Ubuntu stopped being a viable desktop distribution 15 years ago, light or heavyweight.
Sometimes I feel like Linux Mint has a low-key marketing budget or something lol
Nope. Ubuntu is a lightweight distro. If one wants to call it a Linux at all. I freshly installed Kubuntu 26.04 a few days ago “with everything”, but that did not even include a gcc.
Unless they’re comparing to LMDE, they’re mostly similar about being lightweight.
ChatGPT, write me an article about Linux that gets traffic.
So XDA developers page too is affected by AI Slop.
Yea they got bought out recently, right?
Not recently I think. It’s around in 2022. Acquired by Valnet Inc.
I don’t recall Ubuntu being a lightweight distro or ever aiming to be. It was always Debian with more stuff.
They have had light official flavors (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Netbook remix). But primary distro that has always been either Gnome or Unity has been fully-featured. It’d only consider it “light” compared to Windows.
You are all falling for the rage bait
Ubuntu was never a lightweight distro lol
You can tell the author hasn’t spent much time in the Linux world.
Maybe Xubuntu or preferably Lubuntu, but never Ubuntu.
I’d even have a hard time saying Linux Mint is going to be lightweight.
Lubuntu definitely seems about the lightest weight desktop environment for it for sure. I suppose Ubuntu server can be pretty light… But so are most linux servers, that’s kind of their selling point.
Ubuntu used to be even more demanding with Unity. I love Mint though. Been installing it a lot lately
clear debian is the solution
Not for modern hardware from my experience. Instead of suggesting one distribution, I would say Debian for some old hardware models and fedora is the sweet spot for modern hardware.
In my opinion, Fedora is too close to bleeding edge. For me, tumbleweed is the sweet spot
Tumbleweed is good but everytime I debloat it via the myrlyn in installation window, it breaks and fail to boot. Have issues with ctrl+alt+f2. No built in recovery tools like fedora or maybe i can’t find it if it’s there.
The packages are updated as a group which means no matter how much i debloat, it will always return. I fear using addlock can cause any dependency issues also.
Any Linux distribution based on KDE or GNOME is not going to be lightweight. It did have the LXDE option for stripping it back somewhat, but the repos were still mostly filled with software that requires KDE or GNOME.
Mint is kind of like LxUbuntu back in the early days; still no lightweight, not even by desktop standards, but it’ll bloat up quickly if you want to get anything done with it.
I mean, Puppy Linux and DSL are still around. Anything based on Debian could claim to be stable or enterprise ready, but not lightweight.
I feel like this was true maybe 10-20 years ago, but any semi-recent desktop or laptop can run KDE or Gnome fine. If you are running an SBC with limited RAM, then maybe you should look at another desktop GUI.
Any semi-recent desktop or laptop has no need of a lightweight Linux. That’s for embedded solutions, rPis, and other resource constrained systems.
Having said that, in 2026 and going forward, we may have need of lightweight desktop distributions again. 64GB storage, 4GB RAM style.
#! was, and still is, where it’s at. There is even still a 32-bit x86 version.
