One sledgehammer coming up! Of course you're exactly right, I had forgotten about LFS somewhat. It's not for the fainthearted, it's a one stop shop of how to linux like a boss.

It most definitely is lighter than AntiX, it's also on my list like Alpine should AntiX not work out. I don't mind dated GUIs as long as it works. Many thanks.

Trim down is perhaps a strong work. I went in to heavily limit it's performance capabilities, limit the amount of cache it could hold, number of threads it could use and so on. I also stripped out a lot of bloat like pocket and other features that if they couldn't be removed I could turn them off.

AntiX uses IceWM which is much lighter than LXQt apparently. I haven't yet tried Alpine so can't compare the two. AntiX (64bit) barely uses 300MB RAM. AntiX by the way is based on Debian.

SimpleX now has a bin in the AUR, which I believe was made from a .deb file. Fk appimage and the horse it rode in on.

Does Calligra have BASIC capabilities?

Arch linux is too big even as base. I'm currently using 64-bit AntiX which runs (base) half of what Arch-Linux does according to it's own guide. It's using IceWM (which is its heaviest DE). It took a while to investigate believe me, it's also Debian so focuses more on security than Arch does (due in part to Arch's bleeding edge status new vulnerabilities are being added all the time, they're being fixed of course, it's just a natural consequence of their methodology).

I don't believe AbiWord or Gnumeric have BASIC capabilities?

Deluge takes up a tiny amount of ram, I'd recommend investigating the thin client mode. It's smaller than Transmission for me. The non-daemonized client has a memory leak.

Thanks for the tip about X2Go. I'll take a look.

It's in my pile in case AntiX falls through, it weighs in at only 300MB RAM base install.

Bunsenlabs is just slightly too heavy, I know some manage it, it depends on what you're trying to do with it.

Following the comments and response so far, I looked around quite extensively over a broad range of linux distributions. Arch, Alpine, Debian, even Gentoo booting them up and seeing what worked and what didn't.

I found AntiX which appears to meet many of my requirements.

AntiX as a base install comes in at under 2GB HDD and 300MB RAM. By using lighter desktop environments I can push this down even further, admittedly sacrificing some usability.

It does not, sadly, have access to the AUR as it is Debian, however, there is the Sid repository, which I guess will have to do. It comes pre-loaded with RSync, LibreOffice and Firefox (which I will be booting shortly).

Even with the base of 300MB, I'm not sure I could manage to run Whonix through it, so I'm going to have to look at a different method to achieve my goals. If you have more RAM, this would be idea.

I usually use rustdesk on this smaller device to log into my main, which is a decidedly tough nut to otherwise get back to as it's not on a static or exposed ip address. I've tried everything else, VNC cannot access my system, which is unfortunate.

Wayland is not a huge thing for me I can take it or leave it. I'm not expecting performance here for example gaming or such (beyond ZSnes which I swear would work on a suitably grown potato).

I had manjaro on the machine with operated at around 800MB, I was able to run Firefox and Rust desk on it, though I did have to trim some fat off Firefox to get that to work without setting the system into thrash mode.

All good tips!

I think I'll try to aim for a lighter DE but, sure wth it's worth a shot.

Edit:

Debian is a bit high on the demands so I've done some digging and I'm taking a look at AntiX.

Could not even get it to install sighs

This is fair and I am willing to look at other distributions. I looked at some of the commands for alpine linux and baulked, worst comes to worst I can alias things though.

I'll take a look at it thanks.

Gonna trial ArchBang which looks like it's supposed to run at around 500MB worth of RAM.

Thank you for this comment... double checked the sub lmao. This showed up in my feed.

"One side" both sides outright lied. So have to disagree on at least that point.

As I keep being told the UK is a 'representative democracy', it is generally your MP who decides the specifics, as the voting electorate it's your job to decide which strategy should be followed. This is why manifestos are presented and that they are not complete covering every policy. The EU also made it abundantly clear (as they threw their toys out of the pram) that the UK could not 'cherry pick' parts of the EU, they were either in or out. There was no option of remaining part of the single market so it would be silly to offer that to the public.

Yes or No, was a legally non-binding way to advise government. What the government did with that information was their own effort. The referendum was sound. That someone lied should not preclude us from voting on things, because all politicians lie... except perhaps in wales where it might actually be a criminal offense for politicians to lie soon(tm)...

There actually was a deal with the EU, several of them, however, the public then elected Boris Johnson deciding by electoral mandate that they wanted out and leave meant leave, not half in half out, just fuck 'em. It's rather sweet to pretend that there wasn't a general election before we actually left. There was a chance for the public to opt towards trying to remain in the single market, whether via Theresa May's deal or by electing Labour.

Yep. Fair play. Take an upvote!

The reason I mention prison, is because when someone is convicted of racism, that's generally what happens. Depending on your country blackface can land you in prison.

Legal issues are Human Decency issues boiled down. I think you do have to have intent or some awareness to be racist. Whether you recognize that as racism or not is a different matter. Is it human decency to want to emulate what you like? I think it is. So I don't mind people wanting to change the color of their skin if that's what they want to do, as much as I don't mind them wanting to change their gender, if that's what suits them, great.

Since race is 100% a social construct much more so than Gender (the difference between the genes are stupidly small). The ethnicity argument is largely one about cultural appropriation: You can't have my skin color because you weren't born with it, you're actually another color, you don't know what it means to be my skin color. (Just replace skin color with gender). You can't listen to X music or wear X hair style because it's X skin color thing.

You enjoy R&B, love black hair styles, love black skin tones, maybe you believe in your heart you were always black, go right ahead have at. I'm not going to judge you.

You want to mock black people and dance around in full minstrel while doing a monkey dance with bananas just for laughs... I'm not cool with that. Just as I'm not a huge far of people dressing up as women to caricaturize/mock them as part of a stand up act.

No. I'm very much are of why the genders are separated to begin with. These people are not very well educated, they don't have a great never mind positive peer group, they are riddled with attitudes that you would expect of prisoners, drugs, mental health issues and so on... this applies to both men and women.

As long as the inmate has human contact, whether staff, visitors, volunteers etcetera they do not need to be in gen pop. For their own safety and rehabilitation.

The whole reason why they're in prison, is because the judge believes they are a risk to society, whether trans, male/female or whatever. I think everyone should have a fair chance of being rehabilitated without the additional problems that come from them being trans. Whether this is caused from the inmate themselves, or because the fears that the population has. Their best chance of rehabilitation is to be among other trans prisoners (best option) with possible supervised interactions with their adopted gender to ensure that they will be able to adapt to life outside of prison.

Putting them in gen pop is usually a bad idea.

Prison is at least 10x worse for trans bashing, no matter which gender.

I really wish more people understood just how fickle the justice system can be...

It's a little more equivalent than most seem to be considering.

Her point is not about caricature either way, in fact the opposite. She's assuming that the individual would be wearing black face in good faith. Blackface isn't always about caricature, we see this most frequently in Hollywood, but it wouldn't be the first time I've seen a white person wearing dreadlocks or even a traditional Nigerian outfit. Blackface itself is a little rarer, but being tanned to look like someone from the Mediterranean is still very popular, likewise White-face is an entire make-up industry with various skin lightening products. It's okay to want to make yourself look white but woe betide anyone wants to actually look black, nope, must be a caricature.

What do you do if a white kid wants to be a dark elf at a party? Same goes for cosplayers.

The point Rowling was making, well okay, if it's not acceptable under any circumstances to attempt to change your race, even if you 'feel' like that race, then why is it acceptable to change the gender. To Rowling, it's no different, she feels just as offended that 'men' are dressing up as women, pretending to be women, as everyone else seems be about people dressing up in blackface, no matter how well intentioned.

Both sides of that argument are clearly wrong, good faith matters and blackface isn't always caricature... and likewise, not all people who dress as women are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts either, some fully intend to caricaturize women and often make a whole song and dance about it and is apparently hugely acceptable, often degrading women while they do so.

Too soon! 💀