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General discussionGood lightweight Linux distro for web browsing in a virtual machine?(11 posts)(11 posts)
(11 posts)
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Posted July 05, 2016
I'm planning to start doing my regular web browsing inside a virtual machine and leave banking, shopping, etc, for the "outside real machine". I know people usually do it the other way round, but I prefer this approach because if things get dirty it's way easier to wipe the VM clean. Also, although I've read about host keyloggers not capturing VM keystrokes, I still have the feeling that it's more difficult for malware to leak out of a VM than leak in from the host. At any rate, I'm still toying with the idea and I'm open to suggestions.

My host machines run OSX (laptop) and Windows (desktop). I've already tried Ubuntu 16.04 inside VirtualBox (inside OSX 10.9.5), installed and run Chrome, and it works well enough for me. But somehow this setup makes me itch. I only need Chrome to surf the web and download the occasional file to a host folder, that's it. I'll edit my documents, play my music, watch my movies in the host machine, so I really don't need a full-blown distro.

After an initial bit of reading I'm going to try Mint (MATE, I think) and Puppy and see how much unneeded stuff they include. But seeing as there are quite a few Linux enthusiasts around here, I'm willing to hear you guys and probably save myself a lot of reading and testing.

So, any recommendations? Thanks for reading and in advance for any help :)
Posted July 05, 2016
Try Tiny Core Linux?

Base distribution is only 16MB, and you can just add the extension for the web browser that you want.
Posted July 05, 2016
Try this http://www.browserlinux.com/
Posted July 05, 2016
i don't think that changing the distro is what you need..
all depends on what desktop environment you're using
unity (ubuntu) is more heavy than mate (on linux mint mate or ubuntu mate) or xfce (xubuntu)

but also mate or xfce or lxde are way more heavy than a window manager like i3 or awesome

and you can get windows or desktop manager to work on ubuntu, so you can switch between them and you won't need to learn some new commands because the distro remain the same

here you can find memory usage of almost every window and desktop environment

in my opinion the best choice for you is to install either Lxde in your current ubuntu or Lubuntu as you will maintain apt-get (or aptitude) and the ubuntu repositories. Lxde is the most Lightweight mainstream desktop environment

you can also use debian and install Lxde there (and still have apt-get but with the debian repositories)
if you want a rolling distro you can try manjaro Lxde version so you will use manjaro and arch repositories and pacman as package manager

If saving ram usage is an absolute priority you better install a window manager (like i3, awesome, blackbox, etc) on you currently installed ubuntu

install Lxde on Ubuntu
Posted July 05, 2016
I agree, the core distro isn't that important. The Desktop environment has a bigger impact. So go with XFCE or LXDE (depending on taste)

I used Lubuntu inside a VM and it worked smoothly. But Mint+XFCE should work just as well.
Posted July 05, 2016
I'll second manero666, any distro using LXDE.

I find Lubuntu works quite well in a VM, I use it for my web development environment in Windows.
Posted July 05, 2016
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nepundo: .
Customize a Porteus ISO that fits your needs. You're welcome.
EDIT: It seems the main Porteus project is very outdated. Try Porteus Kiosk and see if it fits your needs.
Post edited July 05, 2016 by sunshinecorp
Posted July 05, 2016
Thanks everybody. I wouldn't have found easily all this information on my own.

I have downloaded all your suggestions, and I'm trying them all. However I think I'll go with a "big" distro + light desktop environment for my machines, and since I'm at it I'll build a bootable USB with one of the light distros to use out of home.
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nepundo: .
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sunshinecorp: Customize a Porteus ISO that fits your needs. You're welcome.
EDIT: It seems the main Porteus project is very outdated. Try Porteus Kiosk and see if it fits your needs.
Thank you :). I've already tried this because it looked like the easiest one. It's almost perfect, except for a couple of drawbacks so far:

1. Updates are a paid service.
2. Highly customizable at installation time, but enabling access to the browser settings requires quite a bit of messing around with the ISO and takes some work. At least I haven't found any easy way to do it via UI.
Post edited July 05, 2016 by nepundo
Posted July 05, 2016
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nepundo: Thanks everybody. I wouldn't have found easily all this information on my own.

I have downloaded all your suggestions, and I'm trying them all. However I think I'll go with a "big" distro + light desktop environment for my machines, and since I'm at it I'll build a bootable USB with one of the light distros to use out of home. Thank you :). I've already tried this because it looked like the easiest one. It's almost perfect, except for a couple of drawbacks so far:

1. Updates are a paid service.
2. Highly customizable at installation time, but enabling access to the browser settings requires quite a bit of messing around with the ISO and takes some work. At least I haven't found any easy way to do it via UI.
I guess that 1. is the reason that the Porteus project is that far behind in updates, they must have shifted commercially to Kiosk.
Posted July 05, 2016
I would recommend Manjaro with the Xfce desktop environment, or even Manjaro Netbook which I think has a custom-setup Xfce by default (it's a bit slow on ISO releases, but as it's a rolling release, you'll soon be up and running with the latest versions, and you don't even have to run yaourt -Syua or sudo pacman -Syu as it has an update checker).

I've had success with the Netbook release on a machine with 512 MB RAM, 4 GB storage, and a 800x480px 7-inch screen. Though I have trimmed it down a bit to save space (and I'll need to clear the package cache folder every once in a while for the storage to not fill up entirely), my installation currently fits quite comfortably, taking up 2.1 GB and leaving me slightly less than 2 GB free.

As for the custom config of Xfce, Manjaro Netbook by default tries to set all windows as full-screen without titlebars (which is great on such a low resolution and small screen), and succeeds with most of them (excepting application that creates larger windows than fits on the screen), showing just the window contents, dock/taskbar and a close-window button on said taskbar. I have tried to emulate this on a Debian installation with reasonable, though not complete, success (I probably just need to know where to look, as is usually the case).

Manjaro, and thus Manjaro Netbook, is based off Arch, and shares is thus rather similar to said distro, the main difference being that Manjaro and its offspring focus on a much easier out-of-the-box experience, so you get a graphical and guided installer and don't have to have a secondary machine running and follow a wiki until you've learned how to install the thing.

Disclaimer: I run Arch with Cinnamon on most of my machines, excepting one that has Debian (mentioned above) and another, at work, that runs Ubuntu just because I want to follow the developments there.
Post edited July 05, 2016 by Maighstir
Posted November 12, 2018
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Maighstir: I would recommend Manjaro with the Xfce desktop environment, or even Manjaro Netbook which I think has a custom-setup Xfce by default (it's a bit slow on ISO releases, but as it's a rolling release, you'll soon be up and running with the latest versions, and you don't even have to run yaourt -Syua or sudo pacman -Syu as it has an update checker).

I've had success with the Netbook release on a machine with 512 MB RAM, 4 GB storage, and a 800x480px 7-inch screen. Though I have trimmed it down a bit to save space (and I'll need to clear the package cache folder every once in a while for the storage to not fill up entirely), my installation currently fits quite comfortably, taking up 2.1 GB and leaving me slightly less than 2 GB free.

As for the custom config of Xfce, Manjaro Netbook by default tries to set all windows as full-screen without titlebars (which is great on such a low resolution and small screen), and succeeds with most of them (excepting application that creates larger windows than fits on the screen), showing just the window contents, dock/taskbar and a close-window button on said taskbar. I have tried to emulate this on a Debian installation with reasonable, though not complete, success (I probably just need to know where to look, as is usually the case).

Manjaro, and thus Manjaro Netbook, is based off Arch, and shares is thus rather similar to said distro, the main difference being that Manjaro and its offspring focus on a much easier out-of-the-box experience, so you get a graphical and guided installer and don't have to have a secondary machine running and follow a wiki until you've learned how to install the thing.

Disclaimer: I run Arch with Cinnamon on most of my machines, excepting one that has Debian (mentioned above) and another, at work, that runs Ubuntu just because I want to follow the developments there.
I'm running Manjaro XFCE as guest for web browsing, but I'm having issues with it. I can't access any shared drives on the host (Windows 8.1) nor can I update the Virtualbox guest additions due to some dumb permissions issue. Could I take an hour, a day, a week and figure it out? No doubt, but I don't really have that time or want to spend it troubleshooting. As such, I can't recommend Manjaro for this use case to anyone. I am going to try ̶L̶i̶n̶u̶x̶ ̶M̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶D̶e̶b̶i̶a̶n̶ ̶E̶d̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ (cinnamon just won't do) something else, because I do want a rolling release, so I am not having to set up a new VM every time another version comes out.
Post edited November 12, 2018 by rawmilk905
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General discussionGood lightweight Linux distro for web browsing in a virtual machine?(11 posts)(11 posts)
(11 posts)