Ubuntu LTS base is not suited for desktop use. Being lightweight also just seems completely unnecessary as a 'Windows 10 replacement' OS. Just use Fedora or Arch.
Lightweight to me just means I can use it in any situation regardless of what shitty or wonderful device they happen to need it on. And it can match all devices they end up needing it on. Say a media player with stremio, or a laptop, desktop etc. I understand what you mean though. Arch from everything I have heard isn't for beginners so as someone who has used 5 or so different Linux distros, maybe more... Have avoided it because the stigma that people have put around it. Is Fedora Debian based? I am unsure I've used it. I suppose I am looking for something with LTS that can be used across a multitude of hardware so I can create a "standardized" image per say, and then just adjust to meet the needs of specific hardware while always allowing them to have basically the same interface so they dont have to learn how to navigate situations differently across devices.
I don't see anything that makes it more suitable than Mint or any other distro.
If it's true that it uses only 250 MB of RAM as it claims, then it had advantages on old computers over Mint which uses 950 MB (htop). My mom's computer only has 2 GB of RAM for example (an old, converted-to-linux Chromebook), so we need a distro that really doesn't use much ram. Thankfully she only uses 1 tab at a time on the browser (she doesn't know how to open more), so that makes it just enough with something heavy like YT or FB, so she doesn't hit the swap and slow things down.
In that case you might try TinyCoreLinux @64MB
No, that thing is unusable. It has no niceties to help a user do basic things. The best OS I've found that has enough GUI tools to do stuff, is Q4OS. Uses 350 MB of RAM, but it has enough stuff to get you going. I looked more into FunOS btw, and it requires quite some terminal work to even get tap-to-click to work. It's missing some GUI tools for basic things. It doesn't even save screen resolution changes without editing X11 files. If they get these things implemented, then sure. Same goes for all the other lite OSes, like AntiX, DSL, etc. Lightweight, yes. But not really usable by an ordinary user. They are missing GUI tools, of if they have them (like in the case of antix and puppy), they are a complete and utter MESS. I've used all of them, and they have left me very, very underwhelmed. Until then, Q4OS is the best of the lightweight distros. It's well put together.
Lubuntu and Xubuntu have entered the chat....
Not nearly as low in memory usage. Xubuntu requires 1.1 GB of RAM on a clean boot for example. Lubuntu close to 700 I think.
Ah the older version could run a lot less. Like 256 and 512. I haven't used it since 4GB - 8GB was the standard.
For 60+ I might recommend ChromeOS Flex, Mint, or Ubuntu.
Can't say that I have but for your use case I would like to mention elementaryOS, I tried it a few years back and I found it quite nice and intuitive
I haven't used Synaptic before for an app store I dont think, any recommendations there?
Yeah, mint uses synaptic. Works well in my experience.
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