Depending on your spec, Ubuntu may not be light enough for your hardware if it's an XP netbook. There isn't a netbook edition anymore. I'd have a look at Linux Mint 15, possibly the Cinnamon edition, or the MATE one if you don't have much power in the machine.

Keep us posted.

will do. cheers.

I sometimes download the odd TV show torrent , but didn't know if that was any safer from viruses on Linux. Anyway, it's all up and running smoothy now and it seems to be a lot faster than Vista. Although, I'm finding it a bit of a pain when it keeps asking for my password before I run programs, but I think that will die down when I have everything installed.

Thanks for all the help, btw. An helpful thread to keep looking into.

Well, through no fault of its own other than I had a spare weekend with nothing to do, I decided to ditch Ubuntu and re-install Linux mint 15 Cinnamon. Just got itchy feet I suppose, as Ubuntu was running absolutely fine.

Distro hoppers eh...?

Well, im not quite there yet, give it another week or two.
But i may have been converted to KDE. Well i have always liked the look of it, but it was always overkill, plasma this widget that, seems every icon has a sub menu etc etc.

Now my beloved Xfce, is still sound, but looks dated, no matter what i do to it

Dont like Unity/Gnome, well not till they sort out those pointless workspaces/desktops.

Mint is great, but still seems any version of it doesnt like my hardware

So a few weeks ago i loaded
http://www.netrunner-os.com/

http://www.netrunner-os.com/features/

Mint users may spot some relevance
http://www.netrunner-os.com/about/

Its what i call a clean KDE and so far so good as i say, give it a bit more time and my beloved Xfce will be deleted Been using it for a couple of years, so cant be accused of being a Distro hopper

I'm also running KDE on another partition with openSUSE, and I really love it. But...it certainly likes to mess about with you sometimes. I think KDE is awesome but it needs some attention from developers that are interested in user experiences and not developer ones. It's not as polished an experience at the user edges as I'd like. That said, Netrunner seems to be adding this themselves.

Tried out Elementary OS Luna the other day. Just live, but very nice. Seems light and easy. Might stick it on my mum's old PC.

Had a go at this
http://www.kwheezy.com/en/
Nice concept, and worked fine.

But at nearly 4gb download
The default install is overkill with way too many programs installed. I tried to delete them, but it was taking ages.

Sorry im not a Suse fan or Fedora fan, yuck

Do wish those Unity/Gnome destops/workspaces would work indepenent of each other, that may get me to use it.

But for a while it looks like its Netrunner, or the next version of MInt starts to play nice with my hardware.

I'm trying that on one of my partitions, after someone mentioned it on here.
As you say the UI is beautiful and simple.
A bit like a simplified gnome-shell, with everything on the one screen.
It's got Ubuntu 12.04 at the base of it.

It did require a bit more setting up than Ubuntu or Mint. For instance, although I ticked the box at installation to install the extra codecs, I still had to install ubuntu-restricted-extras to play music.

There aren't many configuration options out of the box, but you can install Elementary Tweaks to give you more.

I really like it, and quite like that they've gone their own way with custom apps for playing music and email client etc.
But there's nothing to stop you installing all your favourite apps instead.

There's still a couple of bugs.
I connect via wifi, and there's nothing plugged into the ethernet port, but it insists on trying to connect that on every boot up (as well as the wifi), and the icon on the taskbar keeps spinning until I right click on it and disconnect the wired network. (I might be able to do something about that in the settings?)
Also the file manager pantheon-files is a bit flaky.

I've been using Crunchbang on my htpc and it works great!

Linux fan here. I have done a fair bit of Distro hopping from Ubuntu to Opensuse to Fedora to Mint to Elementary, but I keep coming back to Xubuntu. It is just nice and simple and stable and does what I need/want it to do. Can't seem to kick the habit.

Im a member of that club as well

Been using Xubuntu for a few yrs as my main OS, whilst dabling with nother Distros.

But do feel like
http://www.netrunner-os.com/

Will finally lead me away, just feel its time for a change, nothing wrong with Xubuntu.
Well apart from the slow introduction of the whisper menu,
and it looks a bit dated once ive used KDE.

PS ive not deleted Xubuntu yet!

I must say, Netrunner is one I have not tried. I might just stick it on a USB and give it a whirl

Actually I can relate to this to some degree. Fedora I don't like very much. My favourite stuff would have to be compiled in order to use it as they're just not available on Fedora. OpenSUSE though has been fine, especially for the missus. She's had it running on her laptop since its release and it has been the best one she's used. Their build service has a ton of available software, but a great deal of stuff is in their PackMan repo.

The only downside, as you've said on here before, is setting it up. Between YasT and the KDE settings it doesn't make it easy, and why oh why does KDE feel the need to bork your audio for no reason? I remember having a right old job setting that up. And no, you can't blame Pulseaudio anymore. It's bloody Phonon.

Nice to be back on Mint. Had a couple of glitches after the fresh install, but once the Nvidia driver was installed it calmed down. Lovely. Feels like home.

As a long time fedora (and before that RH) user what software do you use that hasn't got packages?

Sorry, just spotted your post. It's a bit late but off the top of my head I cannot use Handbrake without having to compile it as there is no package available for up to date Fedora editions. Also I like to use lots of different emulators that I seem to struggle to either find available on Fedora, or ones that actually works as they're supposed to. There's other examples too but I gotta get to bed. Post back tomorrow.

Does the likes of Fedora or OpenSuse come with codecs/flash pre installed.

Its actually been a while since i tried them so may have to give them a new look into.

Just seem to remember they are trailed as cutting edge, and yet could play iplayer by default.

Still find that strange, seeing as most just pre load them nowadays?

Yes i know its easy to install them, but if thats the case why bother leaving it out in the 1st place?

Oh and the installer was rubbish, you had to manualy configure partitions
Thats something else i dont get, a few distros still require you to that

Really needing a new OS (been using Win7 and it's awful). Tried NetRunner. Looks great and install went well, but couldn't update due to the update server not serving. Ended up with 8 broken packages...

Life.

With openSUSE you do have to add the codecs etc manually. It's not hard to do and the PackMan repo has the lot. For Fedora I haven't a clue, but some of the tutorials around suggest it's not hard there either really. They're left out for licensing reasons. I suppose Mint doesn't have that issue being a UK based distro. Laws for codecs are somewhat different for other countries. At the end of the day it's safer for many distros just to leave installing that stuff to the end user.

Got to disagree on the openSUSE installer. I think it's possibly the best installer there is.


Let us know what you go with. I'm enjoying mint but it feels a bit broken next to Ubuntu to be honest. I've had the "The greeter application has crashed" thing a few times, and for some reason Cairo Dock just disappears at odd times. Otherwise it's good but it feels ready for an update now. Or some bug fixes.

Sold on the look (and the KDE/Blue Systems inside) of NetRunner, so I'll fix it when the (ubuntu) server is sorted. Shouldn't be a problem.

Any good text editors with a clip library full of vBulletin tags (and smilies)?

Did say it had been a while since i had used them
Was looking at it from as a new user to linux would, people would expect the basics to be already there.
Think even Ubuntu left them out at some stage?

Sorry to hear about issues with Mint, but realy you think it needs a update, hope thats not looks wise?

Hmm, strange ive not had any problems updating, using the Muon updater that comes as default with the install

Do think being linked into Blue system, is a big bonus.
http://www.netrunner-os.com/about/
Ive found it to be a realy nice mix of bits of Distros i like, and so far stable
Havent installed steam, yet.

[quote=
Let us know what you go with. I'm enjoying mint but it feels a bit broken next to Ubuntu to be honest. I've had the "The greeter application has crashed" thing a few times, and for some reason Cairo Dock just disappears at odd times. Otherwise it's good but it feels ready for an update now. Or some bug fixes. [/QUOTE]

Control Centre > Login Window then change style to GTK instead of HTML
That stops the "greeter" bug, I used to get it incessantly before making that change.

I still prefer Synaptic, but I can't see how that preference could have been the cause.

I've got huge potential and silent running with this PC. 6 Noctua fans with "Ultra Low Noise Adapters", most on magnetic rubber mounting, no spinny drives, silent PSU and TwinFrozer cooling on the GPU. It's so much better...

7.6 - 7.7 - 7.9 - 7.2 on the Richmond scale

The 7.2 is for a Vertex4 on sata 3.

Yes thanks for that. I spotted it in the Mint forums too. I've kept the HTML login around simply because it doesn't do it that often and it's so pretty.


Nah, I absolutely love Mint's looks, especially after I've added Cairo Dock.

Oooh nice one
Im less of gadget/widgetperson nowadays, desktop may seem blingy free for KDE but its how i like it
Netrunner


glad to know people are still reading this now very long thread, nice to see a new name.
But just knowing people are still taking a intrest is
Thread comes and goes in bursts, but should hopefully keep going
The new log in screen is cool, if maybe a bit pointless to some people, but i love the animated ones

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...st/004291.html