Many popular Linux distributions slant their bias towards being easy to use and good-looking. Unfortunately this means they choose user interfaces (GNOME, KDE) that are memory-hungry and thus unsuitable for older computers. Vector Linux 6.0 Light (VLL) on the other hand, tries to go against this tide by choosing applications and a desktop user interface that are light on memory usage. It doesn't insist on having 512 MB of RAM to run smoothly - a bare minimum of 64 MB does just fine, and even a 200 MHz processor would do alright.

Vector Linux Light is based on the Slackware Linux distribution and targets users who already have some Linux experience, or would like to learn. Therefore, even its installation routines are text-based, with no graphical interface.



It is fairly simple, with a wizard guiding you through the whole procedure, and partitioning tools available as always. Once installed and configured, the graphical window manager used is IceWM. Functionality isn't compromised - network connections, web browsing, chat, image-viewing, CD-writing and so on work as expected.

The one issue you might face is with Siag Office - it can do basic word processing and spreadsheets, but some complex documents would have a problem. To solve this issue download and install the latest version of OpenOffice.