When comparing TinyCore vs Xubuntu, the Slant community recommends TinyCore for most people. In the question“What are the best lightweight Linux distributions?” TinyCore is ranked 11th while Xubuntu is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose TinyCore is:
Can be as small as about 9MB, and with even X, wireless modules, and more, it takes up only 72MB.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro VERY small
Can be as small as about 9MB, and with even X, wireless modules, and more, it takes up only 72MB.
Pro Surprisingly customizable
Fluxbox window manager is especially slick looking all considered, and the options one gets with it's toolbar, app bar, and wallpaper are surprisingly complex for such a small distro.
Pro Use of tcz packages stored on media outside of MyData
Pro Great performance
Xubuntu is very fast and makes good use of resources.
Pro Quick boot time
Boots at about double the speed of most distributions.
Pro Comes with lightweight applications
Xubuntu is designed as a lightweight operating system and Linux distro. It uses XFCE by default and comes packed with XFCE applications which are generally pretty lightweight.
Pro Conservative, yet modern
It comes with all Ubuntu goodness but without bloat, a perfect mix between new ideas and usability.
Pro Customizable
Official distro of XFCE, one of the most customizable desktop environments. In XFCE you can create as many tasks bars as you need and configure every one of their elements and behaviours. You can also change any icon, font, color... etc. Literally there's nothing you can't change in GUI.
Cons
Con Not visually appealing
The operating system is not very pretty.
Con Can be somewhat slow to turn on
Once it is up and going it is unrivaled in speed, but it can be sluggish when it comes to turning on, restarting, or turning off.
Con XFCE development is slow
The desktop environment used in Xubuntu has not been updated in over two years and is developed at a snail's pace.
Con UI is pretty generic without customization
The default XFCE UI is pretty generic and sometimes ugly unless customized to suit the user's needs and liking. Customization in XFCE is easier than on Unity, but still hard for beginners.
Con Redundant
There is absolutely no reason to install it, since it uses the same package repositories as Ubuntu and you can transform any Ubuntu install into a Xubuntu install.