NETBOOKS: what Mint: LXDE or Fluxbox? (or KDE or XFCE)
 

I was wondering if someone could give us some guidance as to what is a better distrop for netbooks, offering efficiency resulting in speed, but without sacrificing usability, and which might even be used on bigger computers as well.

In the name of uniformity, which of these runs fastest, while still offering a good base of apps and a good software library to build upon that?

"Acceptable level of apps" meaning:
* codecs for everything - lets keep licencing and politics out of this, we're talking usability here
* support for webcams
* WiFi works out of the box (with WPA support)
* Abiword and Gnumeric or equivalent would be just fine
* Skype: more people use it, and are using it more and more, because it succeeds effectively in opening a path for clear uninterrupted voice through all your internet activities.
* an image viewer
* preferably Firefox4 or Chrome

Thanks in advance for your input, everyone. Please try to provide useful input here and don't just answer the poll and run: I am sure this will be helpful to many.

Edit 2020-20-16: I've made this message more compact and more straight to the point.

Fluxbox will be the most configurable as you just edit a couple files..

LXDE is nice but heard it is more resource hungry than xfce4
?

You should look into JWM too
Very nice and Lite
Icewm and JWM litest i think

I resemble that remark. My choice for that Netbook is JWM or IceWM. Macpup. AntiX 8.5. AntiX 8.2. Flies on it. E17 works pretty good on it also in Macpup.

I've already been looking at Jolicloud, EasyPeasy, Leeenux (a compacted EasyPeasy), AntiX, Moblin, Slax, Zenwalk...
but I posted this in the Mint sub-forum because I noticed that just recently Mint released some new colors... namely LXDE and Fluxbox.

I use Mint on my Laptop now, and am wondering now if I shouldn't be trying these new Mints... but before I do that I would very much like an expert's opinion (cause I'm not), as to which would be a better choice, with the criteria in mind initially mentioned in the first post.

The opposite is true, especially in Ubuntu-based distros (like Mint). LXDE is much lighter on resources than Xfce, but offers few of the way cool features.

Xfce in Mint8 Xfce edition is superb, bug-free, and fast. The LXDE version is lighter on resurces, but the current release candidate is buggy so far.

-Robin

your right; as after reading this article

http://www.bargincomputing.com/2009/...e-versus-lxde/

and heres info on "stacking" window managers like LXDE, fluxbox,icewm,jwm,etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacking_window_manager

and xfce4; which is a "compositing" wm like Gnome and KDE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager

So, hands down a stacking wm will be best for low resources,etc

heres a comparo of wm's too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...indow_managers

http://xwinman.org/comparisons.php

http://www.internetling.com/2008/07/...h-screenshots/

http://www.nuxified.org/article/comp...which_best_you

What we are seeing so far is:
LXDE is real fast (on ubuntu based distros) and low on resources requirements, but it's still buggy on Mint8 (it seems other distros also have trouble combining LXDE on Ubuntu - just take the example of the Lubuntu project which is alpha quality at best).

So more eye candy with xfce... but did you guys notice that the stable release of xfce is on Mint7? Maybe it's even buggier and that's why it's not offered on Mint8? Or if it's just a question of development taking a little longer, we should, in all fairness, keep a watch and see how this picture evolves, if both become available on the same base.

If you go to LinuxMint.com in the downloads section, and notice that XFCE is lying on top of Mint-7 (and not Mint-8 as you were assuming), would you change your commentary?

In a general sense, LXDE is still rather fragile when compared to Xfce, Gnome, or KDE. It also has more things going on than in Fluxbox. LXDE is in very heavy development right now, I think this has to do with Lubuntu and the upcoming LTS release, but I'm not certain. Regarding most of the reported bugs for Mint 8 LXDE, I've been unable to reproduce most of them and I think a lot of them are upstream in LXDE and are being fixed for the LTS.

Mint 8 Xfce is currently in RC status as well.

That's because Mint 8 Xfce edition is still a Release Candidate. Mint 7 Xfce is awesome! I have been testing the Mint 8 Xfce Release Candidate all last week, and in my opinion it's ready for prime time.

It does ship with OpenOffice, but that is easily exchanged for Abiword/Gnumeric using Synaptic. Configured properly (which it is in the RC), Xfce is just about as easy on resources as it's much buggier little sister LXDE.

Robin

Actually I would say LXDE is only "buggy" in *buntu and Debian based distros

Its not buggy in my slackware or arch installs at all
nor is it buggy in 9.04 buntu

as far as the comparo in my last post; basically any "stacking" wm like LXDE is always gonna be more low-resource than any "compositing" like xfce4, hands down

+1

It's great in Debian Lenny and Debian Testing. I call it "the 'Buntu Bug."

Robin

FYI: since I posted this in the Mint forum, and am starting to figure out there are some minor unresolvable compatibility issues between LXDE and ubuntu 9.10 (some of you report not noticing, but I did: major freeze-ups on boot or running it), I have found and started to use Masonux 9.04 (9.04 referring to the ubuntu build it is based on plus LXDE window manager). It is small (ISO is 350MB approx), fast, stable.
***** EDIT ***** I have to recant... I'm running into problems with Masonux.

Could you please elaborate a bit more on these?
I think we'd all be very interested in adding these to the discussion thread.

It took longer for Mint 8 to be released because of all the Karmic bugs that had to be addressed, not anything to do with with Xfce. And by the way, Mint 8 Xfce was released yesterday. It rawks!

LXDE is lighter weight than Xfce, but the phrase "under heavy development" is best translated as, "Beta! Beware!"

I expect LXDE will be awesome - when things settle down and they're not re-writing major components of it from scratch (like the PCManFM). In the meantime unless you enjoy some risk, I'd stick with the tried-and-proven Xfce, Fluxbox, etc.

But I'm keeping an eye on LXDE - from a safe distance, so to speak - because I believe that in another year or two it may very well give the others a run for their money. It's just not there yet.

-Robin

I think Fluxbox is great, especially for laptops and netbooks. It is easy on resources and a big plus is that keyboard shortcuts are easy to configure. This is really nice since with netbooks your fingers are usually on the keys. No fumbling around with the touch pad to find a menu to click on.

When you say under heavy development... Who's distro are you talking about when you say that? Mint? As you mentioned, Mint8 XFCE was released yesterday... along with Mint8LXDE having come out of beta (perhaps you overlooked that?).

And are you certain that LXDE is the problem here?
It seems to be when you retrofit it (as an afterthought) on TOP of an existing Gnome distro that we see distros with problems. To illustrate my point: KNOPPIX has been using LXDE for quite some time now, and it works great! No betabewareheavydevelopment there.

What I am starting to perceive, is that there are incompatibilities between Ubuntu (especially 9.10) and LXDE... because I've seen a few distros that attempt to deliver what Lubuntu promises to be and they all have more problems with 9.10, while the versions based on 9.04 work but are beta quality.

Will Lubuntu become the better choice, once it comes out, instead of MintLXDE?
Note the ISO sizes... Lubuntu is going to be around 350MB, while MintLXDE is the same order of size ISO as Mint standard edition... not exactly what we're coming to expect from the newer LXDE distros. Ditto for the XFCE community edition.

Now are we going to see a Mint Lubuntu in the future? When Lubuntu is finished?

This begs the question:
Is Mint8Lxde just the wrong distro for running lxde?
And if so... do we go on to ask whether Mint8xfce is the wrong distro for running xfce?
Same for Fluxbox, etc.

Are we back to square 0, and need to evaluate every distro, to find a faster more compact one?

What are plans over at Mint? Have they even considered this yet? To create a Mint Lubuntu?

Personally I don't care for Mintinstall in addition to synaptic... it just makes me use twice the amount of tools to add and remove programs, and I don't quite understand why both are required. I like Mint because everything works out of the box, whereas it doesn't in Ubuntu, and I hate Canonical for that - for their stubbornness to not finish the job and make a distro that is truly for the people! (as they like to call it)

Personally Timmi; I also believe 9.10 has issues, and not with just LXDE.
However, LXDE between some versions is very different

on my Phalanx 9.04 LXDE works pretty good
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Syste...DE-52442.shtml
I made it off of Masonux 9.04

and it seems in slackware 13 its very good, no noticable issues

I also noticed that LXDE seems to be broken in Squeeze, along with 9.10

It seems that the buggiest part of LXDE when running on Ubuntu is LXDM. In Mint, SLiM is used instead and most of the problems are avoided. Something to note is that the internal testing at Mint is particularly vicious. It would probably do Canonical a lot of good to hire the entire Mint team just to test releases.

The reason the iso size is significantly larger in Mint than Lubuntu has everything to do with the default application list.

I will say that Lubuntu Beta is faster than Mint LXDE, but pretty much all the Lucid Beta's are way faster than Karmic ever hoped to be. I'm exploring the possibility of basing the Mint 9 LXDE edition off of Lubuntu, but no decisions are final just yet.

Not a distro at all, but it's LXDE that is "under heavy development." Up to and including a re-write of the PCManFM file manager from scratch. LXDE runs fine in several distros (PCLinuxOS has an awesomely fast and stable version), but in Ubuntu and its offspring, LXDE is buggy and troublesome. I call it "the 'buntu bug."

I tested the Release candidate of Mint 8 LXDE. I know it was released the same day as the Xfce edition. But on my computer it's buggy, halting, and crippled, whereas Xfce was very fast, well-balanced, and trouble free. Your mileage may vary, of course! If it works well for you, great! Just be aware that big, major changes are coming at you fast. The new PCManFM Alpha is on it's way to the Romeo repositories, and many other components of LXDE are still "under heavy development" too. It's basically a Beta desktop environment. Non-Ubuntu-based distros that are using the earlier versions of LXDE have good implementation of it - but as the new developments make their way in, who knows.


As I said, I call it "the 'buntu bug." LXDE ran great in Debian Lenny for me, and KNOPPIX users enjoy LXDE without all the maddening bugs I encountered even in a minimal Ubuntu+LXDE mixture. U-Lite - the earliest attempt to create a "Lubuntu" - was equally buggy.

Bingo. It's the 'buntu bug! Eeeek! Get the spray! :o


Mint 8 LXDE is built on Karmic, Lubuntu is being built on Lucid. Mint 9 LXDE, if there is one, will be built on Lubuntu and I'd bet it'll be a hellofalot better. Mint 8 LXDE, has all the heavy-duty stuff that Ubuntu Karmic has. Lubuntu is using a suite of lightweight applications, like Abiword and Gnumeric in place of the OpenOffice suite. There's really no comparison between what Mint8 LXDE is and what Mint9 LXDE will be. I think Lubuntu will be buggy (unless they've finally figured out to rid it of "the 'buntu bug") - and the Mint 9 LXDE edition could be it's much less buggy counterpart. The difference between Mint 8 and Mint 9 is the same as the difference between karmic and Lucid.

Yet LXDE remains "Beta" unless the devs choose to use the older LXDE stuff. "Mint Lubuntu" will be called Mint 9 Isadora, LXDE Community Edition.

Xfce and Fluxbox run awesomely well on Ubuntu. Therefore their respective editions run wonderfully on Mint. It is LXDE that is buggy on Ubuntu/Mint, not the other desktop environments. If you want to use LXDE and you want it Minty fresh, I suggest you wait for Mint 9 LXDE edition. But go ahead and at least try Mint8 LXDE. You might find that it works great for you. There are several people in the Mint Forums who love it and have no problems! You won't know 'til you try. For me, though, on my 'puters, that "'buntu bug" rears it's ugly head even in Mint8 LXDE.

Robin

I have been secretly fantacizing about that for a long time! LOL
And every now and then I run into some ubuntufan who awakens that fantasy by telling me Ubuntu and Mint are identical, thus should go with Ubuntu instead. (I do think however, that if Mint were to perhaps approach the makers of Synaptic, they may be able to integrate their work on Mintinstall into Synaptic, and the question to integrate mintinstall into ubuntu would be a moot topic). It would make things so much better for all: one install program instead of two, less changes to make to Ubuntu to finalize it... maybe it will become a simple question of adding a "completion app" to Ubuntu rather than having to maintain an entirely different distro... and this could benefit many debian-based distros and not only Ubuntu... a good way for MintInstall to benefit more than just the undeserving team at canonical. ;-p
And I agree, if only Canonical didn't have their pride in the wrong places and could, as you say, hire the whole Mint team...


And the reason people go with LXDE in the first place, is they want something lighter. So, perhaps a good strategy may be to focus on lighter replacement applications (like Abiword and Gnumeric for the office part, and lighter utilities too). Those who want a heavy set of Office apps are not the target end user base for a lighter LXDE version of an OS anyways - after all, according to the people at Sun, Office can potentially be up to 2GB depending on how much of it you install. Is there an easy/quick way to pare Mint8LXDE down, and re-release a lighter Mint8LXDE? Target iso size: 60% of what it is now?
Either Lubuntu is so good that we won't need a Mint LXDE, or there is room for improvement, by making it smaller, faster, with WiFi and media codecs working out of the box.

I've tried Mint8LXDE and run into issues, and switched back to my Mint8 standard. Also someone mentioned Masonux: it seems fine out of the box, fast and light, but even release on 9.04 turned out to have lots of bugs once I started exploring deeper by using some of the utilities packaged with it.

So here is what I'm feeling so far can be done with the current state of OSes:
I agree, I'll wait for Mint 9 and Lubuntu before making my final choice for the core2duo.
But Puppeee is going onto my eeePC900sd once it is finalized.
And unless Mint LXDE gets lighter on the default applications, I may be ending up with either Puppy, Lubuntu, or Knoppix on my Celeron desktop (Knoppix ran fine, and Puppy ran fine wired on that one, both very fast).
If by some miracle MintLXDE become so light and fast that it can even be used on a netbook, I would put that one onto ALL my computers in the name of uniformity. (my mini-brain only wants to handle so much).

Also, I can't help but wonder: was Mint7 faster than Mint8? Was there a Mint7LXDE? As I recall, the main difference going to Mint8, from an end-user's perspective, was auto-update in MintInstall (and maybe Synaptic too).

I've recently discovered the power of fluxbox on Ubuntu. This was after I decided to test it out on my Slack boxes just to see what everyone was talking about. After learning to add programs to the menus where I wanted them, I was sold. It's just so quick. I haven't tried it on my laptop where Network Manager being right up front is quite important, but now that I've thought about it, it's going to happen tonight!

so are you set on LXDE

For maybe less resources fluxbox and the other *box wm's can outdo LXDE
in performance and eyecandy.

Look here at Macpup Foxy e17
http://macpup.org/

awesome

look at weaknets fluxbox
http://weaknetlabs.com/main/?page_id=18

these are representtive of what customization to lite wm's anyone can achieve as many
like fluxbox use simple text files for configs

see ArchBang's Openbox
http://www.archbang.org/

LXDE would have a hard time competing I think..

you should try those and if you want a huge list of those
I'll scrape one up

so are you set on LXDE

For maybe less resources fluxbox and the other *box wm's can outdo LXDE
in performance and eyecandy.

Look here at Macpup Foxy e17
http://macpup.org/

awesome

look at weaknets fluxbox, e17 too
http://weaknetlabs.com/main/?page_id=18

these are representtive of what customization to lite wm's anyone can achieve as many
like fluxbox use simple text files for configs

see ArchBang's Openbox
http://www.archbang.org/

LXDE would have a hard time competing I think..

you should try those and if you want a huge list of those
I'll scrape one up

linux72: you posted the same message twice (see previous to this one).

I was thinking of Mint, because it works out of the box for everyone: noobs too (and it's a 'buntu, which pleases noobs and experts alike, and has extensive support and applications). Some of the distros mentioned may just well be with only one individual improving an existing distro, where the distro's longevity/continuity becomes a concern to users wary of having to hop.

Yes, by coincidence I was looking at Fluxbuntu this morning... and the project looks pretty much dead! This is getting me to question Fluxbox's longevity (maybe there are technical or user preference issues I don't know about that this may not be the best horse to bet on for the long term?) I mean, otherwise there WOULD BE a current Fluxbuntu right now, wouldn't there? What frustrates me with the Mint Fluxbox CE, is they still have a large installer... it would be so nice to be able to select something other than openoffice as the default. The whole purpose of this thread was to see if Mint could be used across a range of computers one may own. Having a huge install size does not resolve that.
FYI, I tried removing openoffice, and the files required by it, and I broke something else in the OS... it's so much easier to add, than to take away. Openoffice is needed if you are going to war with the small to medium business Windoze market, but not required when going after pure Linux enthusiasts and home users. It is sort of counter-productive to slap a speed and space-saving windows manager and still pair it with the largest of applications... the OS will run fast... but once you load those huge applications, they may not run much faster in the end...

A note on Mint XFCE: it will not configure audio automatically (see "known issues" on the Mint site) and 2 steps are required to find out if after your 2 steps it will work (not reassuring to those extensively using internet for their communications with others).

This journey is starting to make me wonder if we should just choose the windows manager that ships by default in a distro?
Mint xfce: fast with eye candy but with known issues
Mint kde: fat and with some know issues
Mint fluxbox: fast but still bloated by openoffice (but may be the best choice so far despite it's plain vanilla looks)
Mint gnome: fat but works just fine on fast machines with lots of memory
Mint lxde: 'buntu-bug affecting all ubuntus with LXDE... we may want to wait for Lubuntu to come out and see if there is hope... it may have been premature to be looking at Mint LXDE first quarter 2010 (and perhaps second, depending on whether Lubuntu gets finaliThis journey is starting to make me wonder if we should just choose the windows manager that ships by default? ed or not, and whether a Mint Lubuntu may bring satisfaction to those speculating this may happen).

Timmi what about debian Live's LXDE
have you tried it?

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/re...e/i386/iso-cd/

You can really customize Debian Live stuuf from scratch and
I can show you how if you want.

If you dont wanna burn to cd, just either use Unetbootin for usb
or put on usb manually

The reason for having OpenOffice installed by default in Mint Fluxbox and Mint LXDE was a regression in Ubiquity for Ubuntu Karmic that pulled in the entire suite (and OpenJDK) due to a language pack dependency chain issue. This was also present in Xubuntu 9.10. Due to bandwidth restrictions in some parts of the world we made the executive decision to have OpenOffice installed by default in all the Mint 8 releases as the accidental download would pull in about 170 MB.

Shane Joe Lazar (the previous Mint Fluxbox maintainer) reported this as a bug during the Hardy development cycle and it was fixed then. We reported this as a regression for Karmic and the fix came in Lucid Alpha 3. It's my intention to go back with Abiword and Gnumeric for Mint 9, subject to internal deliberation with the rest of the Mint team.

We fixed ubiquity from pulling in OpenJDK by editing the preseed files before building iso's for the Mint 8 releases.

Regarding the *buntu bug for LXDE, replacing LXDM with SLiM solves most of the issues (at least on a Karmic base). I have Lubuntu Beta 1 running on my laptop right now and I've experienced no stability issues whatsoever so it's likely that it will be the core for both the LXDE and Fluxbox editions of Mint 9.

I'm looking forward to trying the LXDE edition of Mint 9 when it's ready! I'm really glad to hear that the 'buntu bug is being worked on so diligently. You guys rock!

-Robin

I just use plain old Ubuntu and use Synaptic to add fluxbox.

Personally on my laptop I'm transitioning to SalixOS. It's slackware based, with an apt-like package manager called slapt-get, plus Gslapt which is graphical. I was able to use slapt-get to install NetworkManager which is my favorite feature of Ubuntu on my laptop. It is pretty small (one program per task) for a full distro. It uses xfce by default and is just FAST compared to Ubuntu. It's probably as fast as Slackware proper. The last thing keeping me from making it the default boot is power mangement which I haven't gotten to tinker with, but if it does that well too then I'm done.

It also has a "multimedia-codec-installer" that gets me all the patent encumbered codecs etc. in a single click.

Thanks, but I was always under the impression that Ubuntu was friendlier than debian, and Mint was truly people-friendly. That's why I haven't looked at it. I think we will see this in the form of Lubuntu and maybe an updated/corrected/fixed Masonux (if it's author decides it continues to have a reason for existing once Lubuntu is out).

You mean like Mint Fluxbox CE is out of the box saving you all those extra steps...

Eh, I've never tried mint. I assume it's a lot like Ubuntu which means a little slow. I really like Slackware and run it on my desktops. Salix is an interesting offshoot of Slackware to me. To each his own. :)

One thing to consider is that Mint Fluxbox comes with a particularly effective menu system. It should work well in Ubuntu, but some of the entries in the root menu will probably need to be changed.

Hi everyone, personally I'd like to thank you all for participating. I trust the discussion will continue for all those interested and looking at the different Mint Community Editions.

For the moment, I've reinstalled everything in Mint 8 standard, pending more stability and less bugs in the Mint's CEs.

And although I love Mint ubuntu, I can't help but wonder if Mint will be releasing a super small and fast edition for underpowered netbooks.

And in the meantime, I will try out (this may please a poster or two here):
for my fastest machine (and possibly my other ones), the new upcoming PCLinuxOS that issues in versions for all the popular windows managers (KDE, LXDE, XFCE, FluxBox...) and there is even a superlight edition. What attracted me is how distrowatch describes it: stable, fast, has all the media codecs and hardware detection we all want and expect; even their criticism of the author being very conservative and not having a fixed frequency upgrade cycle pleases me, because quite frankly, reinstalling a distro every 6 months and having to address new bugs doesn't appeal to me at all.

EDIT: tried PCLinuxOS miniME today... rather slowwww... awaiting upload of the other new editions.

I run Leeenux 3.0 on my slow netbook, and with it, it has become faster... although the upcoming Puppeee may just make it fly. EDIT: bugs in Puppeee... some common with Puppy - needs to ripen.

So, to sum it up, I will meet you here again, once Lubuntu is stable and maybe a new Mint based on it comes out...

I have a satellite a205 with intel graphics. I'm now intrigued and will have to install fluxbox on the Ubuntu boot to see what happens.

Please try also ArchBang 2.00 Timmi as its Arch Linux, very nice with precustomized Openbox desktop
http://archbang.org/

and if you aint got spare cd, you can dd it to usb or install manually
I can tell you how

Thanks. I read a lot of good about it and tried it, and it did not appeal to me. I find it hard to be enthusiastic about a distro after having used Mint for a while. I found it to lack polish, and require more end-user intervention to get it running compared to Mint.

I have an A100 VA7, which is a core2duo with Centrino chipset (all intel chips for graphics, bus control, and wifi). I think graphics is an Intel 950 (and my memory tells me it was developed with ATI, having seen something to that effect in the docs years ago).

Mint is VERY fast on my core2duo (but then again, what isn't).
I tried those, and came away disappointed. Although a lot of good is written about them, they didn't seem to work well on my hardware, and aren't as much for newbies as Mint ubuntu is. EDIT: my memory is telling me there were bugs in salix, and that is why I discarded it. Unfortunately many distros lack the human resources to do really thorough testing before release.

Yes, thanks, I agree. But it is buggy on my system. Also, a cause for displeasure, is that the Mint CEs aren't any smaller than the original, suggesting to me that they all use the standard Mint gnome edition as a starting point to build other windows managers onto. Other distros vary much more in ISO MB when you look at them... suggesting that their LXDE, Fluxbox or XFCE versions, being much smaller, may run faster on netbooks and generally slower hardware.

Even on top of Gnome, fluxbox will run much faster on slower hardware. I just installed fluxbox from the Ubuntu repos on top of a base gnome. While disk space isn't smaller, it is MUCH faster. Granted my oldest/slowest machine is a celeron at 2.8 Ghz witha GB of RAM, but the differnce is night and day. Browserlinux was also fast and could play the limited media I threw at it out of the box. http://www.browserlinux.com/ It's a smaller version of puppy.

Do remember that smaller doesn't necessarily mean faster or slower. Processes that don't load when booting or logging in generally don't effect the speed of the distro as a whole. That and you're more than welcome to screw with the default settings to whatever end. Do keep in mind that not every combination of software works well with every combination of hardware. At Mint we're fully aware of this fact and we're going to continue to try and resolve it, but it's still there and we know it.

Would you care to message me your email address. There's a private beta of something in the works and I'd like to get your scrutinizing input.

Yes that is perfectly correct.

I was thinking that reduced ISO size is often an indication of smaller apps, and smaller apps generally run faster. On a netbook with an SSD size matters, and on just about any netbook, SSD or HDD, speed matters.
(edit)

I (superTimm) can't (@) wait (gmail) !

This thread came up in Google search, actually.

Xfce4 takes 40 seconds to start on Suse 11.2 (Yes I have counted the seconds) and on contrast Lxde takes 1.2 seconds !!

The LXDE version of Mint 9 runs perfectly on my Asus eee PC 701.

Your signature is easily mistaken for a comment on the current thread.

I see... thanks for that info. However, I've yet to find a slackware derivative that is TRULY newbie friendly and basically for all levels of users, not just for intermediates and up. I'd been considering Salix... but there was not much incentive in it for me, since in Mint everything is there already... codecs and all, as well as a nicely designed menu system.
BTW, Mint now has a new Mint Debian version, that is not an offshoot of Ubuntu, and should be much faster. It's in it's first release... but expect it to become more polished over time and resemble the mainstream version of it eventually. I haven't tried it yet... I'm patiently waiting for it to be a bit more matured and completed (ie: noob-ready).