Widen your horizons

To help you get wet, rubber ring in tow, and everything, you can rely on your trusty Linux computer magazine, namely, this one.

In this issue, you'll learn all about those distros that are designed to work well on old or underpowered hardware. MX Linux, BunsenLabs, PCLinux OS, and the other distributions covered in this issue's Features section sport impressive functionalities and pretty desktops, coupled with a small footprint.

They are ideal if you have an aging laptop collecting dust in the back of a closet, or need a backup and all you have handy is the netbook you retired five years ago. Or, maybe you have a friend or relative who needs a basic computer.

Or, heck, you yourself have come to love your old PC and don't want to buy a new one just because software is getting more and more bloated. I won't tack on the adage of "for basic computing activities," because, as you will learn in the pages ahead, some of these distros can do pretty advanced and impressive stuff, despite how few resources they use.

Here's the thing: You may think having hundreds, maybe thousands of distros, is overkill, but when someone, often a group of someones, has put time and effort into developing a new distro, you can be pretty sure it's for a reason. Usually, it's because they had an itch that nothing would scratch for them, so they set about scratching it themselves.

It's not like this is a new topic in our magazine – this looking at other distros that satisfy a specific set of needs. We have often talked about distributions different from Ubuntu in Ubuntu User . In just the previous issue, for example, we showed how Kali can help keep your network safe [1] and Tails can keep your data private [2].

Sure, you could do all these things from Ubuntu, install networking monitoring software, or privacy-guarding tools, as well as try to shave off fat and bludgeon an ultra-light desktop into your current system.

But, seriously, tailoring a general-purpose distro to such specific needs… well, that *is* overkill, especially when some very clever engineers have probably already done it for you.

Recycling, optimizing, and not wasting are part of what Free Software is all about, and with these distros, you can do just that.