Desktops becoming Fatty and eating up resources at boot time.

I recently tested Mandriva's latest Live DVD which is trying to become a gorilla fed on a FAT diet (type of a desktop) and very lazy to boot and work with me.

I could not fire up FireFox and LibreOffice and it froze on my old IBM with 1 GiB RAM.

Unfortunately Ubuntu's Unity desktop and (Gnome 3 new desktop I have not downloaded or tested yet) Gnome 3 has the same Atherosclerotic predilection and if you have low RAM please do not try them.

My comments elsewhere reported  on  Ubuntu and  Ping Eee were done (I have installed them) on my laptop with 4 GiB RAM and they run smoothly with adequate RAM.

If you have low RAM please do not try them.

Instead try distribution on a lean diet.

There are plenty.

1. 4MLinux all in one (70 MiB). It has UnetBootIn too.

2. Puppy Linux (120 Mib)

3. Unity (370) both 32 bits and 64 bits version.

4. Peppermint (440MiB)

5. TaylorSwift (690 MiB)

So if you have an old computer UP your RAM and have several of the above mentioned distribution at your disposal.

I see another comment at distrowatch where a user complains that so called i586 distributions do not boot up.

One is they do not test (like me) before release and most of them a "cravvy "on RAM.

"Cravvy" is a new term (from Crave) I have coined for (Savvy lineage) distributions that eat up RAM like Microsoft.

So my advice for newbies is for you to have at least three Live distributions in addition to your FAT and atherosclerotic "potato couch' distributions.

If you have trouble with the lazy gorilla put a bonobo live and get your work done on a flash.

One super lightweight.

One lightweight.

One middleweight.

 Below is a reproduction from DistroWatch and read it carefully.

Alternative desktop environments and window manager are currently making a strong comeback, with many users willing to experiment with some that once seemed on the verge of extinction. One of them is Enlightenment, a flashy, but still lightweight window manager whose current version (17) has been in development for nearly a decade. Jeff Hoogland, the founder and lead developer of Bodhi Linux, lists the five things the Enlightenment desktop does best: "There is no doubting that all of our modern desktops have been progressing in features and functionality. One spot where Enlightenment excels though is that it has a focus on remaining trim and fast while adding these new features. Don't believe me? KDE 4.x needs around 512 MB to be happy, GNOME 3 recommends slightly more at 768 MB and Ubuntu's Unity desktop requests a full gigabyte! Someone always pops up and cries out, 'but our computers are so powerful it doesn't matter', whenever you mention system requirements these days. The fact remains though - it does matter. A desktop that runs fast on a slow system will fly on a quick system. Resources should be there for your applications to use, not for your desktop environment to eat up. Trim as Enlightenment already is, the developers are currently in the process of rewriting all of it's code to use XCB to replace XLib - which will make it even faster."