For the last five years, I’ve been running Lubuntu and was very happy with it.
But it seems to be grinding to a halt. Nothing new is happening, the Wayland transition is stopped etc.
What are my options? I need a lightweight distribution (4 GB max. RAM).
XUbuntu? Mint? Mate?
Just for info, this thread illustates my trigger for this query:
Is this a support question?
Or are you merely shopping for a new distro?
What does “grinding to a halt” mean?
Last time I checked about 2 years ago, the order was…
Lubuntu…lightest and highly configurable
Ubuntu…second lightest and configurable
Xubuntu…third lightest and more configurable than Lubuntu
That isn’t to mean that I was just checking.
I was in search for a specific distro just as you are now.
I chose 3 that fit best with my hardware and did my own tests to see which was best for both my system and my “personal taste”.
Each distro has their caveats.
Which caveats are you willing to deal with?
That’s one of the main questions you want to answer when looking for a distro for your system.
What packages you install/run determine your weight and footprint. (qt, gnome, gtk, KDE, …)
When I started Lubuntu, it was on QT4.
Now I believe it’s QT6. (it may be QT5)
QT5 was awesome 
Hopefully someone more knowledgable than me on the differences will chime in.
Hope this helps.
Since this does not seem to be a support-related topic I have moved it to the Lounge, which is for general discussions and ideas.
I think the approach suggested by @WyattWhiteEagle is very sensible.
There are so many distros out there and you can test them either live from a USB or in a VM if your hardware supports this/is capable.
But one example I can give is Bodhi Linux, which is Ubuntu-based, has a very lightweight desktop environment and runs very nicely on an old Intel Atom 1GB netbook.
Make checklists and work your way through the options you come across until you find what works for you.
This is just one of the amazing things about Linux, we have choices.
Of those, Lubuntu is the lightest. Xubuntu comes close.
If you are happy to leave the Ubuntu fold, you can try Bodhi Linux (based on Ubuntu), which is even lighter. Or Debian itself.
Outside Debian, there’s the tight AntiX Full. You could try Arch, which requires a sharp learning experience, but Arch gives you a great deal of control over your installation, so you can go tight.
As you’re accustomed to the Ubuntu fold, personally, I’d recommend that you stick with Lubuntu. It’s still under development and still an official member of the Ubuntu fold; the link that you posted says nothing whatsoever about Lubuntu “grinding to a halt”. I don’t know where you got that idea from.
I was referring to this:
“Lubuntu is effectively in “maintenance mode” at this point”, a quote from the 25.04 release notes (section Technical Notes).
https://lubuntu.me/lubuntu-25-10-questing-quokka-released/
Wayland is still not there, other parts have also been pushed into the future.
I am going to try and put this as politely and as respectfully as possible: seems to me you are selectively choosing which parts of that section to mention, while skipping over other parts.
I think people often forget that those behind the flavours are volunteers who devote their spare time to developing and maintaining these distros.
Also, in terms of stability and the like you should always be waiting for LTS rather than interim releases anyway. This is what I have always recommended to users so the fact that some features were temporarily frozen seems to me both normal and perhaps even insignificant in the larger picture.
Lubuntu never used Qt4; in the days when Qt was Qt4, Lubuntu provided the LXDE desktop which was GTK2.
When GTK2 was deprecated and replaced with GTK3, a core developer (PCMan) ported pcmanfm (LXDE) from GTK2 to GTK3 and was disappointed with how much heavier it was, thus he blogged about it… that in time led to another port (to Qt5 and newer pcmanfm-qt) which was lighter (than GTK3 port, so he blogged about it), and soon after LXDE developers such as himself joined with the RazorQt team to create the LXDE replacement which is LXQt. Lubuntu stuck with LXDE for a few more years, before finally following to LXQt too.
Lubuntu switched from LXDE (GTK2) to LXQt (Qt5) which now is LXQt (Qt6); release determines whether you’re using Qt5 (18.10 to 24.04) or Qt6 (24.10 & later).
I’ve found Xfce lighter than GNOME, or other desktops (inc. MATE), and regularly find if using GTK apps and a limited RAM machine that Xfce can beat Lubuntu/LXQt too, but comparing an out of the box Lubuntu and Xubuntu machine I’ve found Lubuntu/LXQt lighter/faster (but so what, few of us aren’t adding apps to our fresh installs anyway), just as it is using many Qt apps (which can better share resources with the LXQt desktop), so I consider both OS installed plus software I’ll add to it.
I tend to consider apps I’ll use, and then decide what desktop or WM when resources are limited; as I want them all to share and not compete for resources (esp. when RAM/CPU is a limited resource; if the issue is disk space it’ll be different to what I’m outlining here!). My resource limited devices tend to have both Xubuntu/Xfce & Lubuntu/LXQt installed in a multi-desktop install (ie. NOT dual boot!), and I decide which session/DE/WM I’ll use when I login based on what I’ll do in that particular session. This will mean my disk footprint is far larger of course; but I worry about RAM & speed of operation; as most of my devices can easily copy with an extra ~1GB of disk footprint due to the extra files/apps/libs on disk; RAM & speed of operation is what matters more to me.
FYI: pcmanfm is both a file-manager for LXDE as well as used in the operation of the LXDE desktop. The pcmanfm-qt is both file-manager & desktop manager or doing the same functions for the LXQt desktop.
This griped at me quite a bit when I read it… I saw it as complaining about the efforts of a team of volunteers…
You later quoted something from two releases ago (though you linked 25.10 release notes but say 25.04?), which was highlighting a lack of resources or lack of people offering to contribute; but do you offer to help? No you just complain. The Lubuntu team lost a rather key developer earlier this year which has impacted what is achieved with the now much smaller team, and relates to what was written.
Thank you @rubi1200 for your response !
Right after a complaint, you ask [us?!!!] where you want to go to?? two other Ubuntu flavors and an off-topic (Ubuntu based) system??
The one bright spark you probably aren’t aware of… asking if you should move to somewhere where users there are asking if they should move where you came from?? They’re not liking that their flavor isn’t in the list of 26.04 LTS flavors, but anyway it gave me a smile… Alas our [human] nature tends to be to complain, far more than help others out.
I apologize if my question came out the wrong way. That was certainly not my intention, I appreciate the works of the developerrs highly.
The niceties of what’s a flavor and what’s Ubuntu based are not clear to me, sorry.
The 25.04 vs. 25.10 mixup stems from the issue that I upgraded from 24.04 to 25.04, but a subsequent upgrade to 25.10 keeps failing.
I’ll probably stick with Lubuntu and wait for the new features.
Sorry for the trouble. I’ll be more careful when posting in the future.
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