Distros like these help troubleshoot boxes that are old/slow but also not used as computers in the traditional sense. For example network boxes, NAS, video recording boxes etc that can't run the latest LTS ubuntu well but can boot a distro like DSL. getting a vga out on these things with a fast to boot distro helps you fix things like corrupt drives, bad partitioning, bad boot loaders etc which needs a few terminal commands and a distro that boots up quickly.

It once took ubuntu 18.04 30 minutes to boot on an old dual core intel network box once. I switched to Xubuntu and it was about 5 minutes. imagine having to do multiple reboots.

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LeFantome 3 days ago | parent [-]

DSL uses the latest Debian kernel. It is not any smaller than Ubuntu.

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lproven 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah it is.

It fits into under 700 MB and runs in well under 100 MB of RAM. The default Ubuntu image is about 6 GB now and takes a gig of RAM.

Have you not tried it? I have:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/damn_small_linux_retu...

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compounding_it 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The GUI is usually the problem. I have booted Xubuntu and it's still slow. Slow systems with older GPUs simply can't keep up with newer desktops. Most of the times I need a terminal but a lightweight desktop can help if I quickly want to open a browser and search something so that I can copy past more complicated commands.

	▲	lproven 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It is still slow. Try Alpine. It's amazing. Xubuntu 22.04 took nearly 10 GB of disk and half a gig of RAM. I measured it: https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/18/ubuntu_remixes/ Alpine takes 1.1 GB of disk and under 200 MB of RAM. https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/05/new_lts_kernel_and_al... Both running a full Xfce $CURRENT desktop, in a Virtualbox VM.