On 11/19/2011 1:31 PM, Jason Hsu wrote:
> Although there are hundreds of Linux distros, I still see some unpopulated and underpopulated niches.  The ones I see are:
> 1.  Lightweight user-friendly distros with large repositories:
1. Use Ubuntu alternate CD to install a base system
2. ???
3. Profit

Ubuntu doesn't force anyone to install tons of software; it only
installs that much by default. If you don't select any extra
meta-packages during the install software part, you get a pretty good
base system. This is probably true of any major distro, but Ubuntu is
the most popular and it definitely fits the "user-friendly" and "large
repos" qualifications. LXDE is pretty lightweight (not as minimalistic
as some DEs, but still much lighter than KDE or Gnome) AFAICT, so if you
consider apt-get too user-unfriendly, go with Lubuntu, which will
install LXDE for you.

Personally, I think there are /way/ too many distros and that effort
should really be going into teaching users how to customize their
systems rather than making distros to fit niches.