Looking for a Linux distro with a little less “meat to it”? Then this article is for you! As many of you know, the advantages to a low fat Linux are many. One of the biggest benefits is that it can run more smoothly on older PCs.

I first started playing with Linux a few years ago, after reading several Introduction-To-Linux articles in computer magazines and on the web. In almost all of these articles, low hardware requirements are listed as one of Linux’s advantages. Usually the authors then go on to show how easy it is to use Linux on the desktop with the GNOME or KDE desktop environments.

So I set up my machine to dual-boot Win95 and Linux, and experimented with several different distros. Initially I was disappointed with the performance of Linux, and it took me a while to discover the performance gains made possible by running leaner software. The fact that most of the newbie-oriented documentation emphasised GNOME/KDE while ignoring everything else only made things harder. That’s what this page is all about - a newbie’s guide to good, lightweight software that runs well on boxes that are less than state-of-the-art.