My HP Mini feels lonely - advice?

[SteveRiley]

With Kubuntu chugging along nicely on my T520 and Ubuntu-base-plus-KDE remaining reasonably maintenance-free on my X1, that little Mini 2140 in my desk drawer calls out -- "Play with me!" So now I'm debating what to put on it.

* Chakra -- retain KDE, learn about a different underlying OS.
* Xubuntu -- retain Ubuntu as a base, try out a different DE.

If I go the latter route, I'll likely do the same thing I've done with my X1: a Ubuntu CLI install followed by selective apt-gets of various Xfce packages.

Arch, while great for tinkering, was overly tedious to install when I played with it some a year ago. OpenSUSE, I think, will be too much of a pig for the Mini (Atom N270 at 1.6 GHz, 945GSE with GMA 950, 2 GB 10-10-10 RAM, 160 GB SSD on SATA 1.5 Gb/s).

Thoughts? Ideas? Prefer something not mentioned? I'm looking for opinions and experiences here, so feel free to let it all out

[woodsmoke]

Try CrunchBang, only a version BEFORE they went to the Debian base.

Or Trisquel, totally free and in FREE , and works...

woodsmoke

[whatthefunk]

I second CrunchBang, but I like the Debian base.
Ive been wanting to try Slackware...looks interesting. Or something on the Red Hat side...Ive always stuck with Debian based distros so going to the dark side would be a good learning experience I think.

[rms]

Just ideas what to try; I'll leave experiences aside, form your own opinions, So, not knowing what you did try previously and in addition to the two distros let me propose also Mageia and Ark.

[SteveRiley]

Or perhaps...Android Ice Cream Sandwich!



Original project -- http://www.android-x86.org/
Generic x86 build -- http://tabletsx86.org/CYNEW-UPDATED-BUILDS.htm

[woodsmoke]

If you are into Puppies, this one is designed JUST for your lappy!

Legacy OS for older, low power machines, that want a nice slick interface!

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

With Kubuntu chugging along nicely on my T520 and Ubuntu-base-plus-KDE remaining reasonably maintenance-free on my X1, that little Mini 2140 in my desk drawer calls out -- "Play with me!" So now I'm debating what to put on it.

That is symptomatic of a TRUE geek! (My boxes talk to me as well!)

Thoughts? Ideas? Prefer something not mentioned? I'm looking for opinions and experiences here, so feel free to let it all out

Do you have an "Entertainment Center" in your house that could stream music, news and videos/movies from sites from around the web

I'm facing the same dilemma. Setting on my desk next to my new Acer 7739 is my 3 year old Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E, which has been running Lucid faultlessly since Lucid went Alpha in Jan of 2009. I only turned it on yesterday because I realized that I had set my wireless up so that only the MAC address on that Sony would allow the admin mode of my wireless router. It hasn't been on more than three times siince Jan 3rd, when I put Precise on this Acer 7739. This Acer's screen is nearly 18" diagonal and is rated at 1080p, which is better than the Sony. Movies are gorgeous on it. My wife has her Acer Aspire netbook. And, I don't consult anymore so I don't need more than one development platform, and I rarely play with code any more. I've been debating what to put on the Sony.

Then a though hit me ... why not install some surveillance cameras pointing to the front and back porches, and at the car setting in the driveway, and use that old VAIO to control them and act as a guard for the house? (My wife LOVES the idea, so my question is probably rhetorical! ) I could set it up to send a txt msg to both of our phones in the event something looked amiss to the scanning algorithm.

[SteveRiley]

That is symptomatic of a TRUE geek! (My boxes talk to me as well!)

Perhaps this bit belongs in our "what is a geek?" thread

Do you have an "Entertainment Center" in your house that could stream music, news and videos/movies from sites from around the web ... Why not install some surveillance cameras pointing to the front and back porches, and at the car setting in the driveway, and use that old VAIO to control them and act as a guard for the house?

We don't typically consume media in this fashion. And we live in a neighborhood that really doesn't require the installation of paranoia-reducing panaceas

[Flip the Switch]

I run Bodhi on my Asus 1015PEM Netbook.
It uses only 100Mb RAM and it goes like the wind.
Enlightenment based and really nice.

[SteveRiley]

I've looked at that a couple times...I just can't get into the "feel" of Enlightenment.

[Flip the Switch]

I've looked at that a couple times...I just can't get into the "feel" of Enlightenment.

It's kind of different, and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's real easy to get in about it, and it looks very cool.
Big advantage is its low system demands which makes netbooks and low spec laptops really perform.

Good luck with whichever way you go.

[vw72]

Of course a really simple solution would be to use the HP mini as a testing platform for new releases of Kubuntu.

EDIT: Or even use it to keep up with Gnome shell and Unity.

[SteveRiley]

Of course a really simple solution would be to use the HP mini as a testing platform for new releases of Kubuntu.

That's what I'm doing on the ThinkPad X1. The day Precise goes gold, I'll upgrade my T520 from Oneiric to Precise, then pave the X1 and install the first download of 12.10.

EDIT: Or even use it to keep up with Gnome shell and Unity.

That's what I plan to do with my Samsung 700T, once the kernel drivers catch up with the Amtel touchscreen it uses. Turns out there's a USB wrapper around the hardware, and only in kernel 3.3 is there a way to make full use of the thing.

[GreyGeek]

Neither could I.

[rms]

Or perhaps...Android Ice Cream Sandwich!

So... what are your first impressions about it? I'm interested if you can actually dictate posts instead of typing?

Powerful voice input engine

Android 4.0 introduces a powerful new voice input engine that offers a continuous "open microphone" experience and streaming voice recognition. The new voice input engine lets you dictate the text you want, for as long as you want, using the language you want. You can speak continously for a prolonged time, even pausing for intervals if needed, and dictate punctuation to create correct sentences. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, you can tap the underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.