Here are some suggested conclusions as to the best software packages to use. The aim is a lightweight Linux (fast, low resource use) which is usable for everyone.
Some are drawn from online discussions, such as the Lightweight Linux Network[1] on Identi.ca - in these cases, add the source url between square brackets after the suggestion. This enables people to check out the context of the discussion.
Where there is any controversy, choices should be discussed on the Lightweight Linux Network, or the talk page here, before being added to the list. These are suggestions, which are made civilly, and there will be more than one suggestion for most applications.
GUI and CLI
The emphasis here is on software with GUIs - i.e. standard modern programs that run in a window. This is almost always easier for the non-expert user.
However it's both easy and important to have CLI (command line) tools on a system, for times when, for whatever reason, the GUI tool is not working, or a CLI command is needed for a script, or the user wants to use even less system resources for a task.
So, each category below should aim to find at least one good, lean, user-friendly, package - though the GUI packages will be much more user-friendly, and the CLI packages will be much more lean.
Suggestions
Text editors:
- Medit has a nice GUI, tabs, regex (regular expression for search and replace). Less RAM than gedit (and gedit doesn't have regex). (More RAM than Leafpad or Mousepad but more features.)[2]
- High potential for further development: Nedit uses even less RAM than Leafpad, & has tabs, regex. But seems buggy, and GUI is very ugly.[1]
- nano is a great CLI editor, super-light, easy to use as CLI tools go.[3] But still confusing for newbies, no obvious way to save (F3 works), no protection against accidental window (terminal) closure, and every time a file is saved it requires user to either manually enter file name, or browse (ctrl-T) using the terminal interface!
- vi(m) and emacs are the standard programmer's text editors, but emacs is anything but lightweight.
Rich text editors:
- To be discussed (Abiword has improved a lot, supports open formats...; for advanced functions, sometimes OpenOffice is the only choice?)
File search:
- Catfish. Light, uses search function already installed in standard Linux system (find, locate, slocate... what about grep?) with a somewhat easy interface.[4] More development would be good (less confusing interface, search by date...) but development is stalled.[5] (Comment: often fails to find items which are found bysomewhat searchmonkey or gnome-search-tool)
- searchmonkey: seems lighter than gnome-search-tool, not quite as smooth, but easy to use.
Window managers:
- To be discussed
- Openbox
- JWM (used by the default Puppy )
- Xfwm (used only by Xfce?). Integrates its own compositing manager.W See Xfce, below.
- Many other lightweight window managers exist - while these may be extremely light and have useful components, they may be less intuitive (e.g. IceWM) or extremely unintuitive (e.g. dwm) for non-coders to use. They could potentially be packaged with tools and settings to make them much more usable.
Desktop environments:
- To be discussed (LXDE...)
- Xfce (heavy in some implementations such as Xubuntu, but can be almost as light as Openbox)
Menus
- dmenu - keyboard shortcut, narrows down options as you type the command. "Alt-F3" is not intuitive, but so light, and so handy when accustomed to it, that there's no harm in including it. Part of dwm or dwm-tools package.
Screen lock
- slock. There's no prompt - just type in your password. (Should be part of dwm-tools...?)
Browsers
- To be discussed. Initial ideas:
- Disable flash.
- Avoid extensions. Use bookmarklets instead where possible: Ditch Your Extensions for Bookmarklets
- Good browsing practice - avoid excess windows and tabs.
- Many lightweight browsers exist with very limited functionality. Midori is extremely light and displays pages well (though common shortcuts don't work). However all information (login state, passwords etc) are lost on each logout.
- Google Chrome is reputed to be much faster than most other browsers. It works in Linux, but is not yet fully debugged and functional.
Archive managers (file compression)
- Squeeze. Uses around 451 disk space, with around a 93 kb download, and is clear and simple to use. Compares to around 6 MB disk space for file-roller (which is often confusing to use) and over 8 MB for the easy-to-use PeaZip.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Nedit is designed for Unix (uses Motif) and does not support UTF-8, so the GUI displays poorly in LXDE/Openbox, KDE, GNOME.