Other Distros

[Colonel Panic]

SolydX is a decent distro; it's based on Debian and uses the XFce window manager. It has quite a small set of software as standard but what it does have works well.

I didn't get on with Zenwalk 8 at all (I couldn't even log in as a normal user, and Firefox didn't work). Maybe I could have spent an hour or so trying to get to the bottom of it but frankly life's too short.

[Robert123]

Yeah Solydx is prettry nice when I tried it. Yes Zenwalk when I tried 32bit ones and it wasn't a pleasant experience pretty much what you said. Vector was far superior.

[nitehawk]

SolydX is a decent distro; it's based on Diebian and uses the XFce window manager. It has quite a small set of software as standard but what it does have well

You know,...when it comes to Debian based distros, I just go with plain Debian or Devuan now. Then "customize" to make it tiny or full (what-ever I need). Right now I'm using my 10" RCA Viking Pro Android tablet (that You can use like a very small computer).
But I (personaly) find Android to be a big PITA!!! Wish you could get linux on these things.

[Colonel Panic]

SolydX is a decent distro; it's based on Diebian and uses the XFce window manager. It has quite a small set of software as standard but what it does have well

You know,...when it comes to Debian based distros, I just go with plain Debian or Devuan now. Then "customize" to make it tiny or full (what-ever I need). Right now I'm using my 10" RCA Viking Pro Android tablet (that You can use like a very small computer).
But I (personaly) find Android to be a big PITA!!! Wish you could get linux on these things.

Can't help I'm afraid because I've never used Android (except on my Mum's tabloid once, and that was only briefly).

I might try Devuan sometime, but as for Debian; I know there are advantages in installing Debian from scratch in that you start from a clean sheet; you can set it up exactly the way you want it and not have anything on there that you don't want or need.

However, the devs of BunsenLabs Hydrogen, which I'm posting from now, have *done a lot of work to make Debian more user-friendly; for example, Hydrogen has customised hotkeys to make some of the most used functions easier to access. It's basically a fork of CrunchBang;

https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

It would take me quite a long time to replicate all that, or even anything similar, which is why I haven't so far attempted to do it. It's also why I prefer Stella to plain CentOS; the Stella developers have done the hard work to set it up to be usable from the get-go, so that I don't have to.

Horses for courses I guess.

*The same is true of AntiX, which is a mature distro now with no serious faults that I can see and a lot to recommend it, especially for people with old computers.

[nitehawk]

However, the devs of distros of AntiX and BunsenLabs Hydrogen, which I'm posting from now, have done a lot of work to make Debian more user-friendly. For example, Hydrogen has customised hotkeys to make some of the most used functions easier to access. It's basically a fork of CrunchBang;

https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

It would take me quite a long time to replicate all that, or even anything similar, which is why I haven't so far attempted to do it. It's also why I prefer Stella to plain CentOS; the Stella developers have done the hard work to set it up to be usable from the get-go, so that I don't have to.
Horses for courses I guess.

Oh yes,...
I'm a very big fan of Antix and MX!!!! I have both of those on a couple of computers right now (I use Antix on one of my main computers,...and MX on a large tower computer...dual-booted with Stella).
This little old laptop runs just Devuan right now. But Antix and MX rule IMO.
Guess I should try bunsenlaps version of Crunchbang though,...might really be nice on this old lappy.

[Colonel Panic]

However, the devs of distros of AntiX and BunsenLabs Hydrogen, which I'm posting from now, have done a lot of work to make Debian more user-friendly. For example, Hydrogen has customised hotkeys to make some of the most used functions easier to access. It's basically a fork of CrunchBang;

https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

It would take me quite a long time to replicate all that, or even anything similar, which is why I haven't so far attempted to do it. It's also why I prefer Stella to plain CentOS; the Stella developers have done the hard work to set it up to be usable from the get-go, so that I don't have to.
Horses for courses I guess.

Oh yes,...
I'm a very big fan of Antix and MX!!!! I have both of those on a couple of computers right now (I use Antix on one of my main computers,...and MX on a large tower computer...dual-booted with Stella).
This little old laptop runs just Devuan right now. But Antix and MX rule IMO.
Guess I should try bunsenlaps version of Crunchbang though,...might really be nice on this old lappy.

Thanks for replying nitie. Yes, BunsenLabs Hydrogen is definitely worth a try; I slightly prefer it to CrunchBang++ though there's not a lot in it and they're both good, I find it easier to read the text of Conky in Hydrogen (more contrast with the background).

The latest version of AntiX (16) is out now, and I might give it a go soon; there wasn't a lot wrong with the beta version the last time I tried it. MX looks good too, Dedo gave it a good review;

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/mx-15.html

Sorry about the typo in my last post btw, when I've now corrected; the third paragraph should make more sense now.

P.S. A quick fix in Crunchbang ++; "sudo xsetroot -solid "whitesmoke" " lightens the desktop area around the conky display sufficiently to make it much more legible. (I like whitesmoke which is a very light gray, F5F5F5; other colours may work just as well.)

[rufwoof]

Debian Jessie KDE amd64 liveCD installed to HDD frugally (grub4dos/menu.lst) on a 2GB quad core, with continual save or save on demand boot choices. SFS loading at bootup if desired (see http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 339#916339

KDE is really flexible. Not so keen on the wobbly windows as you move them option - I've not bothered turning that on. Exploding windows on close is ok - for a while, I've also not turned that on. Like the cube desktop (mine pops up if I mouse into the top right corner). Only just discovered that if you open a video and drag the window part off screen then the cube desktop view shows that video spanning both desktops.

Also like the bouncing mini icon next to the mouse cursor when you've clicked something and its loading. More clearly indicates that something has been clicked rather than sitting waiting for has-it-or-hasn't-it been clicked.

Debian's stable repository is great and extensive. Like how security updates also come through very quickly.

I'm running with the main sfs all extracted, around 5GB in total but that includes a load of programs having been installed (libre, masterpdfeditor, skype, openshot, blender, audacity ...etc.). Or runs as a 1.9GB sfs if squashfs'd using low compression.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the latest version, 8, of Rosa (the Russian distro). It's working well on the whole and with Mate as the desktop has an attractive blue interface, but LibreOffice has no spell checker, at least when Rosa is installed, which to me is a bit of a pain.

If you can live with that though, it's worth a look; it has Pale Moon as its main browser instead of Firefox or Chrome.

[Billtoo]

I installed Mint 18 to the hard drive of my Acer desktop pc.

Computer
Processor 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 540 @ 3.07GHz
Memory 5972MB (678MB used)
Operating System Linux Mint 18 Sarah
Date/Time Sat 13 Aug 2016 11:26:05 PM EDT
Display
Resolution 1920x1080 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Desktop
X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Multimedia
Audio Adapter HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
Version
Kernel Linux 4.4.0-34-generic (x86_64)
Desktop Environment XFCE 4

Installed kodi,smplayer,smtube,kpat,and others.

It's working well.

[Pete]

@Billtoo

Looks good.
I have always liked Mint but the sudo this and sudo that, really gets on my nerves.

[learnhow2code]

sudo this and sudo that, really gets on my nerves.

best way to puppify something like that is to do a frugal install from its livecd, have /etc/rc.local (or whatever nih systemd equivalent deprecates this) call something to change the shortcut to the term to sudo name-of-term and from then on, the term opens as root.

if you want the same from the vt, login as non-root and add this to ~/.bashrc:

Code: Select all

# public domain
cktty=$(tty | grep tty | wc -l) 
if [[ "$cktty" == "1" ]] ; then sudo su ; fi

on a frugal install this will most likely automatically make you root, only when you are in a vt.

[bark_bark_bark]

If you want, you could always use su, rather than sudo.

[Pete]

True, there is always su but then you may find that some programs will not run because one is now logged into the root account.

@learnhow2code

Can one even do a frugal install of Mint? I don't know.

[Colonel Panic]

True, there is always su but then you may find that some programs will not run because one is now logged into the root account..

That's right; Chromium won't run from root, for example.

@learnhow2code

Can one even do a frugal install of Mint? I don't know.

I've seen someone say it can be done with AntiX (which is based on Debian, as is Ubuntu which Mint is based on) so I suppose it's possible.

[Billtoo]

@Billtoo

Looks good.
I have always liked Mint but the sudo this and sudo that, really gets on my nerves.

@Pete

I did another installation to the hard drive of my emachines laptop, it
has a single core processor,2gb ram.
It came with Windows Vista Basic.

Computer
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 2650e
Memory 1788MB (407MB used)
Operating System Linux Mint 18 Sarah
Date/Time Sun 14 Aug 2016 12:19:40 PM EDT
Display
Resolution 1280x800 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Gallium 0.4 on ATI RS690
X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Multimedia
Audio Adapter HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
Kernel Linux 4.4.0-34-generic (x86_64)
Desktop Environment XFCE 4

I added all the same software as the first install to the Acer.

This is a LTS realease that will get security updates until 2021.

Entering your password to use synaptic etc is a bit of a pain.

Apart from that I'm happy with the way it runs on this laptop.

[Pete]

@Billtoo

Thanks for the update.
Two questions if I may,

1) Can one switch the updates off as they have a habit of breaking things

2) Does Mint 18 support multiple monitors, as in two distinct displays versus "cloning" where the same thing is shown on both?

[Billtoo]

@Billtoo

Thanks for the update.
Two questions if I may,

1) Can one switch the updates off as they have a habit of breaking things

2) Does Mint 18 support multiple monitors, as in two distinct displays versus "cloning" where the same thing is shown on both?

There are three settings for updates, the first 2 won't break your system, the third updates everything so it may break the system.
I went the the default setting (2).

Xfce4 supports multiple monitors, I don't have this on a pc with multiple monitors yet but I'd be surprised if Mint Xfce4 didn't.

[Pete]

Thank you Billtoo, gonna give Xfce4 a try.

[Billtoo]

Thank you Billtoo, gonna give Xfce4 a try.

Hi Pete,
I connected a second monitor to my COMPAC Presario which is running Xslacko-4.2 and set it up to use both monitors.

video-info-glx 1.5.3 Sun 14 Aug 2016 on X-Slacko 4.2 Linux 3.14.56 i686
0.0 VGA compatible controller: AMD/ATI [Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.] RV530 [Radeon X1600 PRO]
oem: ATI ATOMBIOS
product: RV530 01.00

X Server: Xorg Driver: radeon
X.Org version: 1.14.3
dimensions: 3840x1080 pixels (1016x286 millimeters)
depth of root window: 24 planes

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.4
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.1.7

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Core 0: @2800 1: @2800 MHz

[Pete]

Hey Billtoo, that is impressive.
Perhaps I should give Xslacko a whirl too and I see it's based on Slacko 6.3.2 32 bit so most/all of my programs should be compatible although I'm a bit concerned about the devx.sfs.