User:Captaincaveman/Linux Minimalists Guide

So for whatever reason, be it your love for old thinkpads, old computer's, frugality, your shitty job, or dumpy ass neet lifestyle, you've ended up with a toaster of a pc. Or perhaps you just love minimalism or maybe you purchased an ARM microboard and want to use it as a desktop for some weird reason. Obviously Windows XP is shitty, old, outdated, loosing support, insecure, wont run on many newer toasters (especially not your microboard), and worst of all is proprietary. Most linux distro's also contain default bloatware that is best suited for more higher end pcs, so they are possibly out of the question for you. This guide will do it's best to give you a good idea on how to get the most out of your toaster or give you a minimalist experience.

The Lazy Way Out

This is here first for all the people who will probably read 1/4th of this article and stop. If you want to speed up your computer but you don't want to do much work, and you don't care if your computer is not fully optimized, just read this part:

Desktop Environent's you should avoid at all costs:

• Unity - The King of resource whores.
• KDE - The Queen of resource whores.
• GNOME - The Joker of resource whores.
• Cinnamon - Not as bad as the other 3, but not good for toasters.

Distro's You'll Probably Want:

• Xubuntu - If your toaster isn't too bad and you don't want to sacrifice "beauty".
• Linux Mint (MATE) - If Xubuntu isn't for you and you want more resources saved. Classic GNOME users might like this.
• Lubuntu - If you want the most speed and you don't care about running into the occasional glitch nor do you care about eye candy, this is what you want.

For Those Who Want To Continue

For those if you are willing to spend at least a couple days setting stuff up (depending on ones speed or how far one is willing to go), next you should ask yourself how far you want to go and what setup you want.

• I want everything as minimal and resource conserving as possible: Then you'll be stuck with console and console applications. Not exactly a bad thing if your needs are specific. We'll cover this.
• I don't mind sacrificing some things as long as I have a gui: Then you'll probably want a window manager like i3. If i3 is too complex you could check out full DE's LXDE or Enlightenment.
• I want customization and bleeding edge, but I don't want to spend a ridiculous time with this: Then you'll probably want Arch
• I want all of those but with more possible stability over new software and/or I hate SystemD: Then you'll want Debian as your distro.
• I want complete control of everything and don't care how much time I'll need or I have a good separate computer: Then you'll want Gentoo. This guide doesn't cover Gentoo (yet).
• I might get a bit lazy throughout this and learn some of these things later - This guide will also give you the next less "complicated" thing (usually a gui application).