For a number of reasons I won’t go into here, I have had to move my photography workflow to Windows.
Yes, it’s horrible decision but it is what it is, What I need to run works, except that I can’t live without the ingenious RPD.
So I have installed RPD on a Virtualbox VM. At the moment I’m using Mint simply because I know it well and use it for work everyday.
But a full Mint installation, just to run one program is a bit overkill.
So my question is what is the lightest OS I can use to just run RPD and pretty much nothing else?
I realize using the VM means I will loose some of the speed advantages (only 2 CPU for instance) but I can live with that.
I did try to set up Windows Linux framework to run RPD but, to be honest, I just found trying to do anything slightly complex in Widows too frustrating.
Given you are coming from Mint, I’d suggest Lubuntu 20.04. It’s pretty bare bones, and thus quick to boot. LXQT gets the job done.
Just be aware that downloading from an Android phone in which you need to specify File Transfer over MTP each time on the phone will very likely not work because the host OS Windows and VirtualBox itself will not be able to agree on who controls the device. If this is not applicable, Rapid Photo Downloader should work just fine.
Thanks Damon, I will definitely be give that ago.
I only need to pull from an SSD or possibly the cameras (Canon) so the MTP problem is not an issue. However I am aware of it as my Garmin Zumo XT GPS is not recognized on a Windows machine on a Linux host for the very reason you describe.