I write this small review of GNU/Linux distros with XFCE User Interface to help you choose a suitable lightweight, free operating system for your computer. Especially, to empower your old PCs and laptops once again. I present here five distros for you: Xubuntu, Linux Mint XFCE Edition, Fedora Spin XFCE, Manjaro XFCE Edition, and Porteus XFCE. All are lightweight. By looking at my criteria below, like, 32-bit availability and how small the ISO size is, or what special features are available and how satisfying the support is, I hope you can choose one most suitable for you. Let's revive our old machines and empower more our new ones with an XFCE distro!
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1. Xubuntu
- Family: Ubuntu, based on Debian
- Architecture: 32-bit and 64-bit
- ISO size: 1.3GB (on version 18.04 LTS)
- LiveCD: yes
- Prominent features: LibreOffice included by default, can install packages from Ubuntu repository, easy to upgrade, can install packages from Ubuntu PPAs
- Support & help: https://xubuntu.org/help, https://ubuntuforums.org
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+
- Package manager: APT
- Donation: https://xubuntu.org/donations
- Download links: https://xubuntu.org/download
2. Linux Mint XFCE Edition
- Family: Mint, based on Ubuntu
- Architecture: 32-bit and 64-bit
- ISO size: 1.8GB (on version 19 LTS)
- LiveCD: yes
- Prominent features: LibreOffice and Compiz+CCSM included by default, system restore facility, easier to upgrade than Xubuntu, rollback upgrade if something goes wrong
- Support & help: https://linuxmint.com/documentation.php, https://linuxmint.com/faq.php, https://forums.linuxmint.com
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feed
- Package manager: APT
- Donation: https://linuxmint.com/donors.php
- Download links: https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php
CCSM brings back so many memories of our old, old Ubuntu time:
3. Fedora Spin XFCE
- Family: Fedora
- Architecture: 64-bit, ARM 32-bit
- ISO size: 1.2GB (on version 28)
- LiveCD: yes
- Prominent features: based on Fedora (the basis of RHEL, so you can learn how to operate an enterprise GNU/Linux system), vanilla XFCE (so you can learn un-customized XFCE), Abiword and Gnumeric included as office suite, using Anaconda system installer
- Support & help: https://forums.fedoraforum.org, https://ask.fedoraproject.org
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+
- Package manager: DNF
- Donation: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Donations
- Download links: https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/xfce
4. Manjaro XFCE
- Family: Manjaro, based on Arch Linux
- Architecture: 64-bit only
- ISO size: 1.7GB (on version 17.1.12)
- LiveCD: yes
- Prominent feature: LibreOffice included by default, rolling release (you can get latest package quicker than another distro at a given time), based on Arch but with nice GUI and Calamares installer
- Support & help: https://forum.manjaro.org, https://wiki.manjaro.org
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+
- Package manager: pacman
- Donation: https://manjaro.org/donate
- Download links: https://manjaro.org/get-manjaro
5. Porteus XFCE
- Family: based on Slackware
- Architecture: 32-bit, 64-bit
- ISO size: 275MB (on version 4.0)
- LiveCD: yes
- Prominent feature: fast, smallest size compared to the four others, lowest resource usage, huge repository as it's compatible with Slackware repositories and SlackBuilds
- Support & help: https://forum.porteus.org, http://www.porteus.org/faq.html
- Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube
- Package manager: USM
- Donation: http://www.porteus.org/donate.html
- Download links: https://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7742
Conclusion
Here is my recommendation in brief:
- If resource usage is not a problem, take Xubuntu.
- If you need the lowest resource use, Porteus XFCE is the best here.
- If you want a nostalgia with Compiz, use Mint XFCE.
- Always try in LiveCD mode before installing to disk.
- Good idea to use a LiveCD of them for your internet anonymity and privacy.
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