Strapped for hard disk space? Install one of these lightweight Linux distros to make your PC usable again.

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.

  • LiveLMEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    I think one of the smallest yet fully up-to-date distros around is Alpine Linux.
    It might not be a perfect desktop because of Musl incompatibilities but hey, it has a ton of apps in the repos, if your usecase it’s simple it might be enough.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      Keep in mind that it doesn’t have good out of the box support for broadcom. (Broadcom is the old Nvidia and is a pain to get working under Linux)