Legacy OS (formerly TEENpup Linux) is a distribution based on antiX (prior to 2023 the distribution was based on Puppy Linux). Although the original concept was to create a flavour of Puppy Linux with more applications and a more appealing desktop aimed at teenage users, Legacy OS has now grown to become a general purpose distribution. It comes with a large number of applications, browser plugins and media codecs as standard software. Each new release of Legacy OS is about providing a lot of software which will work smoothly on older computers (about a decade in age).
To compare the software in this project to the software available in other distributions, please see our Compare Packages page.
Notes: In case where multiple versions of a package are shipped with a distribution, only the default version appears in the table. For indication about the GNOME version, please check the "nautilus" and "gnome-shell" packages. The Apache web server is listed as "httpd" and the Linux kernel is listed as "linux". The KDE desktop is represented by the "plasma-desktop" package and the Xfce desktop by the "xfdesktop" package.
Colour scheme:green text = latest stable version, red text = development or beta version. The function determining beta versions is not 100% reliable due to a wide variety of versioning schemes.
TUXEDO
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
Learn more about our full service package and all benefits from buying at TUXEDO.
Star Labs
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
I am a long time user of Linux and have tried and used many differing distro's over time. I can name you a few of my favourite distributions and give you pro's and con's for them all, but my reason for writing this review for this distro is very simple. It's amazingly fast.
I have a preference for using older hardware because I think older hardware is often over looked by many people and deserves more use because of it's inate versatility. Different desktops are resource and memory intensive which is often why many people have negative experiences with differing distro's but that is where LegacyOS shines because it uses a very light desktop environment and because it uses it very well. Example. I currently use this distro on 3 different low end laptops, but the lowest of them is a HP8710P laptop a HP, dual core 2ghz CPU with an NVidia GPU, 4gb of Ram and a 2.5" HDD 5400 RPM.
Low specs for a laptop especially in 2023 right? And yet using this distro it loads in seconds, finds and install all drivers which makes this worry free, it then goes into a full desktop which is preloaded with so many applications that I literally have to add nothing to be productive in moments. In fact not only is it preloaded with a plethora of apps, but they load effortlessly and quickly because even with just 4mb of RAM to play with everything runs so quickly that the speed of this laptop is exposed as being more than adequate for any current day task which is I suppose the reason why I love this distro so much and what lead me here to write this review.
LegacyOS is based on AntiX which is in turn based on current Debian software which is up to date, stable, battle tested and has a very current and up to date software repository base. Win, Win and win for all concerned.
Can I use difering distros that might offer me a more pleasing experience>? Sure. I love Linux Mint, its incredibly stable, has a great development team a wide user base and a huge amount of feedback and experience behind it. Yet its not nearly as fast as LegacyOS, Environments such as KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, even LXDE or LXQT are nowhere near as fast as the desktop that LegacyOS uses and it's intuitive which is just a huge bonus to an already impressive experience.
There are other distributions which offer you a great experience, Fedora (Fantastic), Ubuntu (Always stable and great to use - Heavy resource usage though), Debian (Stable, useful, dependable and worry free, moderate resource usage) these are 3 alternatives and I mention them because they are all great but none of them come to the speed of LegacyOS especially on older hardware which is a massive selling point for me.
If any of what I have mentioned piques your interest, please give this often over looked Linux Distro a view please. I think you will be impressed and find it worth your time. Best regards to all.
Never heard of this distro until yesterday so thought I would give it a go on my now pretty elderly Lenovo 92Z all in one.
Wow, I like it. It is funny how these smaller less known distro's can offer such a great system. No longer do I think that the lower ranked (or un-ranked) players offer less, you have to give them a try and this is one of them.
Another added bonus is that the 2023_x64.iso also contains the BOOTia32.efi for those struggling to find a distro containing it or adding it to an iso.
A smooth and effortless installation followed by an easy to follow set up for those wishing to add their own tweaks. There is no PUP look here any longer. It contains a whole lot of software should you need it, if not immediately, one day you may and it is there.
Overall a great general purpose distro that you should give a try, it may have been asleep for some time but it is certainly back in good hands now.
My only gripe, and this is not specifically about legacyos, there are many, many others, is that I really dislike conky configured by default. I guess many may like it shouting at them on their screens but I prefer clean and uncluttered.
Legacy OS is just like Antix, with a good looking default theme and very good performance..
The live Legacy OS system is unfortunately not supported by Ventoy. From the Ventoy medium it cannot be booted, while booting the original Antix just works well using Ventoy.
With Rufus i could create a bootable USB device and Legacy OS boots from that without any problem.
The default kernel seems to be 5.10, while older kernels are available for installation.
Support would have been better for my older hardware if by default a 4.9 or 4.19 kernel had been used by Legacy OS when claiming to support older hardware.
The 5.x kernels do not correctly support the Realtek R8101 ethernet interface.
In general Legacy OS looks almost the same as the original Antix distribution and i did not see a good reason yet to install Legacy OS instead of Antix.