Ask HN: Lightest Linux distribution (DE agnostic)

[ryzokuken]

Okay, now I realise that this question has been asked​ and answered way too many times to be asked here, but I noticed that at every single place possible, the distributions are compared keeping the distribution in mind. When they say Ubuntu, they mean Unity, Debian means gnome and so on. But consider if all distros used the same DE (say XFCE)? In my opinion, this would help us choose better.

Thanks in advance

[xparadigm]

Puppy Linux. (http://puppylinux.org) It runs from memory. That means it's super light.

On second thought, you can make Archlinux (https://www.archlinux.org/) really light. It doesn't run on memory but you can choose very easily whatever DE or services you want. So it's possible to make Arch super lightweight more easily than say, Ubuntu.

[ryzokuken]

As a matter of fact, I have been using Manjaro right now. Thanks for clarifying that Arch does infact beat other distros in terms of speed.

[brudgers]

I'm glad to see Puppy continue to be updated. When I ran it on a circa 2001 laptop a few years ago, it seemed to have stagnated a bit.

[nwrk]

DistroWatch (https://distrowatch.com/)

https://distrowatch.com/search.php?ostype=All&category=All&o...

[NHAs]

I've always found that Slitaz was the lightest I've found. http://www.slitaz.org/en/ Comes in at a 35 mb download.