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I have a friends previously xp machine, that is about 10 years old. It only boots through CD but I've made two different CD-R's with Lubuntu and it won't take. I do get mini-iso to load, and have installed Lubuntu, but is there a more efficient desktop than Lubuntu-desktop?

The computer has 256mb RAM, and when I had Lubuntu-Desktop installed half of it was used up by the desktop. The machine loads Chrome well enough and plays youtube videos barely, but getting movies to play through xbmc/vlc is almost impossible (even logging out and logging in directly to xbmc).

So is there any other desktop I can install other than sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop that would allow the computer to browse/watch movies.

Korkel
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Michaeljwjr
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2 Answers2

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The lightest desktop you can install from mini.iso or from a full iso is Lubuntu (LXDE). But if you have installed an Ubuntu desktop (or Lubuntu desktop etc.) you can switch to IceWM, JWM, i3 or other very light window managers.

I would recommend IceWM as a good alternative because there where a debian menu preinstalled and it is very easy to install.

Here is a memory usage overview:

enter image description here Soure: A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops on l3net

To install IceWM run this:

sudo apt-get install icewm

More info https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IceWM

LXDE vs IceWM

enter image description here enter image description here

To install JWM run this:

sudo apt-get install jwm

To customize the JWM menu you have to create this file $HOME/.jwmrc

A good jwmrc example file: Link

To install i3 run this in a terminal:

# login to the root shell for one 'echo' command
sudo -i
echo "deb http://debian.sur5r.net/i3/ $(lsb_release -c -s) universe" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
logout
# we're back our user account
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --allow-unauthenticated install sur5r-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install i3

Source: brentwalther.net

i3 user guide -> http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html

TuKsn
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I have an old XP machine with 256 MB, and I use XFCE, so Xubuntu would probably be your best option.

Tim
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  • could I just type: sudo apt-get install xfce and be fine? – Michaeljwjr May 30 '14 at 16:25
  • @Michaeljwjr that's what I did, but I thought that it being just XFCE would make it faster, there are still some parts of it that slow down mine. – Tim May 30 '14 at 16:45
  • XFCE (Xubuntu) has higher system requirements (512MB RAM) than LXDE (Lubuntu) and should be run slower on such an machine. – TuKsn May 30 '14 at 16:50
  • @Xubu my mistake, I thought it was the other way round! – Tim May 30 '14 at 17:07