Ubuntu stopped being the lightweight Linux distro, and Linux Mint filled the gap it left behind

Any Linux distribution based on KDE or GNOME is not going to be lightweight. It did have the LXDE option for stripping it back somewhat, but the repos were still mostly filled with software that requires KDE or GNOME.

Mint is kind of like LxUbuntu back in the early days; still no lightweight, not even by desktop standards, but it’ll bloat up quickly if you want to get anything done with it.

I mean, Puppy Linux and DSL are still around. Anything based on Debian could claim to be stable or enterprise ready, but not lightweight.

I feel like this was true maybe 10-20 years ago, but any semi-recent desktop or laptop can run KDE or Gnome fine. If you are running an SBC with limited RAM, then maybe you should look at another desktop GUI.

Any semi-recent desktop or laptop has no need of a lightweight Linux. That’s for embedded solutions, rPis, and other resource constrained systems.

Having said that, in 2026 and going forward, we may have need of lightweight desktop distributions again. 64GB storage, 4GB RAM style.