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I am looking for a light version of Linux. I tried out Unity desktop but it is a bit too much for my laptop so I switched to Mint Cinnamon. It is less heavy but I could not install my graphics card driver. So this time I am trying out Xubuntu.

I tried to watch a 1080p video on YouTube. While I was watching, CPU usage was mostly like 90-70%, rarely 30%. Is this too much? I am giving up some desktop features in order to use less CPU but my CPU is used maybe more than Unity desktop. Actually I am fed up of trying to install nVidia drivers on mint. After installing Nvidia drivers, the Cinnamon DE has vanished. It works fine somewhat now but I want to use all capacity of my hardware and it is very hard for me to understand the world of Linux as a beginner but I love Linux so much. Now my questions:

  • I have a 4 GB flash disk, can I install full Xubuntu onto my flash disk?
  • What can I do to use less CPU on Xubuntu?

thanks

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    Mar 1, 2013 at 19:14

2 Answers 2

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This is not unusual, youtube-1080p is a very heavy load, even for recent hardware. Here is some information to compare to your own experience:

I have recently bought a pair of pretty cheap an modest netbooks and have compared how ubuntu, xubuntu and lubuntu handled video. All of them were assisted by hardware video acceleration (mplayer-vaapi on AMD/HD4000) and is played perfectly althoug I noticed differences in processor core temperature which made me curious. I used the same player and movie for each install and monitored with htop.

Approximate CPU load according to htop: Lubuntu: 20 - 30 % Xubuntu: 40 - 60 % Ubuntu: 70 - 95 % (Ubuntu 2d without compositing)

So it seems to me that your hardware (probably without hardware video decoding) is doing quite well. Lubuntu could speed it up a bit more, and since you only have 4GB flash I second Greyscaleimag3s' advice. Go for Lubuntu.

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4 GB flash disk could get a little small, only some distibutions run that small, try Lubuntu instead, this would maybe also fix the CPU problem, as Lubuntu is very lightweight.

If Xubuntu should stay, try to deinstall/disable running, not frequently used background services

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