Before the RAM apocalypse caused PC hardware prices to hit the danger zone, I’d made big grand plans to upgrade a bunch of systems in my arsenal. And I don’t just mean my everyday gaming machine or server nodes, either. Instead, I want to talk about the cheap mini-PCs and old laptops I wanted to set up for my family. Now that I can’t beef up these systems with extra RAM or SSDs, I’ll have to make do with software tweaks.

The most obvious one involves purging the inefficient mess called Windows 11 from the PC and replacing it with Linux distributions. But since I plan to give them to folks who have used Windows for most of their lives, I can’t go too deep into the Linux iceberg. So, turning my family members into a part of the Proxmox or TrueNAS factions is out of the question, and I don’t want them to go through the trouble of setting up (and troubleshooting) desktop environments in CLI distros. With those restrictions in mind, I’ve honed in on four distributions that, despite shipping with GUIs, are fairly light on the resource consumption front.

AntiX

Somewhat unconventional, but it’s great for reviving old systems

AntiX may be based on Debian, but it has a couple of variations on the classic formula I’ve grown to love from the king of vanilla distributions. For starters, it doesn’t ship with conventional desktop environments, instead saving system resources by relying on window managers. Likewise, AntiX ditches systemd and provides a bunch of alternative, lightweight init systems for me to choose from.

However, it’s still pretty approachable for beginners. It’s compatible with age-old 32-bit systems, and can run basic apps on devices with merely 1GB of RAM. On my old 4GB NUCs, the base version of AntiX is enough for browsing the web and accessing typical Linux-based productivity applications. The default IceWM window manager makes it approachable for beginners, while the Control Center has plenty of customization features and (more importantly) recovery provisions.

MX Linux

The most beginner-friendly Linux flavor of the bunch

Truth be told, MX Linux requires slightly more resources than AntiX. But it makes up for this drawback with its extremely intuitive UI. This Debian-flavored distro features full-fledged desktop environments instead of AntiX’s window managers. I’ve opted for Xfce, as it has a low performance overhead but doesn’t cause the UI to look overly dated. If you want something different, MX Linux also includes the aesthetics king KDE Plasma and the ultralight DE Fluxbox.

It’s also backed by an extensive wiki and community-created documentation, on top of offering a better collection of tools than AntiX on a fresh installation. I’ve grown (maybe Stockholm Syndrome’d) to like alternative init systems, but MX Linux also supports systemd for better package compatibility. Throw in the massive community support and the Advanced Hardware Support ISOs, and you can see why MX Linux is my go-to option for reviving systems when I don’t want the headache of troubleshooting a random package.

Bodhi Linux

Perfect for building a lean, mean, green lightweight machine

I’d heard tales of Bodhi Linux’s ultralight nature, but it took me a while until I actually gave it a shot. And although I still prefer the QoL services in MX Linux, Bodhi is a fantastic option for bringing dinosaur PCs to life as general-purpose machines. Rather than featuring some common desktop environment, Bodhi Linux ships with Moksha, a fork of the Enlightenment 17 window manager. As such, it barely consumes any resources, while offering a responsive (if somewhat minimal) interface for everyday tasks.

Like AntiX, Bodhi also includes 32-bit variants of the ISO, and it can even run basic tasks on 512MB of memory. With some extra RAM, Bodhi Linux can be armed with moksha-modules, which add some neat monitoring graphs and lightweight service widgets to Bodhi’s UI.

Chimera Linux

A quirky distro that doesn’t hog too many resources

All the distros I’ve mentioned up until this point are based on either Debian or Ubuntu (which, in turn, traces its roots to the king of vanilla distributions). Not to be confused with the Arch-based ChimeraOS, Chimera Linux is an oddball, as it’s an independent Linux flavor developed from scratch. Like the Greek myth of the Chimera, this distro is a weird combo of Linux and FreeBSD. While it has the classic Linux kernel, it ditches GNU coreutils for FreeBSD userland services.

So, you get a wacky distro that’s made of LLVM (with Clang), musl library, and the dinit system, with Alpine Package Keeper serving as the package manager. Contrary to what you may think from its wild set of services, Chimera supports KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce, so it’s pretty beginner-friendly. Throw in Xfce, and it’s light enough to run on systems that can’t support Windows 11. Me? I’d rather save this one for the N100 mini-PC I plan to use for random Linux experiments, as it seems right up my tinkering alley.