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Installing LXLE Lightweight Linux

I am always on the lookout for lightweight Linux OS distro to install into my ye olde ancient computers. I’m not quite ready to dispose of these old PCs of mine and would like to see if I could squeeze out some useful life from them.

My old Intel D915GEV with the stuck heatsink and CPU was a good candidate to try this LXLE Linux. According to their website, this distro has light resource usage, though it was filled choc full of apps. Their philosophy was, a lightweight linux did not mean a stripdown version devoid of apps, but rather it reduced the number of apps running in the background using up resources.

Running LXLE lightweight Linux

I liked the sound of that. After all, I had some distro that was supposedly lightweight, but still took time to boot up and took time to startup any apps for usage.

The ISO file wasn’t small. It was 1.8GB in size and took awhile to download. Installing the ISO using Rufus to a thumbdrive, it took a bit of time to boot up the LXLE on my old Intel D915GEV. My first attempt at installing was a failure. Probably because I went straight to the installer which spewed out Matrix-like display during installation. My second attempt went smoothly when I installed from the live boot disk instead.

Yikes! LXLE Linux spewing out Matrix-like gibberish when using direct installer

Overall the layout and functionality were rather smooth, and I could straightaway use it. The bootup was rather fast and the by what the LXLE developer said of booting under one minute rang rather true. I have other distro that took much longer during the bootup process, and this was rather quick!

It has enough customization of settings with themes and colors, enough to suit my taste. And of course my favorite Xscreensaver would run without issue.

To autostart the screensaver, the startup settings are located at:

Menu ➤ preferences ➤ default application for lxsession

I wanted to see if my old PC could handle the Xscreensaver and so far it seemed to hold its own.

Overall this LXLE lightweight Linux distro has caught my eye and I am considering installing it on my other old PCs.

LXLE Linux Website

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