After exploring the alternatives to Ubuntu, I finally settled on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) running Xfce as the desktop. I am now Ubuntu free and have a desktop that looks the way /I/ want it to look rather than the way some design nut wants it to look. I am also hopeful that the desktop will stay that way in future.
My main desktop now looks like this:
and my netbook looks like this:
I chose LMDE rather than Xubuntu partly out of pique with the way Canonical is taking Ubuntu, and partly out of a genuine desire to move to a distro which is closer to the ideals of the FOSS community which Ubuntu used to espouse and which Debian always has done. For me, LMDE now offers the best compromise between a truly useable modern desktop (with all that implies for proprietary codecs) and the purity and stability of Debian. I know where things are in Debian and I much prefer the Debian package manager to RPM (which immediately rules out Fedora or SUSE). Having now spent some time playing with Xfce I find myself surprised that I didn’t move to it much earlier. It is clean, relatively lightweight, fast and eminently configurable.
On my main desktop machine (which is running the 64 bit version to take full advantage of the 8 Gig of RAM I have installed) everything works as it should – even the dreaded flash (yes, I occasionally watch youtube). On the netbook (32 bit version) everything except the RHS card reader works. Hot plugging works on the left, and the right /will/ work if there is an SD card in place on boot. (But no, I /still/ can’t read Sony memory sticks. I have sort of given up on that now anyway since I no longer use the PSP to watch videos.)
Now to convert my wife.
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Let me know once you’ve managed to convert your wife, a HOWTO would be welcome. I’m positive many geeks would like to upgrade their wife’s Operating System..
:-)
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Peter. I have no wish to change anything about my wife. Besides, she reads this blog.
Convert/upgrade – it was a joke.
In my personal experience it’s best to leave people to it with a new system – when they discover for themselves it isn’t all that different they feel encouraged to ask questions. Try and tell them things beforehand only creates apprehension. FYI, I have just been through a transformation from Windows XP to Linux Mint with someone, and apart from pointing out the menu search function there were no real problems – I already had them on OpenOffice and Thunderbird.
Kids are best at this. For them, everything is new so they don’t care and just get on with it. That may be the real reason behind the interface changes of some products: make it so different that it is hard to switch..
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Ummmm. I know it was joke.
But my wife’s machine currently runs Ubuntu 10.4 (as does my daughter’s). I don’t want either of them to have to face unity come next april.