As more and more Linux distributions are no longer compatible with 32-bit systems, you might be wondering what to do with that old computer of yours.
Fortunately, there are plenty of lightweight Linux distributions that could put those old computers for some regular computing tasks such as playing small games, watching movies, listening to music, and surfing the web.
4MLinux is one of those Linux distributions It requires less system resources and can even run on 128MB of RAM.
The desktop edition only applies to the 32-bit architecture, while the server edition is 64-bit.
4MLinux can also be used as a rescue CD in conjunction with a complete working system or as a mini server.
About 4MLinux
It is called 4MLinux because it focuses mainly on four points, called "4M":
- Maintenance: You can use 4MLinux as a rescue Live CD.
- Multimedia: There is built-in support for almost all multimedia formats, be it for Image, Audio and Video.
- Mini Server: A 64-bit server is included that runs the LAMP package, which can be enabled from the application menu.
- Mystery - Includes a collection of classic Linux games.
Most Linux distributions are based on Debian with DEB packages or Fedora with RPM.
The 4MLinux desktop comes with a variety of lightweight applications so that it can work on older hardware.
JWM - Joe's Windows Manager, which is a lightweight stacking window manager for the X Window System.
To manage the wallpapers, a light and powerful feh is used. It uses PCMan File Manager, which is also a standard file manager for LXDE.
The default desktop screen has a dock at the top with the most common applications pinned.
There is a taskbar, a Conky theme with the option to activate and deactivate in the dock, and a clock in the lower right corner.
About the new version of 4M Linux
Some days ago the distribution was updated reaching its new stable version 4MLinux 26.0 with which this latest stable version of the project comes with updated packages, as well as support for the most modern video and image encoding systems.
In addition to it the updated packages that make up the Linux distribution of which we can highlight we found the office suite LibreOffice 6.1.0.1 and GNOME Office (AbiWord 3.0.2, GIMP 2.10.6, Gnumeric 1.12.43).
Also in terms of software for browsing and sharing files over the network, we find DropBox 55.4.171, web browsers Firefox 61.0.2 and Chromium 68.0.3440.75 , the Thunderbird 52.9.1 email manager, and Skype for the Web.
To be able to enjoy your music collection, this new version comes with Audacious 3.10 and with the multimedia player VLC 3.0.3 and mpv 0.28.2.
Table 17.3.7 and Wine. 3.14, you can also configure the LAMP 4MLinux server (Linux 4.14.64, Apache 2.4.34, MariaDB 10.3.9, PHP 5.6.37 and PHP 7.2.9). Perl 5.26.1, Python 2.7.14, and Python 3.6.4 are also available.
4MLinux 26.0 comes with some new features:
- Tcl / Tk (with a collection of small games) has been integrated into 4MLinux
- Engrampa (file manager) can finally open Debian packages
- Git support in 4MLinux now has both the GUI and the cgit web interface
- Beaver (with syntax highlighting) has been added for easier editing of C / C ++ code and scripts
- TiMidity ++ now uses the Tcl / Tk interface while AbiWord has migrated from GTK2 to GTK3
- Expect has been added to the 4MLinux server to facilitate task automation, Xorriso (with its GUI) is now available as a downloadable extension
- Vala and Rust have been added to the development set of 4MLinux packages.
Y finally Biggest change: full support for modern video and image encoding. ImageMagick and GIMP can now handle WebP, HEIF and BPG images.
You can use Hyper Video Converter to: VP8 / VP9 / AVC / HEVC encoding, create video for the web
Download 4MLinux
The download section presents the stable 4-bit 32MLinux and its beta version, 64bit 4MServer and 4MRescueKit. Although the ISO size is more than 1GB, 4mlinux is very light in design.
They can download from the following link.