A Debian 13-based distro built around the Enlightenment desktop brings old-school Linux efficiency into the modern era — and it's fast enough to make you forget you ever left.

The New Stack is a publication covering trends and technologies in cloud-native development, DevOps, and software delivery. Developers can learn about containerization, Kubernetes, and cloud computing, as well as explore topics such as microservices architecture, serverless computing, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

The New Stack

ExLight is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian 13 (Trixie) featuring the Enlightenment 0.27.1 desktop environment. It offers a fast, efficient desktop experience with features like a desktop right-click menu and window shading. The distro comes with a lean set of preinstalled apps including Firefox, GIMP, FileZilla, and Synaptic Package Manager, but lacks Flatpak and Snap out of the box (both easily installable via apt). It performs well even on older hardware and includes the Calamares installer and Refracta Snapshot for creating custom Debian-based systems.

Exton Linux’s light version will “enlighten” you