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I work mostly in graphic design (GIMP) photo processing (in the past Lightroom and now Darktable) and creating and maintaining websites. I'm currently working on a low spec machine: IBM Think Pad R51, HDD 80 Gb, RAM 1x 512 Mb and 1x 256 Mb, Intel® Pentium(R) M processor 1500MHz , Graphics Intel® 852GM/855GM x86/MMX/SSE2

My question is, what is the most appropriate version of Linux to run lighter on the machine when working with the internet, GIMP and Darktable?

Zanna
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MsLitopolis
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If Ubuntu is running slowly it might be worth trying out the other 'flavours' of it. Lubuntu or Xubuntu both use lighter, less resource heavy desktop environments so generally run better on older hardware.

You can install the new DE in place with sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop. The next time you log in you can select Lubuntu rather than Unity. More details can be found in this article.

It's the same OS underneath so using them is very similar.

To be honest, if you are doing a lot of work doing image processing, it might be worth upgrading the computer if possible. If not the whole machine then at least expanding the memory. 768Mb is very little (by today's standards).

Zanna
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Holloway
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The Window Manager - or for most modern Linuxes the Desktop Environment - makes a huge difference. The more bells and whistles (especially 3D ones) your desktop uses, the less resources are left to actually run programs.

Use a lightweight Desktop Environment like Xfce or LXDE instead of GNOME KDE or Unity (the standard for Ubuntu 14.04) - ie. install Xubuntu (which uses Xfce) or Lubuntu rather than Ubuntu (Unity) or Kubuntu (KDE)... or if you have it installed, install lxde or xfce and set it as default Desktop Enviroment.

Even more lightweight would be a pure Window Manager like icewm, blackbox, windowmaker or mwm (Motif Window Manager). A "Desktop Environment" is basically an advanced Window Manager (advanced meaning that it has desktop-switching, background-pictures, task-bar and so on), but also with a set of application with a similar and consistent look and feel (eg. how KDE comes with a whole set of KDE-applications for things like editing files, surfing the net, instant messaging etc - all with the KDE look).

It's no problem starting an application "belonging to" a Desktop Enviroment (like kopete, the KDE instant-messaging client) even if you're not running KDE but runs another Window Manager instead. Note though that some parts of the Desktop Environment it belongs to may have to be started, so some of your gain by using a lightweight alternative may be lost.

Zanna
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Baard Kopperud
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There are versions of Ubuntu that take less processing power. If you're using it for graphics, the best is probably Ubuntu Studio because it uses Xfce (Xubuntu) which uses very little resources to run and it's designed for exactly what you do. I run it on an old Pentium 4 and it's awesome.

Also, one of the most noticeable improvements you can make to a Linux computer is RAM. It's cheap and well worth the $15-25.

If that still isn't working and if you can't afford any RAM, Lubuntu uses the least amount of RAM.

Finally, you can install either one of these desktops by running one of the following commands:

sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-desktop

or

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

But you really won't get the full benefit of Ubuntu Studio without full installation because of the lowlatency kernel, although that could be installed through apt-get as well.

Zanna
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mchid
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There are at least 2 ways to do this... 1. You can get a distro, like one of these eight tiny linuxes listed on this webpage, http://m.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/8-of-the-best-tiny-linux-distros-683552

Or, You can manually build your own kernal for your distro... this is tedious and time-consuming at first... but, once you become familiar with the process and your favorite tools for doing this it can become much easier... the advantage to this is when building your own kernal, you can streamline it... use only the drivers you need and not use all the other hundreds of possible drivers included in a generic kernal... this can make your favorite distro blazing fast but much, much less plug-n-play friendly... There trade offs... you just have to discover which works best for you... I hope that this info has been helpful... also, sometimes you can team up with people who.are on the same track as you and they have already built some kernal you can use... (Use at your own risk, of course)... Good luck...

user309801
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