Aravisian
Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:29:31 pm
I bought a Panasonic Toughbook because it was dirt cheap, as it is quite old. The purpose being, I am a shop guy. I restore and work on Classic Cars and do a lot of machining and tooling. Lots of dust, though I take steps to reduce it. Having access to information helps a great deal, a Notebook is most convenient but in that rougher environment, a Notebook is at higher risk. The downside of the well-over 15 year old age of the thing (It shipped without any OS installed) is that it cannot handle much of newer O.S.'s as well as that it was designed for a lightweight O.S. even when it was new.
I admit, I decided to move away from Zorin on this one. I figured Zorin would be too heavy for it.
I messaged some folks and asked for pointers and tips and recommendations on a Distro to put on it. I then tested quite a few on my main machine using VirtualBox and LiveCD. Narrowed my choices down to MXLinux (Midweight but very good), Solyd9, Lubuntu and Peppermint. I chose MXLinux and it worked well, but was too heavy, still. So, I tried several other distros where I ran into issues like conflicts, programs not opening or operating correctly. Several were installing with errors. THings got pretty messy with them all. I started thinking; "Is there a Lightweight Zorin?" After-all, I use Zorin now, am registered on a Forum and am familiar with how it works, generally.
Looked it up, found the XFCE Zorin 12.4 Lite and installed it on the Toughbook without bothering to test it. (I was tired, it was late...)
Installed perfectly with no errors. Every program ran perfectly with no troubleshooting required. Even something as simple as installing custom Cursors, which is notorious with XFCE, worked on each cursor with no problems. Zorin 12.4 Lite was the ONLY XFCE distro I tried that did that. The rest might install one, maybe two and even then, partially functional. Zorin 12.4 lite gobbled up four of them with all four functioning fully. (XFCE has a file permissions issue with Custom Cursors, unfixed after ten years. You must manually go in and change the permissions and even then, it's 50/50 hit or miss whether they will work.)
But the most telling thing is that on each, I installed conky with a conky to monitor CPU usage. All the distros maxed out the CPU at 100% under a load, even when some of them still worked reasonably fast and smoothly.
Zorin 12.4 Lite doesn't. On occasions, it hits 100% for a moment, but quickly goes back down. Where all the others showed a solid block of max CPU usage, Zorin shows a series of spikes.
It operates faster than the almost all of the ones listed on a Google search as the fastest, with only AntiX (A systemd free distro) holding the lead. AntiX is still the fastest lightweight distro, but Zorin 12.4 Lite is hot on its heels boasting far more versatility, functionality, customization as well as the ability to handle heavier loads.
Having literally spent this past week testing Lightweight distro's, I cannot express how impressive Zorin Lite is. The rest operated reasonably within the same range but Zorin stands in a league of its own. The difference between it and the rest is huge. I did not expect it.
Oh, and I should point out, this Toughbook uses an SSD hard drive, not HDD. Rock on Zorin Team.
I admit, I decided to move away from Zorin on this one. I figured Zorin would be too heavy for it.
I messaged some folks and asked for pointers and tips and recommendations on a Distro to put on it. I then tested quite a few on my main machine using VirtualBox and LiveCD. Narrowed my choices down to MXLinux (Midweight but very good), Solyd9, Lubuntu and Peppermint. I chose MXLinux and it worked well, but was too heavy, still. So, I tried several other distros where I ran into issues like conflicts, programs not opening or operating correctly. Several were installing with errors. THings got pretty messy with them all. I started thinking; "Is there a Lightweight Zorin?" After-all, I use Zorin now, am registered on a Forum and am familiar with how it works, generally.
Looked it up, found the XFCE Zorin 12.4 Lite and installed it on the Toughbook without bothering to test it. (I was tired, it was late...)
Installed perfectly with no errors. Every program ran perfectly with no troubleshooting required. Even something as simple as installing custom Cursors, which is notorious with XFCE, worked on each cursor with no problems. Zorin 12.4 Lite was the ONLY XFCE distro I tried that did that. The rest might install one, maybe two and even then, partially functional. Zorin 12.4 lite gobbled up four of them with all four functioning fully. (XFCE has a file permissions issue with Custom Cursors, unfixed after ten years. You must manually go in and change the permissions and even then, it's 50/50 hit or miss whether they will work.)
But the most telling thing is that on each, I installed conky with a conky to monitor CPU usage. All the distros maxed out the CPU at 100% under a load, even when some of them still worked reasonably fast and smoothly.
Zorin 12.4 Lite doesn't. On occasions, it hits 100% for a moment, but quickly goes back down. Where all the others showed a solid block of max CPU usage, Zorin shows a series of spikes.
It operates faster than the almost all of the ones listed on a Google search as the fastest, with only AntiX (A systemd free distro) holding the lead. AntiX is still the fastest lightweight distro, but Zorin 12.4 Lite is hot on its heels boasting far more versatility, functionality, customization as well as the ability to handle heavier loads.
Having literally spent this past week testing Lightweight distro's, I cannot express how impressive Zorin Lite is. The rest operated reasonably within the same range but Zorin stands in a league of its own. The difference between it and the rest is huge. I did not expect it.
Oh, and I should point out, this Toughbook uses an SSD hard drive, not HDD. Rock on Zorin Team.
