Just recently decided to try dipping my toes into the Linux water.

I have an old 512 RAM 1.8 GHz desktop PC and managed to get Puppy (Wary 5.2.2) to load on to it and all seems to work fine. Couldn't find a way of slowing down the cursor movement of the mouse though, it is a bit too fast.

The optical drive on that PC seems to be on the verge of dying though. Maybe I can strip it out and give it a clean, never tried doing that before. Loading the 130 MB Live CD of Puppy is touch and go. A Xubuntu CD which occupies almost the whole 700 MB won't load at all, it tries to start but reports errors and packs up.

Don't think the PC will boot from the USB ports at all. HDD is only 40 GB and Windows XP is still working fairly well on it so reluctant to partition off and dual boot and all that. May look for a cheap second hand machine to install distros and use for my initial tinkering.

I did get the Xubuntu CD to load on my puny netbook by connecting a USB optical drive (showing that the disc is burned OK), but had to disable something called "Fast Boot" in the Set Up as well as changing the boot order.

I may have some irritating novice type questions to ask at some point if folks here would be willing to indulge me.

Considering the hardware problems of youre old pc, glad to read you have managed to dip youre toes into a linux os.

As the thread now has 800 posts, im not going to tell you to read it all so please feel free to ask.

Some links to provide some light reading
http://distrowatch.com/

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kdegnome

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ndows_software

Oscar, take a look at Lubuntu on that system. You may have a better experience with it. Good luck.

Giving serious consideration to moving completely to KDE now, with Kubuntu 11.10. Been playing on it a bit over Christmas, and the main thing I love is you can make it whatever you want. It's so easy to completely customise the look and feel without having to get a massive headache or add extra PPA's and faff about. A lot of the stuff I've had to add tweaking apps for in mainline Ubuntu is already present in KDE without the ball ache. Add the fact that it's just so pretty and crisp to use, and it's becoming a no-brainer.

Anyone else using KDE these days and totally bowled over? I honestly can't think of a decent reason why Gnome is better. I'm so fed up of having to fight with it to get things running properly. KDE is a complete dream in comparison.

I started on KDE 3 when trying out various distributions but settled on Kubuntu. Did use Gnome when Kubuntu made the transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4 SC but I got fed up of the philosophy of restricting options and removing things I found useful and telling anyone who disagreed that it was their way or the highway (I stopped using Pidgin for the same reason). So around the release of KDE 4.3 when the fourth iteration of KDE was gathering pace, I went back and never looked back. Looking at the further restrictions being placed on Gnome 3 and more changes which will adversely affect those using Gnome on non-Linux operating systems, it appears I have made the right choice. I've gone from Kubuntu to Arch but I've kept with KDE.

KDE is due a update
http://dot.kde.org/2011/12/22/kde-ma...secret-service
To make it even better.

Ive also dumped Gnome3\Unity as its to locked down.

Using Xfce mint\debian release as main internet browsing OS as its stable\basic\secure for family and wife they just need a browser icon and off button and they are happy, kept telling me off for distro hoping and changing things around
Had to dump my Peppermint due to lack of progress on the OS

That gives me chance to use my spare HD to find a KDE i like, and will play with my camera\mp3 player\bluetooth.

its a shame Mint KDE is still using Ubuntu, and not jumping to Debian
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=89712


http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kdegnome

Thanks for your replies. It's not just me then!

Unity and Gnome 3 are great in and of themselves, but they are proving to be very restricting and that seems to be the path they want to continue down. I'm not sure I can follow that mind set in the long run. It's fine when things are running OK, but when you need to fix simple things you're screwed. It's a real headache searching for fixes for things that should have their own options, and crazy to be struggling with that in 2011/12 imho.

It was kind of funny really. I was reading about how Ubuntu doesn't want the Unity bar moving from the left side of the screen. Fine, I like it there and it works well, but if you pop into KDE and create a plasma launch bar you can stick it anywhere you like! It's not a hard thing to do or only for "technical users" or anything daft, it's easy for any computer novice to do. So why do Gnome and Ubuntu have to be so obtuse?

I remember the KDE4.0 launch. Ouch, it was a total mess, and was so for a few years. But now at 4.7 and beyond, it's the best DE on Linux no question. And I'm off to it.

KDE has improved so much over the last few years, hopefully they won't knacker it all up in 12.04! One of the things that annoyed the hell out of me in Unity was that sidebar - I hate that you only have to even go somewhere near the side of the screen and it pops out - annoying as hell if I'm trying to use links on that side of a browser >_<

Good point about the sidebar. Not sure you really want desktop features popping up over browser real estate in response to cursor movements and link menus are often listed down the far left of the page.

I've installed Xubuntu on my old PC as a dual boot (using Wubi since my CD drive doesn't work) and it seems to run OK all things considered.

I like the Xfce desktop but was a little unsure about the launcher bar that pops up along the bottom (in the default settings). Maybe it is better there than on the left and you do have to take the cursor hard to the bottom of the screen to trigger it. May change it as it can all be totally customised of course. Haven't looked at Unity yet but expect it can all be changed to suit your requirements.

I always remove the bottom bar on Xubuntu and just have the single panel a la Gnome 2. Much better. As for Unity, not much can be changed by the user at this point in its life...

http://linuxmint.mirocommunity.org/v...-linux-mint-hd


http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=HbstMDvRpyc

It's Gnome 3 but the bar is removed at the top and the new menu is added. Not sure it needed forking to do this, as it's just a tweak but I'm sure they had good reason. I like the fact that they kept the hot corner though on the top left. I like that feature and now use it in KDE. Unity is missing that imho. Other than this though it looks much like the current Mint to me, but I hope they get it how they want it.

Anyone else enjoy the games which are part of KDE? They used to be part of the default installation for most kdistros, but they are more usually an extra, which can be installed via the Muon package manager (or apt-get install) as 'kdegames', these days.

Some favourites are Shisen Sho, which I remember playing on Win98! Breakout - it's quite a good basic variety, but nicely done with some quite frustrating levels. I haven't managed to complete it yet, but I have done, a long time ago.

The card games are good too, but I only usually play FreeCell. KNetWalk (the network construction game) is quite good to play against your previous best times. Just connect the monitors to the world using all the cables.

I probably don't need to mention to resize the game window to get things the size you want. I think they all remember your size setting at least and WindowRules can be used, if you're like me and frequently used applications must always open at the position I want.

Still enjoying playing with Xubuntu, biggest disappointment is that I can't get Skype to work. It installs OK but if I try to make a call the CPU hits the 100% ceiling hard and the sound is all broken up. The version is a beta. Did Microsoft buy Skype in the end? If so I guess they won't be falling over themselves to develop the Linux version.

On the same machine under Windows, Skype calling drives the CPU quite hard but it copes and the calls (audio only) are usually fine. Any suggestions of anything I might be doing wrong?

This led me to look at softphones and I was wondering about how I am supposed to install the latest version of software, eg Linphone.

The package manager installs an old version (3.3.2) and offers nothing else, but the latest is 3.5.0 on the Linphone.org website. Can I install this from the tarball and if so, how?. I tried following the instructions in the unzipped tarball and when I ran ./configure (I think it was) in the terminal I hit an error. Installing something seemed to resolve that but then another error and I wasn't sure if I was going down the right path.

I can't speak from personal experience with Skype, but there seems to be a .deb file of version 2.2 available for Ubuntu distros on their site. Unless someone can tell us otherwise, I'm pretty sure this will work on your Xubuntu. It says it works on versions 10.04+, so on 11.10 or whatever I imagine you'll be fine. I'd uninstall the one you have now, and download the .deb. Just double click to install it.

On a low spec I would imagine as you say, that MS will hardly be killing themselves optimising it much for Linux, but it could be worth a pop.

I had a play with Mepis 11 today: very elegant and handy if Mint ever packs up.

I'm enjoying playing around with Ubuntu 11.10 at the moment and I am going to buck the trend and say I like the Unity desktop. It looks good and feels good to use and I have not had an issue with it. I also like the Gnome Shell interface but overall I prefer Unity and I think the biggest reason for the dislike of it is that people don't like change.

It's not change people are against with Unity\Gnome3. Its not having the ability to change things around to there own personal preference, eg move the bar from the side to top\bottom or left etc. its way to locked down at the moment!

Yes, that's the one. I can install the .deb from the site or the Ubuntu Software Centre offers me the same version. I suspect that it is just requiring more CPU under Linux than the Windows version does under Windows and if this machine were more powerful it might work OK.

Is there any source of earlier versions for Linux that I could try?

Skype is pretty closed so I am not aware of anything else that will run on Linux allowing voice calls with my Skype contacts.

It might be a Pulse Audio issue - there's threads on the Ubuntu support forums about it as well. I can't see a fix or workaround though, other than possibly removing pulse-audio.

Really appreciate folks taking the time to reply. I've managed to find a source for a .deb of an earlier version (2.0.0.68) which has different audio device options allowing me to avoid pulse. I completely removed the current beta version and installed this older one and initial tests suggest that it seems to be working. CPU usage on calling the echo test is now 50 to 70 percent which is acceptable.

Excellent, glad you fixed it. Can't hurt to file a bug report if you have the time too.

Yes I think the truth of it lies in the middle somewhere. I like Unity too and am not offended by the choices made, but I also agree that it needs a set of user changeable options to tweak it in simple ways. Even Windows 7 lets you put things where you want them, so there's really no excuse for Linux putting the stop sign up. I'm back on Gnome 3 (yet again), and one thing I do like with it is the extensions. There's quite a list of them now and you can really tweak the shell to some degree now. Unity needs that imho.

'Course, neither are anywhere near as configurable as KDE4.

:yawn:
Have you made a new years resolution yet? ive got one for you it involves distro hoping

ive made my choice, as my beloved Peppermint isnt being worked on by devs as much as it should be. But then it is a bit off a side project by people working on other projects
http://peppermintos.com/team/

My main OS is now going to be Mint XFCE Debian based, been running that for a few months, no problems

Spare drive is now very happily running Mint Cinnamon, not had too much of a chance yet to give a opinon on it. But think its go be a stayer, will let you know

So after Mint starting me off with Linux, then loosing me for a few years, im back.

That one's not really a distro hop, just a GUI change