PSA: When people ask you "What distro should I use?", try pointing them here - eviltoast

I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.

https://distrochooser.de/

There are some similar sites to this one, but since I’m not familiar with them, I won’t post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.

  • iortega@lemmy.eus
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    1 year ago

    I have lately experienced a problem with my family. We have good computers, kind of bad computers and really bad and old computers. I can install a really cool distro on good computers, but not on the bad ones. I need a lighter DE on bad computers and a distro ready for old computers. But my family can’t afford to learn how to use the 3 of them. So what is the solution here?

    I’m thinking about installing the same distribution on all of them so that they don’t have to get used to a new one every time they jump from one to another computer. I think that will be antiX.

      • Emperor Palpapeen@mastodon.social
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        1 year ago

        @stevedidWHAT @iortega Your best bet is to use a distro that allows you to choose everything you install (at least your desktop experiences) so that you can install the lightest DE/WM you can. I would suggest something like CachyOS or Reborn, that have choosers and then choose something like openbox. Archcraft is also quite nice and light. I run it on an old machine and it runs beautifully.

    • SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      How bad is really bad?

      AntiX is a good choice. Other option is a usb3 drive for each family member so everyone has their own portable AntiX on a stick.

      MX is the related project with a more standard install and could be worth a look, the Fluxbox option should be quite light.

      Each user could have a personal AntiX system on persistent usb3 and each system could have a bare metal MX Linux install. Just see what wins out via natural selection over time.

      LXQT is another option for a full desktop environment that will run on a potato. If family members are mainly just users and you are admin, the base OS may not matter much. They could switch between a potato running Alpine and a good system running Fedora and if they are just logging into LXQT to launch browser, office, email etc the internal system plumbing is not gonna concern them.

      • iortega@lemmy.eus
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        1 year ago

        I like your solution! Thank you.

        About my computers: I have 2 1GB RAM laptops. One has 20-25 years the other one 10-15. I have tried Puppy and antiX in these. And I personally prefer antix on them. Another 4GB laptop that might be around 8 but is pretty trash as it was a gift from our bank (it was able to run Elementary OS, it was fine). A kind of old computer but with 4GB RAM (Think I have XFCE or Cinnamon Mint on it). And a big boy with 16GB and a pretty good CPU. And the oldest computers are used the least often (maybe once a year) while the middle computer might be used 20 times a year and the last one maybe once every week.

        So I believe something like antix would work, but I’m not sure if the USB way would. Seems like they would lose their pendrives the second day.

        • SnailMagnitude@mander.xyz
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          1 year ago

          I’d put the 1gb ram laptops to server/kodi/retroarch/something mode and focus on the three decent machines for anything that requires a modern web browser, or add some ram. Porteus might be worth a shot if you’ve not tried it and want to push the Firefox on a potato idea.

          I don’t think this is a one OS fits all situation, unless maybe Gentoo.