Which Ubuntu?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 2022-11-15 at 15:19 -0500, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Lubuntu is the lightweight version of Ubuntu that some folks use for
> low resource machines. https://lubuntu.net .

Hi,

I'm using the openbox window manager without a desktop environment.
Lubuntu does provide the gtk based desktop environment LXDE and the Qt
based desktop environment LXQT, both based on the openbox window
manager.

Plain openbox or LXDE or LXQT are light weight, but it's possible to
have a more lightweight window manager. I'm not talking about tiling
window managers. One very lightweight window manager is jwm.

However, often it's a miscalculation, since using a lightweight window
manager with or without a lightweight desktop environment might not help
that much, if one or more bloatware apps are needed.

An example, if a user needs "Evolution", "a personal information
management application that provides integrated mail, calendaring and
address book functionality", the user needs to run a lot of GNOME
desktop parts. In such cases the lightweight desktop environment doesn't
gain much, since under the hood a lot of software related to a bloated
desktop environment GNOME does run anyway. A user might not need
Evolution, but it's just an example, for the dependency chains a lot of
modern apps have got.

I like to use old computers as long as possible myself. However, giving
very oldish computers isn't charity. What kind of "I.T. tuition session"
is it? Depending on the answer those old computers might be ok and you
probably don't need to run X at all or they are garbage, because they
are unsuitable to run modern software and therefore unsuitable.

Regards,
Ralf