Right, so I'm gonna give Linux YET another go on my ancient laptop Any recent distros that will work (bitch) with it? Or am I just a sucker for punishment?
Have you tried Elementary OS? - http://elementary.io/, it's pretty low on resources
(and looks a bit OSX like to boot ).
Download the 32bit ISO and see if it works live.
(You don't have to pay. Just put "0" in the custom donation box)
Quite surprised this year. I'd read the reviews saying nothing has changed. And effectively they're right. There's little visual change at all about Ubuntu, much like Mint. But also like Mint I think there must have been changes under the hood, as it's just so quick and smooth now. I think even folks who didn't like Unity will be really impressed with how quick it is. As for the looks, well I just added the Numix PPA, and Bob's your uncle. Looks fantastic. Added Oibaf PPA too for my Radeon card. Brilliant.
I tried Kubuntu, and I really like the new KDE as I previously stated here. But I think at the moment it just feels a little heavy and buggy here and there. Nothing too bad; certainly nothing like when KDE4 first came out. But maybe in October I give it another look. But yes, in spite of seemingly little change, Ubuntu really feels quick and impressive this year. Now, I want to get the phone!
Quite surprised this year. I'd read the reviews saying nothing has changed. And effectively they're right. There's little visual change at all about Ubuntu, much like Mint. But also like Mint I think there must have been changes under the hood, as it's just so quick and smooth now. I think even folks who didn't like Unity will be really impressed with how quick it is. As for the looks, well I just added the Numix PPA, and Bob's your uncle. Looks fantastic. Added Oibaf PPA too for my Radeon card. Brilliant.
I tried Kubuntu, and I really like the new KDE as I previously stated here. But I think at the moment it just feels a little heavy and buggy here and there. Nothing too bad; certainly nothing like when KDE4 first came out. But maybe in October I give it another look. But yes, in spite of seemingly little change, Ubuntu really feels quick and impressive this year. Now, I want to get the phone!
I've also noticed its faster to boot up, seemed to take a age before. Also read that the Mint Devs are working on getting super boot times. I'ts really not a important thing in the grand scheme of life but i also play around with win8/10 and its fast to boot, so when loading my Linux i find myself shouting at the pc ...come on just load...
After using Unity for a while, I recently converted to Ubuntu Mate, and as a recent promoter of Ubuntu Mate, I now find myself to say im back with Unity.
A few things i missed about Unity, but the main one was the global menu, totally love what Unity have done with the menu bar. My PC is mainly used with firefox open, and after using Unity, I just couldn't get used to all that wasted space at the top of screen.
Really shows up when using Firefox, you have about a inch of space at the top thats not used for anything, same on all the Distros I tried.
Also tried loading Global menu onto Mate, but it was just too buggy
Also a thumbs up for Numix, first thing partner said after setting Unity up after using Mate was, ooh thats a modern looking one
I've also noticed its faster to boot up, seemed to take a age before. Also read that the Mint Devs are working on getting super boot times. I'ts really not a important thing in the grand scheme of life but i also play around with win8/10 and its fast to boot, so when loading my Linux i find myself shouting at the pc ...come on just load...
After using Unity for a while, I recently converted to Ubuntu Mate, and as a recent promoter of Ubuntu Mate, I now find myself to say im back with Unity.
A few things i missed about Unity, but the main one was the global menu, totally love what Unity have done with the menu bar. My PC is mainly used with firefox open, and after using Unity, I just couldn't get used to all that wasted space at the top of screen.
Really shows up when using Firefox, you have about a inch of space at the top thats not used for anything, same on all the Distros I tried.
Also tried loading Global menu onto Mate, but it was just too buggy
Also a thumbs up for Numix, first thing partner said after setting Unity up after using Mate was, ooh thats a modern looking one
Numix is gorgeous. I don't know why Canonical doesn't pool this team in to evolve the Ubuntu look. Makes such a difference. I agree about the menu bar too. There's an option to switch it back to the old setting, but I love the way it works by default. Like you say, it's a lot of dead space at the top otherwise. In fact I'm generally finding it extremely easy to get around this desktop.
Sorry to keep harping guys, but really this Ubuntu release has massively impressed me. I discovered Unity Tweak Tool the other day, and I think it has to be the single most comprehensive desktop configuring tool there is. You can adjust pretty much every single aspect of the desktop with it, without it being too geeky or exclusive. My particular favourite is the animations. Just being able to select quicker minimise and maximise animations is so cool and very nicely implemented. I remember having to install CCSM years ago and needing a PHD to get around it. Now, one or two clicks makes easy changes. It seems Compiz really matured. Such a nice desktop, I'm definitely switching over to it completely soon. Not a sniff or a sneak of any kind of problem. Awesome!
Sorry to keep harping guys, but really this Ubuntu release has massively impressed me. I discovered Unity Tweak Tool the other day, and I think it has to be the single most comprehensive desktop configuring tool there is. You can adjust pretty much every single aspect of the desktop with it, without it being too geeky or exclusive. My particular favourite is the animations. Just being able to select quicker minimise and maximise animations is so cool and very nicely implemented. I remember having to install CCSM years ago and needing a PHD to get around it. Now, one or two clicks makes easy changes. It seems Compiz really matured. Such a nice desktop, I'm definitely switching over to it completely soon. Not a sniff or a sneak of any kind of problem. Awesome!
Well apart from my problem with Conky (mentioned in an earlier post), which I think is definitely down to the 3.19 kernel rather than Ubuntu, I'm having a problem with Ubuntu 15.04 randomly disconnecting from wi-fi.
Never had a problem before the update, and doesn't affect other OSs on same PC.
Plus the os-prober part of update-grub seems to take an age in my Unity install. It's fine in Ubuntu Gnome.
But for the first time in a long time it's actually showing Plymouth on boot up.
Probably down to their changes in the boot process (something to do with systemd?)
Quite surprised this year. I'd read the reviews saying nothing has changed. And effectively they're right. There's little visual change at all about Ubuntu, much like Mint. But also like Mint I think there must have been changes under the hood, as it's just so quick and smooth now. I think even folks who didn't like Unity will be really impressed with how quick it is. As for the looks, well I just added the Numix PPA, and Bob's your uncle. Looks fantastic. Added Oibaf PPA too for my Radeon card. Brilliant.
I tried Kubuntu, and I really like the new KDE as I previously stated here. But I think at the moment it just feels a little heavy and buggy here and there. Nothing too bad; certainly nothing like when KDE4 first came out. But maybe in October I give it another look. But yes, in spite of seemingly little change, Ubuntu really feels quick and impressive this year. Now, I want to get the phone!
I tried Kubuntu as well as I wanted to see what the Plasma 5 fuss was about. I ended up going back to Xubuntu as there were just far too many bugs to live with. Xubuntu 15.04 on the other hand is as solid as ever.
Also gave straight Ubuntu a spin before Kubuntu and was very impressed. Unity just keeps getting better and better in performance and stability. The switch to Systemd hasn't gone down well with some but I have noticed no problems there at all.
Hehe I look forward to it! First time in ages I'm excited for Ubuntu on the desktop, not to mention everything else they have going. Really looking good at the moment imho.
Just updated one of my Arch based distros, and I see it's now on version 4.0.1-1 of the Linux kernel.
Don't think there's any great changes, just that they decided to call it that, rather than 3.20 for some reason?
"Just for devilment", as someone I knew used to say.
Today i've been mostly playing with XenServer. I was going to go with Proxmox but v3.4 doesn't want to play nice with my n40l Microserver, and the last time i tried oVirt it wanted more than 8GiB of RAM before you could create any VMs. So XenServer it was.
I wanted to experience it as Citrix intended and the management software (XenCenter) is Windows-only so i ended up in the weird situation of running Windows 10 in Virtualbox on my Hackintosh in order to run XenCenter to connect to XenServer and install Windows XP as a guest. Fun. ^_^
Installation of XenServer itself was a doddle and it *can* be managed through command-line or unofficial 3rd-party applications if you don't want to run Windows on your management system.
I believe the underlying OS of XenServer is RHEL 5.5 with a 3.10 kernel but you don't really interact with that. The next version will be based on RHEL 7.x and they've hinted at having some sort of container integration.
All in all it's a pretty nice virtualisation system and i could see myself using it, especially once containers become a first-class citizen.
Also compelling is the forth-coming Proxmox 4.0 since they're finally switching from OpenVZ to LXC for containers (so could just use stock Debian kernels).
Just updated one of my Arch based distros, and I see it's now on version 4.0.1-1 of the Linux kernel.
Don't think there's any great changes, just that they decided to call it that, rather than 3.20 for some reason?
"Just for devilment", as someone I knew used to say.
Yeah, it's pretty much the same reason that 3.0 came about (Linus said something about the numbers getting high).
Would have been better if they'd gone with a yyyy.mm numbering scheme though IMO.
Hehe I look forward to it! First time in ages I'm excited for Ubuntu on the desktop, not to mention everything else they have going. Really looking good at the moment imho.
Amazing how much I hated Unity when it first came out way back on the netbook remix. Now I love it and am eagerly looking forward to Unity 8.
Amazing how much I hated Unity when it first came out way back on the netbook remix. Now I love it and am eagerly looking forward to Unity 8.
I never really hated it but I just didn't understand why it was needed. Now I really love it and miss it when using other desktops. Even my beloved Cinnamon is feeling its age a bit right now in comparison.
Presently using a onboard Intel HD4000, but I'm looking at sticking a dedicated graphics card in.
A quick Google doesn't seem to give preference to Nvidia or AMD drivers these days.
What would you go for regarding Linux driver support. I'm leaning towards AMD, just do general browsing, utube, iPlayer etc, some lght games occasionally. and tend to use Ubuntu or a deravitive of it as my OS.
Quick piece of advice, if you are using AMD drivers, don't use the proprietary ones on Ubuntu 15.04. They made Compiz go crazy as far as CPU usage is concerned on my laptop. No such issues with the open source drivers.
Of course, if you want to use Steam, you have to use the proprietary ones due to a bug with the open source ones. Thankfully I can take it or leave it when it comes to Steam.
Can definitely attest to using AMD with the open source drivers. I use the Oibaf PPA, which updates quite a lot but has never been a problem for me at all. I was using Nvidia before and while I don't do heavy hardcore shooty gaming, I do like to play some titles on Linux from Steam, emulation, and sometimes WINE stuff. Haven't had a bit of bother with AMD compared to Nvidia, aside from early troubleshooting after installing the card. Very pleased I switched to AMD in fact. People tell you Nvidia is always the way to go but I am very much enjoying AMD on Linux personally.
Of course, if you want to use Steam, you have to use the proprietary ones due to a bug with the open source ones. Thankfully I can take it or leave it when it comes to Steam.
There is a simple fix for this as I encountered it myself. I can't remember what the fix is but if you need it I'll do a search about. I think I may have posted on the Mint or Ubuntu forums about it and got help that way. If I remember correctly it's because Steam uses an older version of a library that comes with your distribution. You just have to delete a folder containing that library, that's it. But like I say I'll check it if you need help.
Comments
Have you tried Elementary OS? - http://elementary.io/, it's pretty low on resources
(and looks a bit OSX like to boot
Download the 32bit ISO and see if it works live.
(You don't have to pay. Just put "0" in the custom donation box)
I tried Kubuntu, and I really like the new KDE as I previously stated here. But I think at the moment it just feels a little heavy and buggy here and there. Nothing too bad; certainly nothing like when KDE4 first came out. But maybe in October I give it another look. But yes, in spite of seemingly little change, Ubuntu really feels quick and impressive this year. Now, I want to get the phone!
On an old machine you need to need to use the 32 bit version of LXLE which is 12.04.5
LXLE works very well on all types of machines old and new.
I've also noticed its faster to boot up, seemed to take a age before. Also read that the Mint Devs are working on getting super boot times. I'ts really not a important thing in the grand scheme of life
After using Unity for a while, I recently converted to Ubuntu Mate, and as a recent promoter of Ubuntu Mate, I now find myself
A few things i missed about Unity, but the main one was the global menu, totally love what Unity have done with the menu bar. My PC is mainly used with firefox open, and after using Unity, I just couldn't get used to all that wasted space at the top of screen.
Really shows up when using Firefox, you have about a inch of space at the top thats not used for anything, same on all the Distros I tried.
Also tried loading Global menu onto Mate, but it was just too buggy
Also a thumbs up for Numix, first thing partner said after setting Unity up after using Mate was, ooh thats a modern looking one
VMware Workstation 11 for Linux is broke since l upgraded to Ubuntu 15.04.
Might have to downgrade to 14.10
Dont think it likes the new kernel
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VMware
sweet. that worked, thanks for the link
Numix is gorgeous. I don't know why Canonical doesn't pool this team in to evolve the Ubuntu look. Makes such a difference. I agree about the menu bar too. There's an option to switch it back to the old setting, but I love the way it works by default. Like you say, it's a lot of dead space at the top otherwise. In fact I'm generally finding it extremely easy to get around this desktop.
Well apart from my problem with Conky (mentioned in an earlier post), which I think is definitely down to the 3.19 kernel rather than Ubuntu, I'm having a problem with Ubuntu 15.04 randomly disconnecting from wi-fi.
Never had a problem before the update, and doesn't affect other OSs on same PC.
Plus the os-prober part of update-grub seems to take an age in my Unity install. It's fine in Ubuntu Gnome.
But for the first time in a long time it's actually showing Plymouth on boot up.
Probably down to their changes in the boot process (something to do with systemd?)
I tried Kubuntu as well as I wanted to see what the Plasma 5 fuss was about. I ended up going back to Xubuntu as there were just far too many bugs to live with. Xubuntu 15.04 on the other hand is as solid as ever.
Also gave straight Ubuntu a spin before Kubuntu and was very impressed. Unity just keeps getting better and better in performance and stability. The switch to Systemd hasn't gone down well with some but I have noticed no problems there at all.
The biggest news though is that convergence will arrive later this year although hardware partner has not been announced.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/05/ubuntu-15-10-name-announced
Hehe I look forward to it! First time in ages I'm excited for Ubuntu on the desktop, not to mention everything else they have going. Really looking good at the moment imho.
Don't think there's any great changes, just that they decided to call it that, rather than 3.20 for some reason?
"Just for devilment", as someone I knew used to say.
http://developer.ubuntu.com/en/snappy/
I wanted to experience it as Citrix intended and the management software (XenCenter) is Windows-only so i ended up in the weird situation of running Windows 10 in Virtualbox on my Hackintosh in order to run XenCenter to connect to XenServer and install Windows XP as a guest. Fun. ^_^
Installation of XenServer itself was a doddle and it *can* be managed through command-line or unofficial 3rd-party applications if you don't want to run Windows on your management system.
I believe the underlying OS of XenServer is RHEL 5.5 with a 3.10 kernel but you don't really interact with that. The next version will be based on RHEL 7.x and they've hinted at having some sort of container integration.
All in all it's a pretty nice virtualisation system and i could see myself using it, especially once containers become a first-class citizen.
Also compelling is the forth-coming Proxmox 4.0 since they're finally switching from OpenVZ to LXC for containers (so could just use stock Debian kernels).
Yeah, it's pretty much the same reason that 3.0 came about (Linus said something about the numbers getting high).
Would have been better if they'd gone with a yyyy.mm numbering scheme though IMO.
Amazing how much I hated Unity when it first came out way back on the netbook remix. Now I love it and am eagerly looking forward to Unity 8.
I never really hated it but I just didn't understand why it was needed. Now I really love it and miss it when using other desktops. Even my beloved Cinnamon is feeling its age a bit right now in comparison.
A quick Google doesn't seem to give preference to Nvidia or AMD drivers these days.
What would you go for regarding Linux driver support. I'm leaning towards AMD, just do general browsing, utube, iPlayer etc, some lght games occasionally. and tend to use Ubuntu or a deravitive of it as my OS.
General consensus seems to be Nvidia if you're using the proprietary drivers, AMD if you're using the opensource ones.
Of course, if you want to use Steam, you have to use the proprietary ones due to a bug with the open source ones. Thankfully I can take it or leave it when it comes to Steam.
There is a simple fix for this as I encountered it myself. I can't remember what the fix is but if you need it I'll do a search about. I think I may have posted on the Mint or Ubuntu forums about it and got help that way. If I remember correctly it's because Steam uses an older version of a library that comes with your distribution. You just have to delete a folder containing that library, that's it. But like I say I'll check it if you need help.
http://www.webupd8.org/2015/04/fix-missing-libgcrypt11-causing-spotify.html
Doesn't mention Steam specifically but it does say that several apps are affected