Do you have an old PC lying around gathering dust? How about a small-capacity USB flash drive sitting, unloved in a drawer? You can reuse your old computer and a USB flash drive by installing a tiny Linux distribution.
Mini Linux distros are great as they require fewer system resources than other options yet still deliver a whole operating system experience, and we have nine of the smallest Linux distros for you to choose from.
tl;dr:
ArchBang
Tiny Core Linux
Absolute Linux
Porteus
Puppy Linux
SliTaz
antiX Linux
Bodhi Linux
Linux Lite
I didn’t care for PuppyLinux as it didn’t run well with even just Firefox open. I also didn’t care for the updating structure that seemed to be the idea that you just don’t update packages between releases. I could be wrong on that, but that was what I got from reading on how to keep things up to date. I did like how small it is and how it loads into memory on boot.
AntiX wouldn’t let me install any packages or update. It would keep telling me I needed to wait a few hours to access the repos. I did like how you could swap between several desktop environments easily.
The lack of systemd was something I couldn’t get over. I mean the alternative service managers are good but a few apps I really need have a strong dependency on systemd and the adapter packages just weren’t working. Otherwise I highly recommend AntiX. It made my old netbook feel useful again.
Just manual change the repo and problem solved…
And I need to clarify this because AntiX IMO, under category Permacomputing for low power consumption without too much sacrificing the function than others [in my experiment].
Change the repo to what?
Mirror repo
I was impressed with antiX as a light-weight system. If you are ok with a tiling window manager, ArchBang is good too.
They are essentially stripped-down Debian and Arch respectively.