After trying Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin, elementary and Deepin, I have discovered the best distro for my older Gateway desktop: Solus. Every other distro has had some problems, although lately elementary has been performing well. But Solus works like it was made for this computer. It boots up fast, is easy to use, and has been flawless so far. I had a little trouble installing it; it got hung up partitioning, so I made my own partition and then it went fine. I also had to fiddle some to get it recognized by my computer, which I did by updating grub on another distro, and then I was able to make it default and now my computer boots directly to it. So, they have a little to do with the installation, but once up and running it has given my computer new life. It runs like it did when it was brand new, with Vista as the operating system. I love the layout, it has a great start menu. Very easy to transition to for someone coming from Windows. I'm not sure how well it runs on laptops, since it was created specifically for desktops, and I'm pretty sure it is not intended for tablets or phones. But if you're an old school desktop guy like me, you might want to check this out.

Congrads!
Thanks for letting us know that Solus runs well on older Gateway desktops.

Yeah Elementary OS Freya does run well. Seems pretty stable too:-

I installed Linux Mint 17.3 on a friends old laptop last weekend.
Found out that Linux Mint works well on older Toshibia laptops that use to run Windows Vista.

Good work Michael. Gateway is a name from the past. Could you share with us the specs of the computer pls? RAM, hard drive size and CPU details? I am wondering, in these days of big everything, how tight the specifications are.

Cheers

How did you find the Budgie desktop? I've never used it, as it's new and a Solus invention, but it looks interesting.

The computer specs are:

Gateway GT5656
6150se chipset
AMD Athalon 64 X2 6000+
3GHz CPU, 64 bit, dual-core
Two 500 GB HDD, 7200 rpm
8400GS video card
6GB ram

I like it a lot. Everything is at your fingertips. Start menu in particular is very easy to use.

In general, Solus reminds me somewhat of Deepin. Very well designed, clean, logical, intuitive. And attractive as well. Deepin runs well on this computer, except that when waking from suspend, the desktop doesn't come back. I can get it back easily enough, but I'd rather it didn't happen.

Mint is one of the distros I'm considering for my wife's laptop. I need to get her into Linux by 2020, when Windows 7 meets its EOL. I agree it works well, but I find it somewhat boring. I liked the Xfce desktop best. Love that whisker menu, so compact, so accessible. The Solus start menu is not far from that.

I'm a big fan of the Budgie desktop it's replaced Mate on all my computers now.

Well, I have run into a problem with the Budgie DE. I was trying some different settings, moving the taskbar from top to bottom, etc, and suddenly all the icons disappeared. The problem occurred when I hit the + and - signs.I had to hit the off switch on my computer, as doing a forced shutdown only put it to sleep, and when it woke up it was still messed up. Rebooting to Solus didn't solve it. I have been trying to join the Solus forum, but I got stuck with the activation step, and am waiting to hear from them.

Should I boot into the alternative boot options, and if so, what then? Or is there a terminal command for this?

you can add you icons back in settings..I believe it's called task somthing

Thanks, Chris. The problem is that I can't get to settings, or anywhere else. The only thing available are "files" and the trash basket. Those are the only things you can click on. there simnply are not other icon on the desktop, and nothing on the taskbars (there are now two of them, one on top and one on the bottom, but they have nothing on them).

Use ctrl + F2 or Ctrl + Alt + t to get into a terminal screen.

read everything at

https://github.com/solus-project/bud...top/issues/289

since I do not run SolusOS or know exactly what is fubar.

If you need more info

Link

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Those are good instructions that rokytnji found for you.

Let us know how it goes:-

The suggestions appear to have worked! Last night, I tried them, but without success. I realized later I didn't use SUDO, so I was going to try them today with SUDO, but when I booted up, the desktop was back. I now have the taskbar on the bottom where I want it, and all is well. Thanks to Rokytnji.

Addendum: forgot to say that the suggestion on how to get into the terminal didn't work. However, I discovered that by right-clicking on the screen, like you do when you want to change the wallpaper, led me to a little menu, which had a choice for the terminal. I thought that was a nice feature, it helped me solve this issue. I think. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but in any event the desktop is back and working correctly.

1 members found this post helpful.

Glad to hear your system is working properly.
Thanks for the update.