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Super lightweight distro??

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ssjwizard

Has slightly less legible writing than Thideras
Joined
Mar 12, 2002
Ok guys I'm looking for an extremely lightweight distro for my extremely paranoid friend. He is running an old C2D machine and wants to do all of his web browsing through a VM. So what were basically looking for a distro that can run virtualized with a minimal CPU and RAM footprint with good web browser and flash support. Desktop environment is totally flexible aslong as its not a resource hog.
 
Ok guys I'm looking for an extremely lightweight distro for my extremely paranoid friend. He is running an old C2D machine and wants to do all of his web browsing through a VM. So what were basically looking for a distro that can run virtualized with a minimal CPU and RAM footprint with good web browser and flash support. Desktop environment is totally flexible aslong as its not a resource hog.

He can try Trisquel GNU/Linux and use the mini edition which is lightweight because it is meant for netbooks and older computers. If he is paranoid it is all free (libre) software meaning every single program has the source code available so he can study it to his heart's content if he wants to make sure his programs work the way he wants them to.

It is one of the 9 distros endorsed by the GNU project.
 
idk if you can run it through virtual machine... but damn small linux? or puppy linux? why is he so paranoid? lol
 
No particular reason hes just paranoid by nature. The kind of guy who wouldn't google dominos for fear that there gona do something with his information..... Hes a linux user already on Ubuntu but he wants to isolate his primary OS from the internet.

Im checking out #! right now it seems pretty light and responsive. Im still open to suggestions for this. Ill be testing for a week or more before I go to set him up with this as I dont want to do it more than once.
 
Ya but what is the web support on a distro that small?
 
I would say ChromiumOS as that can be vitalized and is more or less a bootable web browser, depends on weather your friend has an issue with using google products.

http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

although I'm not sure how having a dedicated VM just for web browsing will increase his privacy the servers he connects to will still log his home IP and his ISP will still be able to log any data he sends over his connection.
 
although I'm not sure how having a dedicated VM just for web browsing will increase his privacy the servers he connects to will still log his home IP and his ISP will still be able to log any data he sends over his connection.
Yeah, this. It doesn't really change anything from the internet's perspective. It does make him safer from browser-based exploits though.
 
Chromium? May as well join facebook & twitter, and use an android or crapple phone for all the privacy you'll get. I'd install salineos, compile midori 0.4.4 (it's in git but not the repo's) and run the private browsing version. Saline is not only fast but easy to use being debian.
 
last time i used dsl, it had firefox preinstalled.

now granted, i haven't used it in a couple-3 years so i don't know what browser it comes with now.
 
I would say ChromiumOS as that can be vitalized and is more or less a bootable web browser, depends on weather your friend has an issue with using google products.

http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

although I'm not sure how having a dedicated VM just for web browsing will increase his privacy the servers he connects to will still log his home IP and his ISP will still be able to log any data he sends over his connection.

If he is paranoid offering him a google designed operating system is like offering a pyromaniac gasoline.

If he is TRULY paranoid then you want to lookinto Secure Linux. Linux distros that are designed from teh ground up to prevent snooping.

Probably be more lightweight by default too since security is in fact REMOVING things not adding things.
 
@neuro thanks for the recommendation Ill look at it.

So I know that it doesnt particularly matter that hes surfing from a VM but this is his reasoning. He can set it up once and get it all tuned up how he wants without having to disable cookes, and scripts, and all the other crazy things hes already doing. Then save the entire VM into an archive file on his machine. Then he can setup a script to automatically extract ontop of the VM folder at startup. In essence it allows him to eliminate his paranoia about cookies and cross site scripts because everytime he logs on its a fresh clean OS, without having to alter his usage behaviors on the main OS.
 
@neuro thanks for the recommendation Ill look at it.

So I know that it doesnt particularly matter that hes surfing from a VM but this is his reasoning. He can set it up once and get it all tuned up how he wants without having to disable cookes, and scripts, and all the other crazy things hes already doing. Then save the entire VM into an archive file on his machine. Then he can setup a script to automatically extract ontop of the VM folder at startup. In essence it allows him to eliminate his paranoia about cookies and cross site scripts because everytime he logs on its a fresh clean OS, without having to alter his usage behaviors on the main OS.


that makes sense, especially since, I can set opera to delete all private data every time I close it. (I don't because I want to retain browsing history and such as I have nothing to hide. I block goolge and facebook cookies and most all 3rd party ones...)

However a not exactly recent but fairly new security notice is that flash stores "cookies" so to speak and those are not deletable by any security software. they are flash files not cookies or anything, kinda like windows old index.dat files.
 
crunchbang indeed !!

puppy linux is awesome ...based on ubuntu10.04 ...ultrastable...use it on atom 1.66 n450 hyperthreaded crap-cpu use it to watch 720 p videos thru vga


C2D is highly overkill(too powerful):comp: for both the above distro's....i use atom crap with 2gb ram....even raspberry pi is better than what i have..
 
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