buck. Lxde isn't much lighter and I never enjoyed using it. I think Lxqt is somewhere between them.
I second xfce. Stable, lightweight, easy to use, and modern (enough).
Almost everything that's not Gnome can be considered lightweight, to be honest.
Could try openbox, its old but works. Highly customisable but still lightweight.
+1 for openbox. It’s fast and lightweight.
A bit late to the party, but especially for an older machine I'll take Openbox any day. I still have some low range 2015 laptops running just fine where something like KDE would choke them up completely.
I liked messing around with openbox but I'm very aesthetically challenged so I never managed to make it look good. Any tips?
Find someone else's config that you like online.
i3wm is pretty light on resources
Probably LXQt or MATE
Maybe dwm or dwl. I'm a hyprland user but this would be the minimum you should go for
Arch user here. Never had any problems with Sway and Hyprland, but still... ratpoison is what you are looking for.
Well that's a disgusting yet easy to remember name
Icewm, antix linux uses it and whole system on startup uses ~200mb ram
Used to have an Eee PC running CrunchBang (Debian + Openbox). Really lightweight and simple (some potential for customization), and it was enough to carry me all the way through university.
I loved CrunchBang. Wish it was still around.
There is crunchbangplusplus. Check it out and relive it.
Oh dang. I’m going to have to give that a spin.
On my old asus eeepc I used to have arch with i3 as a tilling window manager for a while. It was taking a bit to get used to but once I worked it out and configured it how I liked it, it was fantastic. Used it for several years until I had to write my thesis and needed something stable for my operating system.
for lightweight, i would recommend LXQt (qt) or LXDE (gtk). XFCE also seems pretty nice.
also, you could check out i3 and bspwm if you a tiling window manager.
i would've recommended sway, but it sounds like you didn't have a very nice experience with hyprland, and that could be because it uses wayland.
Try qtile, it's got great documentation and is relatively easy to configure, as it's configuration is done in python.
Lxqt
I have the exact same netbook and specs and I installed fedora lxde a couple months ago just to see how it would go and..it's pretty decent performance if you use it just to browse the web or text editing.. Installed vscodium and it got laggy as hell though ... Had to use geany instead
I am old school and still use Fluxbox for that kind of work load. Wish they had Wayland support!
why not Dwm ?
Is you specifically want a wayland compositor like hyprland, you can try sway or qtile. I've also heard good things about river but never used it myself.
dwm (or dwm-flexipatch if you dislike patching manually)
- This or any tiling window manager, because small screen. If dwm is hard for you, try with bellow options.
- i3wm was my first, but now I'm happy with my actual dwm config.
- Awesomewm starts as a dwm fork, but with all included and easier for beginners.
- There are a lot more, but I start with this.
You get better screen use space and smaller memory requirements.
But your real big problem, is going to be web browser, all of them consume insane amount of RAM because of web bloat, and always is going to be a problem. Just 1 tab open and a lot of patience.
My old netbook had just 1GB ram, later I did an upgrade to 2GB and was the maximum possible.
i guess the best you could go for web browser lightweightness would be qutebrowser, or maybe emacs' eww?
Maybe netsurf, Dillo or w3m/links, if you don't need JavaScript, if you do, you need at least 4GB RAM to have a better web experience.
Today's web is very RAM hungry (bloat).