April 06, 2021
Every Bit counts on a LameDuck.This Respin provides a stable, fast and fun OS - based on the light-weight and elegant desktop environment of MX’s unique implementation of Fluxbox, without all unnecessary parts of Gnome and XFCE. Only XFCE4 power manager was kept, because there is no lightweight power manager - and a distribution without power manager should not be be possible, if we talk about climate change - so I think a lightweight power manager is a big need, but I don't have the skills for this.
LameDuck only needs about 150 MB after starting the desktop see attachment - this is LameDuck installed on my Dell Netbook with 2GB RAM
Download (at the moment only 64 Bit): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
md5sum + sha512 are included in the download folder
Login: user demo, password demo
Major default apps
Browser: Firefox 87.0 - Midori 7.0 - Netsurf 3.10
Email: Claws Mail 3.17.4
Media player: Celluloid 0.19 - Deadbeef 1.8.4 - Cmus 2.7.1
File manager: Spacefm 1.0.6-4
Editor: FeatherPad 0.16
Network: connman 1.36
Archive Manager: peazip 7.8.0
Word Processor Software: abiword 3.0.2
Spreadsheet Program: gnumeric 1.12.44
Painting Program mtpaint 3.49.19
Desktop info: Conky Manager 2.7 with large conky collection
When you run from the stick, please customize at least the Language, if you just run the snapshot, Ram usage is not correct and MX behaves quite strange. As there have been questions I specify - when you boot the stick, you have several boot options:
- snapshot MX-19.3_flux_base_x64 patito (03 April 2021)
- Custom x64 ( 3 April 2021)
This is, when the stick boots in UEFI mode - if you have to boot in leagacy mode, use the Function buttons, to define your locale.
So lets talk about RAM. Linux uses the available RAM dynamically - depending on how much RAM is available, the kernel allocates different amounts of RAM to the individual programs. It is also not the same for every boot. On my Dell with 2GB Ram the stick needs between 150 and 160 MB - the same stick with the same settings boots on the Portege X31 with 8 GB Ram with about 210 MB - see attachment 2nd + 3rd.
LameDuck is dedicated to computers less than 2GB of RAM - I had in mind to give Intel Compute Sticks with Z3735F and 1GB Ram or those Windows10 "Chromebooks" with 2GB of RAM a second live. Since I have a 32bit and RaspberryPi version in mind, I set 150 MB idle as a goal, because I want to continue using my Fujitsu Futros with AMD Geode processor and 256 MB Ram. Another screenshot shows that you can visit with 256MB and the browser Netsurf e.g.: theMX- forum without any problems. Of course, you can use LameDuck with a racehorse, but you will not see the big difference.
And LameDuck is not a convenience Linux. The abandonment of Ram naturally leads to a loss of usability. But I tried to keep the usability as high as in the LXDE environment. I think, the only noticeable difference is the loss of desktop icons. LameDuck is more back to the roots, when the Ram guzzlers udisk, consolekit, policykit, gvfs did not exist - by the way, they are removed or reduced to the minimum and udevil does the job - http://ignorantguru.github.io/udevil/
I created this iso for my personal need - everything is working, but the iso is not cleaned and not desiged - if there are other people interested on a very lightweight MX-Respin - I will continue.
Tips to Install LameDuck and the special apps are in the following thread.
Enjoy!