 Visitor Reviews |
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Reader supplied reviews for Lilidog
Average rating
9.6 from 5 review(s)
Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-03-03
Country: Mexico
Votes: 0
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Best distro I have ever used. I was using Mint Debian and I was having some lagging issues, so I decided to distrohop. I came across Lilidog while scrolling at new releases and at first I was not attracted by the concept of it, but I decided to check it out. I am pleasantly surprised. Easy to install, smooth, it works perfectly. The coolest thing about Lilidog is the fact that the auto themes also affect newly installed programs, so even VLC and Geany change accordingly. This is going to be my main distro if nothing changes. It has everything I need for my daily usage, I can use Appimages, tint2 is great, my USB WIFI adapter went through without needing to install drivers, I cannot ask for more. For a person who only wants to get rid of Windows and not tinker with anything unnecessary, this is one of the best options. Maybe it takes a little while for beginners to get used to the window manager and using synaptic but it just works. Highly recommended.
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Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-02-12
Country: Switzerland
Votes: 6
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I didn’t know this distribution before; I discovered it for the first time here on DistroWatch. I have two rather old laptops, a 10-year-old Samsung and an even older Acer, but both are still in excellent working condition.
I tried several lightweight distros on these two laptops, but I was never completely satisfied with the responsiveness, or because some things didn’t work as promised.
I immediately wanted to try Lilidog in live mode. I tested it for quite a while and liked it very much, so I decided to install it.
The installation didn’t seem as simple as with Calamares. Maybe I made a mistake choosing among the different installation options, but there were some specific choices I didn’t really know how to answer, and I just moved forward.
I’m not an expert user. Even though I switched to Linux almost 10 years ago, I don’t like using the terminal. I would prefer to do everything from a graphical environment. I’d like updates to run automatically, and for the operating system to handle these operations on its own without asking me whether I want to remove old versions of programs or other questions and choices during the update process.
That said, there is a small program—probably a script—in English for updating, which is easy to understand, with intuitive options and well designed.
I’m 60 years old and I have good computer knowledge, but I don’t have time to study terminal commands. I always look for intuitive and easy-to-use distributions that make daily PC use simpler and faster.
Lilidog is lightweight and responsive. It feels modern and pleasant to look at. I like having all possible options available with a right-click, and I generally use that to choose which programs to launch.
There are many possibilities to customize the look of the OS. There’s a widget menu, and you can enable Conky with partial or complete information, just the way I like it.
Icons and colors can be changed easily.
Unfortunately, the Italian translation is incomplete or missing. I hope this issue can be fixed.
Lilidog uses only 350 MB of RAM when idle, which is an excellent result—exactly what I was looking for.
I do miss a small software store to quickly install the most popular browsers or other commonly used programs. It’s not a big problem for me, but it would be convenient to have.
Of course, Synaptic is included by default. I have no problem using it, even if it’s not very intuitive.
So overall, everything is good. I’m very happy with Lilidog. I would give it a 10 for responsiveness, a 9 for completeness, and a 10 for being a well-designed, well-organized distro, with a thoughtful selection of programs and solid overall engineering.
I immediately felt it was “mine,” exactly how I wanted it. So my compliments to the author.
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Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-02-09
Country: Spain
Votes: 2
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I reached Lilidog two years ago, looking for a stable, lightweight Debian distro. I've been using it since then. To me is the most complete, well crafted and performant distro I've ever tried. It sports a balanced combination of base tools and many installers, it allows you to build up your comfortable environment suited to your needs. Currently it has three incarnations:
Lilidog, the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, running X11/Openbox but providing installers for Awesome. dwm, i3wm, jwm, and sowm. Not the usual installs where you have to configure everything, but well crafted to be used out of the box. The look and feel is elegant without being overloaded. You have everything you need. I can't stop telling how good it its. it provides a live ISO from where you can try it and install, if desired.
Beardog: A trimmed down version of Lilidog, taking less resources, but with the ability to get to the main one through the installers.
Waydog: The Wayland version of Lilidog,Same quality and craftsmanship but running Wayland under Labwc and Sway, giving the option of installing other Wayland compositors like Niri. I'm currently moving to it, because the video performance of the graphical apps is better under Wayland than under X11. The migration was really easy, the usual tools or similar equivalents are available.
what else can I say?. Just congratulate Sleekmason for the careful and hard work building and maintaining it!.
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Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 8
Date: 2026-02-08
Country: United Kingdom
Votes: 2
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Lilidog has been a very pleasant experience. There's many minimal so-called lightweight distros floating around, but often these feel overly compromised in many ways, but that's not so with Lilidog. I first tried it as a guest in Virtualbox running on Win11Pro, the install went through without a hitch, as did installing the guest additions. The overall first impression is one of confidence, that this distro has had some real thought put into it. There's no sign of common mistakes often encountered with some distros, my pet hate is when localisation at install time isn't properly carried over into the finished install. It's easy to fix I know, but to me it feels as though the dev hasn't taken the time on the details. With Lilidog it's obvious the dev has been thorough, I've come across nothing that suggests otherwise. I currently have a networking demonstration project built on virtualbox which involves simultaneously running four instances of desktop stations, one server and a simulated nas backup. For fun I switched out my usual desktop station choice, replacing it with Lilidog. Each station is driven by scripts simulating app usage, networking etc. I sat back and watched four instances of Lilidog all running like clockwork. Not a scientific test but still, up until now I've found only three distros that don't get their boxers in a bunch running this way, so i'm impressed.
As a daily driver, in my opinion this is a good choice. It's stable, polished and fun. I likey!
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Version: 26.01.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-01-27
Votes: 16
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I reached Lilidog two years ago, looking for a stable, lightweight Debian distro. I've been using it since then. To me is the most complete, well crafted and performant distro I've ever tried. It sports a balanced combination of base tools and many installers, it allows you to build up your comfortable environment suited to your needs. Currently it has three incarnations:
Lilidog, the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, running X11/Openbox but providing installers for Awesome. dwm, i3wm, jwm, and sowm. Not the usual installs where you have to configure everything, but well crafted to be used out of the box. The look and feel is elegant without being overloaded. You have everything you need. I can't stop telling how good it its. it provides a live ISO from where you can try it and install, if desired.
Beardog: A trimmed down version of Lilidog, taking less resources, but with the ability to get to the main one through the installers.
Waydog: The Wayland version of Lilidog,Same quality and craftsmanship but running Wayland under Labwc and Sway, giving the option of installing other Wayland compositors like Niri. I'm currently moving to it, because the video performance of the graphical apps is better under Wayland than under X11. The migration was really easy, the usual tools or similar equivalents are available.
what else can I say?. Just congratulate Sleekmason for the careful and hard work building and maintaining it!.
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Latest Reviews
Project: Lilidog
Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-03-03
Votes: 0
|
Best distro I have ever used. I was using Mint Debian and I was having some lagging issues, so I decided to distrohop. I came across Lilidog while scrolling at new releases and at first I was not attracted by the concept of it, but I decided to check it out. I am pleasantly surprised. Easy to install, smooth, it works perfectly. The coolest thing about Lilidog is the fact that the auto themes also affect newly installed programs, so even VLC and Geany change accordingly. This is going to be my main distro if nothing changes. It has everything I need for my daily usage, I can use Appimages, tint2 is great, my USB WIFI adapter went through without needing to install drivers, I cannot ask for more. For a person who only wants to get rid of Windows and not tinker with anything unnecessary, this is one of the best options. Maybe it takes a little while for beginners to get used to the window manager and using synaptic but it just works. Highly recommended.
|
Project: Lilidog
Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-02-12
Votes: 6
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I didn’t know this distribution before; I discovered it for the first time here on DistroWatch. I have two rather old laptops, a 10-year-old Samsung and an even older Acer, but both are still in excellent working condition.
I tried several lightweight distros on these two laptops, but I was never completely satisfied with the responsiveness, or because some things didn’t work as promised.
I immediately wanted to try Lilidog in live mode. I tested it for quite a while and liked it very much, so I decided to install it.
The installation didn’t seem as simple as with Calamares. Maybe I made a mistake choosing among the different installation options, but there were some specific choices I didn’t really know how to answer, and I just moved forward.
I’m not an expert user. Even though I switched to Linux almost 10 years ago, I don’t like using the terminal. I would prefer to do everything from a graphical environment. I’d like updates to run automatically, and for the operating system to handle these operations on its own without asking me whether I want to remove old versions of programs or other questions and choices during the update process.
That said, there is a small program—probably a script—in English for updating, which is easy to understand, with intuitive options and well designed.
I’m 60 years old and I have good computer knowledge, but I don’t have time to study terminal commands. I always look for intuitive and easy-to-use distributions that make daily PC use simpler and faster.
Lilidog is lightweight and responsive. It feels modern and pleasant to look at. I like having all possible options available with a right-click, and I generally use that to choose which programs to launch.
There are many possibilities to customize the look of the OS. There’s a widget menu, and you can enable Conky with partial or complete information, just the way I like it.
Icons and colors can be changed easily.
Unfortunately, the Italian translation is incomplete or missing. I hope this issue can be fixed.
Lilidog uses only 350 MB of RAM when idle, which is an excellent result—exactly what I was looking for.
I do miss a small software store to quickly install the most popular browsers or other commonly used programs. It’s not a big problem for me, but it would be convenient to have.
Of course, Synaptic is included by default. I have no problem using it, even if it’s not very intuitive.
So overall, everything is good. I’m very happy with Lilidog. I would give it a 10 for responsiveness, a 9 for completeness, and a 10 for being a well-designed, well-organized distro, with a thoughtful selection of programs and solid overall engineering.
I immediately felt it was “mine,” exactly how I wanted it. So my compliments to the author.
|
Project: Lilidog
Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-02-09
Votes: 2
|
I reached Lilidog two years ago, looking for a stable, lightweight Debian distro. I've been using it since then. To me is the most complete, well crafted and performant distro I've ever tried. It sports a balanced combination of base tools and many installers, it allows you to build up your comfortable environment suited to your needs. Currently it has three incarnations:
Lilidog, the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, running X11/Openbox but providing installers for Awesome. dwm, i3wm, jwm, and sowm. Not the usual installs where you have to configure everything, but well crafted to be used out of the box. The look and feel is elegant without being overloaded. You have everything you need. I can't stop telling how good it its. it provides a live ISO from where you can try it and install, if desired.
Beardog: A trimmed down version of Lilidog, taking less resources, but with the ability to get to the main one through the installers.
Waydog: The Wayland version of Lilidog,Same quality and craftsmanship but running Wayland under Labwc and Sway, giving the option of installing other Wayland compositors like Niri. I'm currently moving to it, because the video performance of the graphical apps is better under Wayland than under X11. The migration was really easy, the usual tools or similar equivalents are available.
what else can I say?. Just congratulate Sleekmason for the careful and hard work building and maintaining it!.
|
Project: Lilidog
Version: 26.02.06
Rating: 8
Date: 2026-02-08
Votes: 2
|
Lilidog has been a very pleasant experience. There's many minimal so-called lightweight distros floating around, but often these feel overly compromised in many ways, but that's not so with Lilidog. I first tried it as a guest in Virtualbox running on Win11Pro, the install went through without a hitch, as did installing the guest additions. The overall first impression is one of confidence, that this distro has had some real thought put into it. There's no sign of common mistakes often encountered with some distros, my pet hate is when localisation at install time isn't properly carried over into the finished install. It's easy to fix I know, but to me it feels as though the dev hasn't taken the time on the details. With Lilidog it's obvious the dev has been thorough, I've come across nothing that suggests otherwise. I currently have a networking demonstration project built on virtualbox which involves simultaneously running four instances of desktop stations, one server and a simulated nas backup. For fun I switched out my usual desktop station choice, replacing it with Lilidog. Each station is driven by scripts simulating app usage, networking etc. I sat back and watched four instances of Lilidog all running like clockwork. Not a scientific test but still, up until now I've found only three distros that don't get their boxers in a bunch running this way, so i'm impressed.
As a daily driver, in my opinion this is a good choice. It's stable, polished and fun. I likey!
|
Project: Lilidog
Version: 26.01.10
Rating: 10
Date: 2026-01-27
Votes: 16
|
I reached Lilidog two years ago, looking for a stable, lightweight Debian distro. I've been using it since then. To me is the most complete, well crafted and performant distro I've ever tried. It sports a balanced combination of base tools and many installers, it allows you to build up your comfortable environment suited to your needs. Currently it has three incarnations:
Lilidog, the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, running X11/Openbox but providing installers for Awesome. dwm, i3wm, jwm, and sowm. Not the usual installs where you have to configure everything, but well crafted to be used out of the box. The look and feel is elegant without being overloaded. You have everything you need. I can't stop telling how good it its. it provides a live ISO from where you can try it and install, if desired.
Beardog: A trimmed down version of Lilidog, taking less resources, but with the ability to get to the main one through the installers.
Waydog: The Wayland version of Lilidog,Same quality and craftsmanship but running Wayland under Labwc and Sway, giving the option of installing other Wayland compositors like Niri. I'm currently moving to it, because the video performance of the graphical apps is better under Wayland than under X11. The migration was really easy, the usual tools or similar equivalents are available.
what else can I say?. Just congratulate Sleekmason for the careful and hard work building and maintaining it!.
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