[SOLVED] VERY specific requirements for distro and DE

Originally Posted by Yaractys Basically looking for a base to DE hop with that is both noobish enough and has vanilla DE packages. Fedora is adequate for the DE hopping in VBox, BUT. Enough of my needs for a distro have changed that I started a new thread here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...70#post5078570

I think the problem you're going to run into is "noob" friendly and "vanilla" . It has been my experience that vanilla distro's are rarely noob friendly, Why don't you use VBox to install some distros that are less noob friendly when you're more confident you can install it on the metal? This will give you the side benefit of knowing how to fix something when/if it breaks.

It's been my experience that most Linux distros are pretty much noob-friendly; and all pretty much woirk the same, with only very minor differences (excepting a few of "hobbyist" distros, like Slack and Gentoo)- there seem to be bigger differences between the various DE's than between most of the various distros. Basically, pick a good solid stable distro, like Debian, and you can test-out virtually any DE or file manager (like Openbox).

IMO, it's better to try the various experiments directly on the kisk, as opposed to in a VM, because their performance in a VM is virtually never as good (so you really can't get an idea of how well you like the distro's or DE's performance), and because it is in a VM, and you know it won't be permanent, if you are like me, you don't want to put as much effort into setting it up and tweaking it, 'cause you know it won't be a good investment of your time.

Whereas on the disk, you can play with it for hours, and if you end up liking what you've got...you can keep it and use it. Maybe just use the VM to try a little experimentation with just the installation options...but once ya know how to install it the way you want, do the real thing.

Originally Posted by Germany_chris I think the problem you're going to run into is "noob" friendly and "vanilla" . It has been my experience that vanilla distro's are rarely noob friendly, Why don't you use VBox to install some distros that are less noob friendly when you're more confident you can install it on the metal? This will give you the side benefit of knowing how to fix something when/if it breaks.

Thanks for that. After all this time, I have finally settled on Kubuntu. It's not very vanilla, leaning more toward the noob end, and it has a bunch of its own flaws, but the PPA model really made the deal! I installed qtcurve and some third-party widgets, and brought it within a couple angstroms of perfection; even closer to what I need than Gnome Shell. Now I just need to figure out how to install it in Boot Camp on my mac. Sorry to resurrect my own thread, but I felt it deserved a coherent wrapped up ending!