Why not simply Debian + LXDE + flathub?
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Something that surprises me is that no one mentioned just running debian 12 with lxde. Though, I don't reccomend using the netinstall, as the user created there won't be part of the sudo group. You should use the live iso.
Lubuntu is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. It meets all of your requirements, and has never crashed on me in my 2.5 years of using it, except when running kde, but that's probably kde's fault.
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-12.9.0-amd64-lxde.iso
If you don't trust my link (fair enough, don't click links from strangers), the iso can be downloaded by going to debian.org, clicking "other downloads" under the big "download" button, locating the live isos, in the "Try Debian live before installing" clicking "other live iso", and finding the lxde iso.
Any Fedora Atomic desktop, or any UBlue one.
Immutable distros are the future of the Linux desktop. They work and they never break (I dare you to try).
A stripped down version of pretty much any distro is gonna do the trick here. Minimal install Fedora (or the lxde version), openSUSE tumbleweed, Debian (lxde flavour), arch, or Void Linux (will give you very, very good start-up time, as it uses runit instead of SystemD. It also has a great installer, imo, and is pretty easy to get the hang of—more so than arch). These should all be fine. Depending on how much work you want to put in, my top recommendations are Void and openSUSE tumbleweed. You could also try a tiling WM like Sway if you want to make the whole experience even more lite weight. Good luck!
I second this. A bare-min install of a majority of distros is going to do you more favors than looking for a distro that is made to be minimal. Honestly, minimal is going to rely more on your DE/WM than distro.
I also agree that Arch is going to require more learning curve if you don't have any experience with it, but that's up to you if you want to put time into it. If you do, I'd recommend vanilla Arch or if you want a GUI installer with a lot of DE/WM options then I'd opt for EndeavourOS.
I concur with Void, but that also may have a learning curve. I like Void, but I haven't tried it myself. I hear nothing but good about Fedora and openSUSE these days, too. I played with NixOS and I really like it, but you will spend months messing with Nixlang before you can really do anything with it (but its really fun to play with).
If you want set it and forget, you can try immutable distros like fedora silverblue, if you use bottles for running games, you can look at bazzite. If you want to tinker, then debian/arch/fedora minimal installs and build what you want
OP seems to be running 8gig of ram, if that laptop is stock. I have actually run Bazzite Gnome on worse hardware (2 gigs of ram), but that was for the lulz, not because it was a good idea. Silverblue is Gnome DE, and OP seems to want a much lighter weight DE than either gnome or KDE.
IME, Debian is fairly minimal tinkering once you get the proprietary drivers worked out. Although I don't know how Ubuntu handles updates, is it as (usually) hands off like the immutable/atomic distros?
Has someone tried to do an atomic/immutable distro with one of the lightweight DEs? Seems like there's a niche there, although Mint might be similar enough from an end user experience standpoint that it's not really worth the effort.
That's not your question, but I'm running Kinoite (which is basically Silverblue with KDE) on a 2015 MacBook with 8GB RAM and it runs perfectly smooth.
That being said, I can't personally recommend immutable Distros (at least Fedora's approach to it as I haven't tested others) to everyone. I think it fits to people who are fine with mainly using what flatpak has to offer and don't want to tinker with their system too much, or people on the other side of the spectrum who are fine with exploring toolbox / distrobox.
Arch
why is the arch comment so far down the page? strange
Arch is more cutting edge and thus less stable in very general terms. And is would be a learning curve for someone used to Debian based distros.
these things are true, but when someone asks about a new distro I assume they want to learn something
Everybody keeps saying that.
But when I used Ubuntu/Debian and it had a major bug in the software that I used, which made it completely unusable, I had to wait for half a year for the next release which included the bugfix. But then it also included new bugs in other things... It was mostly broken at any point in time, bUt At LeAsT iTs sTabLe
I don't understand either.
Personally I run it on my desktop, servers (with automatic updates, I know, I know - I like to live dangerously) and rhaspberry pi's without any hiccups for years.
I'd install it on my car or toaster if I could.
Before that I was constantly fighting to keep my Ubuntus and Debians running...
it's cool to have automatic updates turned off, but then obviously not read any of the names of packages that are getting updated, because im not following the development of any of them, and definitely going to update them all anyways, and i just hit Y all the time. And then I sit there for an hour while my internet is slow as balls because im downloading updates
There was an openSUSE suggestion, just a note that default install adds a lot of packages, at the preinstall summary you can click the software title and unchecke patterns you don't want, or go into further detail and check/uncheck single packages. You can make OpenSUSE as minimal as you like.
alpine is cool but I'd only recommend it for computers that are so slow they struggle with Firefox
Alpine is my daily driver. Been that way for 2-3 years now.
- AMD Ryzen 5 7600x
- 32GB DDR5
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060
It's not just for underpowered hardware. 🤷♂️
Maybe Linux Lite? It's based on Ubuntu LTS and the default DE is XFCE but you could replace it with LXDE or whatever you want.
I've been a fan of bunsenlabs distros. It uses debian and openbox and it's very lightweight. I run it on a pentium M laptop and it's quite usable. (I run it on other machines but that's the slowest one I've got)
Depending on how lightweight you need I’d either use Linux Mint XFCE, which would be slightly less lightweight but very easy and well documented or AntiX which as lightweight as it gets but may require a bit more getting used to
Bodhi linux is ubuntu/debian based (but no snaps out of the box) and is good for older hardware both because it is lightweight and because it has support for 32 bit architecture, but it comes bundled with chromium not firefox, but you can easily install ff (or even better librewolf) and remove chromium.
Also there are bsds - I don't know about Bottles and Inkscape but you might be interrested to try out NomadBSD which is for USB boot but can also be installed on hardware, it is freebsd based and comes bundled with FireFox+UBlockOrigin (altho it's an older version you'll need to update the packages)
freebsd , thats all you need