One sledgehammer coming up! Of course you’re exactly right, I had forgotten about LFS somewhat. It’s not for the fainthearted, it’s a one stop shop of how to linux like a boss.

It most definitely is lighter than AntiX, it’s also on my list like Alpine should AntiX not work out. I don’t mind dated GUIs as long as it works. Many thanks.

Trim down is perhaps a strong work. I went in to heavily limit it’s performance capabilities, limit the amount of cache it could hold, number of threads it could use and so on. I also stripped out a lot of bloat like pocket and other features that if they couldn’t be removed I could turn them off.

AntiX uses IceWM which is much lighter than LXQt apparently. I haven’t yet tried Alpine so can’t compare the two. AntiX (64bit) barely uses 300MB RAM. AntiX by the way is based on Debian.

SimpleX now has a bin in the AUR, which I believe was made from a .deb file. Fk appimage and the horse it rode in on.

Does Calligra have BASIC capabilities?

Arch linux is too big even as base. I’m currently using 64-bit AntiX which runs (base) half of what Arch-Linux does according to it’s own guide. It’s using IceWM (which is its heaviest DE). It took a while to investigate believe me, it’s also Debian so focuses more on security than Arch does (due in part to Arch’s bleeding edge status new vulnerabilities are being added all the time, they’re being fixed of course, it’s just a natural consequence of their methodology).

I don’t believe AbiWord or Gnumeric have BASIC capabilities?

Deluge takes up a tiny amount of ram, I’d recommend investigating the thin client mode. It’s smaller than Transmission for me. The non-daemonized client has a memory leak.

Thanks for the tip about X2Go. I’ll take a look.

It’s in my pile in case AntiX falls through, it weighs in at only 300MB RAM base install.

Bunsenlabs is just slightly too heavy, I know some manage it, it depends on what you’re trying to do with it.

Following the comments and response so far, I looked around quite extensively over a broad range of linux distributions. Arch, Alpine, Debian, even Gentoo booting them up and seeing what worked and what didn’t.

I found AntiX which appears to meet many of my requirements.

AntiX as a base install comes in at under 2GB HDD and 300MB RAM. By using lighter desktop environments I can push this down even further, admittedly sacrificing some usability.

It does not, sadly, have access to the AUR as it is Debian, however, there is the Sid repository, which I guess will have to do. It comes pre-loaded with RSync, LibreOffice and Firefox (which I will be booting shortly).

Even with the base of 300MB, I’m not sure I could manage to run Whonix through it, so I’m going to have to look at a different method to achieve my goals. If you have more RAM, this would be idea.

I usually use rustdesk on this smaller device to log into my main, which is a decidedly tough nut to otherwise get back to as it’s not on a static or exposed ip address. I’ve tried everything else, VNC cannot access my system, which is unfortunate.

Wayland is not a huge thing for me I can take it or leave it. I’m not expecting performance here for example gaming or such (beyond ZSnes which I swear would work on a suitably grown potato).

I had manjaro on the machine with operated at around 800MB, I was able to run Firefox and Rust desk on it, though I did have to trim some fat off Firefox to get that to work without setting the system into thrash mode.

All good tips!

I think I’ll try to aim for a lighter DE but, sure wth it’s worth a shot.

Edit:

Debian is a bit high on the demands so I’ve done some digging and I’m taking a look at AntiX.

Could not even get it to install sighs

This is fair and I am willing to look at other distributions. I looked at some of the commands for alpine linux and baulked, worst comes to worst I can alias things though.

I’ll take a look at it thanks.

Gonna trial ArchBang which looks like it’s supposed to run at around 500MB worth of RAM.

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This is basically why I went to linux around the time of Vista. The amount of hurdles windows puts in your way is silly.

However, it’s odd for the OS to work and Steam then not to work. I wonder if the windows store protections have been disabled?

You make it sound like Israel have no cards to play. Russia, China and other states have made it clear that they are prepared to back Israel, even more so if that means an ally turning away from the US.

Of course Biden cannot hold Netanyahu’s feet to the fire, because otherwise it means withdrawing military support etcera. If Biden does this he will 100% lose electoral college votes and then we have trump in office.

I’m no fan of Netanyahu or current Israeli policy and if I could see a perfect solution where Hamas get evicted, Netanyahu gets thrown under a bus and unelected, to work towards a proper two state solution, I would happily support that… it just isn’t there and the Israeli lobby is stupidly powerful in American politics.

The popular vote doesn’t matter in America. Just ask Trump who lost the popular vote yet won the presidency. Biden needs the electoral college votes to be elected and some of those are deep in Israeli pockets.

The mass graves for starters that were discovered after the IDF left the area. The indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, UN assigned refugee camps don’t go amiss either. The forceful expulsion of millions of people from their homes to ever smaller and smaller parts of Gaza. Perhaps where the IDF told people to go to certain places for safety and then promptly bombed those places.This is supported by statements made my ministers or representatives in the Israeli legislature and government, including current and former ministers. The denial/restriction of aid and water.

This is completely aside from using trumped up evidence absent charges that members of the UN agency were supporting Hamas in order to disrupt funding to a UN refugee agency. They also used this as an excuse to raid hospitals providing necessary medical care, doctors and nurses have been killed. Oh and killing aid workers… repeatedly. I think the first excuse was “it wasn’t us” which turned into “it was us but it was an accident” to “it was us, we deemed them a thread”… another incident was… World Kitchen? That was just such a shitshow for the IDF that someone actually got the boot.

There’s plenty of evidence available, it’s literally everywhere and often published/reported on by international media.

I can certainly appreciate the point, but realistically what can he actually do? Israel have already shown that they don’t actually give a toss about what the US of A thinks. The US have said stop hundreds of times already and Israel have carried on bombing refugee camps. Even if he stops sending any weapons right this minute or even at the start of the war… would that have actually stopped Israel no, would Iran have actually launched a straight up invasion, you betcha.

The next option is to go to war with Israel and return Israel back to the mandate. This will take well over a few months, in which time if Trump is elected, as another commentator said, he’s likely just to authorize Israel to and I quote “glass Palestine”. Thousands of people verse Millions of people, it’s a horrifying choice.

Politically, he can’t. I think he’s actually going further than 90% of other presidents would be prepared to do by delaying arms. He’s even leaned into the ‘pro-Israeli’ crowd and given Israel so much benefit of the doubt lest he be called out as anti-Semitic.

Realistically, I don’t think he enjoys being in this position either, but if the Israeli lobby switch to the Republicans, its cuts off a lot of support.

Don’t forget that Hamas are terrorists, they condoned and supported the October 7th atrocities and from what I’ve heard from the hostages, some of them were not great to their captives to say the least. Hamas do need to be removed from power.

Is Israel going too far? Yes, yes they are… can you win the next election by being seen to support Hamas? Even if what you’re actually doing is trying to protect civilians? Nope. Until someone makes a decision that Israel are actually committing genocide (and in my opinion based on the evidence I’ve observed, this seems very likely), I don’t think the president has a political leg to stand on. Once that decision is made, I believe Israel will see international support begin to fade.

Disclaimer: The use of the word “Israel” is limited to Benjamin Netanyahu, the IDF, the ruling government the Likud party.