#Lightweight linux distro for home labs software#

If you want a machine loaded with hard drives to store all your personal data, movies, pictures, etc. If your electricity bill or noise is a concern, solutions like Intel's NUC devices provide a small form factor, low power usage, and reduced noise, but at the expense of expandability. When estimating memory requirements, factor at least 2GB for the host operating system's memory consumption.

Memory can be expensive, especially the latest DDR4 SDRAM. If you are considering server-grade hardware, the Xeon class for Intel and EPYC for AMD are good options. Examples of good consumer-grade processors that can handle virtualization are Intel i5 or i7 and AMD Ryzen. You want to ensure the CPU supports virtualization instructions (VT-x for Intel and AMD-V for AMD). So, consider a CPU platform with multiple cores. If there are not enough resources to share among all the virtual machines, they'll be overallocated and try to steal each other's CPU cycles and memory. The two most important factors to consider in a virtualization server are the number and speed of its CPU cores and its memory. If you want to do a test or try something without the risk of breaking your entire system, just spin up a new virtual machine and you're ready to go. If you break one virtual machine, you won't have to rebuild the entire server, just the virtual one. Virtualization serversДЄ virtualization server allows you to run several virtual machines that share the physical box's resources while maximizing and isolating resources. You'll need three types of hardware: a virtualization server, storage, and a router/firewall. They are usually inexpensive, and server-grade hardware is built to last many years.

If buying new hardware is too expensive, search local universities, ads, and websites like eBay or Craigslist for recycled servers. When thinking about your hardware needs, first consider how you plan to use your lab as well as your budget, noise, space, and power usage. We'll look at the first two categories here and save maintaining your computer lab for a future article. There are three categories to consider when planning a home lab: hardware, software, and maintenance. There are many reasons to have a homelab, and this guide aims to make it easier to get started.

Welcome to the communityДo you want to create a homelab? Maybe you want to experiment with different technologies, create development environments, or have your own private cloud.

(this can change depending what version youвЂ™re using).Д¬onsidering that it is based on Ubuntu, youвЂ™ll have plenty of support and resources available online as you can follow the Ubuntu tutorials. Linux Lite is based on Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases.Д®ven though itвЂ™s a lightweight distro вЂ“ it comes baked with some essential tools.ДЇor instance, you may find Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for emails, Dropbox for Cloud storage, VLC Media Player for Music, LibreOffice for office, Gimp for image editing and Lite tweaks to tweak your desktop. Even a beginner will be able to use it on older computers easily.

CPU: Pentium 4 or Pentium M or AMD K8 or higherДЄs the name suggests Linux Lite is a lightweight Linux distro that does not need high-end hardware to run it.

Minimum hardware requirements for Lubuntu: However, IвЂ™d suggest to always prefer to select an application that doesnвЂ™t consume a lot of system resources.

#Lightweight linux distro for home labs software#

Software and repositories are the same so you will get all the software that you were using on Ubuntu from their repositories. Lubuntu has fewer packages pre-installed consisting mostly of lightweight Linux applications. Lubuntu supports older computers that have been buried (Just kidding! You can also use Lubuntu on modern hardware).В Lubuntu is one of the lightest derivatives of Ubuntu so it specializes in speed and the support for older hardware. In fact, it is one of the official flavors of Ubuntu. From Ubuntu 18.10 and above, you will find LXQT as the default desktop environment and could find LXDE as the default in its previous releases. As the name suggests, a member of the Ubuntu family but it utilizes either LXDE/LXQT desktop environment. Next on our list of best lightweight Linux distributions is Lubuntu. Support for 32-bit systems: Yes (older versions)