Thinking about trying other distro(s)

[SteveRiley]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

Anyway, I've found that deb system so stable and reliable that I would have to be given a very persuasive reason to move to any distro which uses a different packaging system.

Yep, DEB and Launchpad really have no equivalents.

[dibl]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

This morning I downloaded and installed Bodhi Linux, just to see how it's coming along with its E17 desktop. I happen to have a fairly aged computer available for such testing purposes -- a Dell Optiplex GX-270, which I upgraded to 1 GB of memory, and have not yet succeeded in giving away. It has an Intel P4 @2.66 GHz, with an integrated Intel 82865G graphics chip, and from my collection of ancient IDE hard drives I selected a WD-153 as my victim.

The installation routine was not bad -- little obscure on a couple points, such as what "beginning" means, in the context of partitioning. I thought it meant "beginning of the drive", but it actually means "beginning immediately after the end of the prior partition". Oh well, like my college parasitology professor always said, "interpretation of the questions is part of the test ...."

During installation you have some choices as to the style of desktop you want. Intending to stress it a little on the old hardware, I chose "compositing".

The current version of Bodhi is 1.2.1, and it pulls software packages from the Ubuntu Lucid repos. So, for example, LibreOffice came in at 3.3.2, whereas Oneiric and Debian Sid have LibreOffice at 3.4.4. Of course, you could change repos to a later version of Ubuntu, but probably decrease stability of Bodhi in the process. The Bodhi kernel is 3.0.0-12.19-generic, from the Bodhi repo.

So, glxinfo and glxgears indicates that GLX is running and performing reasonably -- I may install Google Earth later just to see if I can kill the graphics by spinning the Earth, but the basic desktop and window management stuff is very satisfactory. Of course with the Ubuntu Lucid repo available, including backports, there's access to all the software that you might reasonably need. In addition to LibreOffice I installed some random packages like chromium-browser, hardinfo, gimp, flashplugin-nonfree, sun-java6-plugin and -jre, msttcorefonts, etc. It all came in with apt-get and performs quite well, considering the hardware that it's running on.

Overall I have a very favorable impression of this implementation of Enlightenment -- this would be a good choice for a limited-hardware situation, especially in the graphics domain.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

dibl, I liked Bodhi, too, and will likely end up going back to it. I did pretty much the opposite of what you did, seeking to stress the laptop as little as possible. I chose the 'netbook/laptop' option.

[eggbert]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

a pic of my Red Hat Linux Unleashed book

Oh that brings back memories. I still have that book too. Mine came with Red Hat 6.0. My very first Linux experience. Good times

Actually I have been thinking about moving to Cent OS... Right now I only run it on servers, but I think it would make a nice desktop OS too. It is dull and unchanging, but the older I get the more appealing that sounds

[GreyGeek]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

I downloaded openSUSE 12.1 and played around with it. My notebook won't boot from a LiveCD any more and will looking over the website I noticed another tool with which to make a LiveUSB stick of their KDE version: dd_rescue (it's in the repository as ddrescue but installs as dd_rescue).

cd to the directory containing the iso file and in a konsole issue
sudo dd_rescue openSUSE-12.1-KDE-LiveCD-x86_64.iso

Took about two minutes.

What it doesn't do is create a storage space that you can use to update the LiveUSB or install apps that will remain around when you next reboot.

The "YAST" is a mixture of KDE System Settings and some YAST tools. But, the options don't look or read anything like System Settings. All I wanted to do was turn off desktop effects. Couldn't find it. (EDIT: I found it after I posted this msg. It is called "Personal Settings". Silly me, all this time I was looking for "System Settings".)

I was running it on an HP dv6245us with only 1 GB of RAM. If I attempted to make a configuration change the busy icon appeared and would never go away.

So, the dd_rescue LiveUSB seems good only for running on suitably powered machines, probably 2GB or MORE, and for installing... not like the Kubuntu LiveUSB which one can make using up to 4GB of stick space for storage of updates and installed programs and configuration changes.

Other than that openSUSE 21.1 KDE seemed ok.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

Actually I have been thinking about moving to Cent OS... Right now I only run it on servers, but I think it would make a nice desktop OS too. It is dull and unchanging, but the older I get the more appealing that sounds

Firefox 3.6.9
GNOME 2.28.0
GRUB 0.97
Gtk+ 2.8.19
KDE 4.3.4
LibreOffice 3.2.1
Linux 2.6.32
Python 2.6.5
Qt 4.6.2
Thunderbird 3.1.3
Udev 147
Xorg 1.7.7

Wow...that's like a major step back in time!

[woodsmoke]

Re: Thinking about trying other distro(s)

Apparently, MATE is Mint's way of trying to keep Gnome2 going here is a review at DLR the salient parts are that a) it seems to be more stable than advertised, b) uses DuckDuckGo as default search engine. Along with other things of course.

http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2011/...-mint-12-mate/

woodsmoke