Lightweight DE for a Netbook?

TobiSGD · 04-24-2012, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neruson

I would advice against SalixOS if your friend has no Linux experience. Not saying it isn't a fine distro (it is, I used to use it on an old laptop) but it is based off of Slackware although it is a hell of a lot more user friendly than Slackware is but I still wouldn't recommend it for newbies. I would go with Mint LXDE or Xfce, Lubuntu or Crunchbang with Openbox.

As far as I see it, the OP is administrating that machine (otherwise his friend would post the questions here), his friend is using it. I don't see why using a file-manager, a browser, GIMP, an office suite or whatever should be easier on a Debian/Ubuntu derived distros than on Salix or Slackware.

el_gallo_azul · 04-24-2012, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by el_gallo_azul

i use 'easy peasy' 1.6 on my asus 901. very happy with it.

i am going to try 'meego' (or current derivative) on another identical machine because of possible fast boot time.

Further to this, I have loaded MeeGo 1.1 on the other Asus eeePC 901 that I have. It boots in less than 30 seconds - I think about 20 seconds - from hitting the 'on' button to being ready to use. It seems to do all the tricks.

Meego took over from 'Moblin', and looks like it will be replaced by 'Tizen', but it looks like Tizen is for developers only at the moment.

neruson · 04-25-2012, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

As far as I see it, the OP is administrating that machine (otherwise his friend would post the questions here), his friend is using it. I don't see why using a file-manager, a browser, GIMP, an office suite or whatever should be easier on a Debian/Ubuntu derived distros than on Salix or Slackware.

Well, if that is the case you're right. Everything would run just as smoothly as any other distro, but personally speaking If I were going to administer a friend's machine I would still go for the "easier" distro. It's a hell of a lot faster to setup a distro like Mint than it is Salix or Slackware. From what I remember the software selections in the repos are limited when compared to other distros and slackbuilds is a lot like the AUR in Arch Linux, a lot of the packages are broken or out of date and takes some time to correct the problems or to simply build the package from source. It would be mainly a time issue for me than anything.

damacy · 05-03-2012, 12:45 AM

Thanks for the replies.

Her laptop is Asus Eee 1000H with Atom N270 (1.60GHz) and 1GB of memory.

What I ended up choosing was the latest version of Lubuntu, 12.04, and it now runs much faster than it was with XP. Installed gedit, Banshee, Skype and some other software packages, and it was all good to go (tried iTunes via Wine, but wasn't too impressed with it at all - it would run very poorly on Windows anyway). The best part was that she's now much happier with her laptop in general, and it didn't take her long to get used to the LXDE interface which impressed me too. She couldn't believe it would take less than 5 seconds to shut down!

While I'm happy with the result, it got me interested in other (lightweight) distros like CrunchBang and Bodhi. I'm going to try them out myself, and I'd like to thank you for all the suggestions earlier.

jv2112 · 05-03-2012, 04:48 AM

I ran Archbang on my Asus 100PE. Ran great. I then tested a fresh Arch install with XCE 4.8 and no degredation.