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ertrules22
July 25th, 2008, 03:36 PM
This is from my Blog Post, which can be found at Toy Nemesis Army (http://toynemesisarmy.wordpress.com/). I figured it would be good to post it here, so others looking in this direction can find guidance on making a decision. Check out my blog for more updates on problems or cool things about Fluxbuntu and have fun!:guitar:


I have recently acquired an old HP Compaq from my work. It has 256 MB RAM, 40.0 GB HDD, Intel Celeron Processor, and that’s about all I looked at to know when I got the thing home, I was going to put a low resource Linux install on it. I had been researching one such install, called Fluxbuntu. Well, I already burned the ISO, which is around 310 MB, very nice and waayyy smaller than a similar Ubuntu ISO, weighing in at about 696 MB (+/- 5%-ish). Well, I brought the old thing home and tested out the Windows XPSP2 (I think). The boot took about two minutes, log in another two minutes to set up everything that was installed from the company I work for. This thing was sluggish like no other. Now, I had previously tried Fluxbuntu on an old Tablet PC that I had lying around, and it would not install, so I just stuck Ubuntu on it, and it runs smoothly. This made me slightly nervous to use partition the whole hard drive and get rid of everything. I did it eventually, and the install started and ran very quickly. It stopped however, nearly finished at 90% and sat for over an hour at 90%. I restarted the install three times, before finally it worked!

http://xs229.xs.to/xs229/08313/120907043516-fluxbuntu2579.png.xs.jpg (http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs229&d=08313&f=120907043516-fluxbuntu2579.png)
Fluxbuntu Start Up

I was so excited to finally have the system run. The computer restarted, and to my amazement the boot time was less then 30 seconds and I was totally logged in to my new Fluxbuntu system! Amazing! The graphics are really nice, and there is plenty of support for it, as it is based off the popular Ubuntu. I even installed Globulation, a pretty awesome game, which runs pretty fast (unless you have more than five computer players!) I like the browser, although it could use some more features, but it does have some unique things. The tabs could use some work as well, as they seem slightly jumbled, and sometimes can be hard to use. I have not looked at all the features of Fluxbuntu, but it seems to be a nice, extremely lightweight, mostly stable system. I have used e-mail, Internet, games, and messed with desktop settings. It uses Fluxbox (hence the name FLUXbuntu) as a window manager. It is a little different, due to the fact that there is no start button, or application menu on a bar at the top/bottom of the screen. You simply right click anywhere on the screen and BANG, there’s your menu, with all your programs. You have Synaptic Package Manager to install programs, pretty much everything you can get in Ubuntu is there. The only problems that I have found with it have already been reported as known bugs, and can be found and most likely solved here.

http://xs229.xs.to/xs229/08313/fluxbuntu107.png.xs.jpg (http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs229&d=08313&f=fluxbuntu107.png)
Fluxbuntu

This system is awesome, but I would recommend to experienced Linux users, and make sure you back up everything first. Also, if you have another Linux flavor, I would recommend trying Fluxbox out first, to see if the interface is for you. It is a little different, but is easy to get used to. Anyone with an adventurous spirit, a low resource system, and some Linux and command line knowledge should definitely give Fluxbuntu a try.

zmjjmz
July 25th, 2008, 04:17 PM
Yeah, Fluxbuntu is pretty awesome.
By the way, Kazehakase has a lot of features, they're just a bit hidden. If you go to (I believe) View > UI > Intermediate or something like that, it will have a search (Google) bar, an up button, etc.
Also, on the Kazehakase website, there are a bunch of nice little tutorials for speeding Kazehakase up and blocking ads.

snowpine
July 25th, 2008, 06:49 PM
Hi there, I really enjoyed your review of Fluxbuntu. I am a big fan too, and you can read some of my thoughts here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=855596

I will be curious to hear some of your thoughts once you've spent a few weeks with it. Personally, Fluxbuntu helped me become (slightly?) more focused and efficient. Good luck, and let me know if you need help with anything!

ps Don't forget that you can add any other applications if any of the default apps are too "lightweight" for you. 256mb is plenty to run Firefox, for example.

darrelljon
July 25th, 2008, 06:50 PM
I'm a long-time KDE 3 fan but am considering switching to Fluxbox rather than going to KDE 4. There are some great fluxbox themes around.

snowpine
July 25th, 2008, 06:57 PM
I'm a long-time KDE 3 fan but am considering switching to Fluxbox.

Hi DarrellJon, I think that you will find that Fluxbox is a different frame of mind. Looking at your Computing Minimalists blog (which I just bookmarked, looks interesting!) I think you will enjoy the no-icons-on-the-desktop feature of Fluxbox. (Fluxbuntu has 5 application icons by default, but I got rid of them by disabling the Rox-filer pinboard--which has the side benefit of freeing up a few mb's of ram--and setting my background with ~/.fluxbox/startup instead.)

RiceMonster
July 26th, 2008, 01:39 AM
I'm assuming that's the default Fluxbuntu theme? It looks really nice.

tel93
July 26th, 2008, 01:46 AM
There are some great fluxbox themes around.

If you're into themes, use openbox. It is a pretty-looking version of fluxbox :)

myusername
July 26th, 2008, 02:04 AM
fluxbox and openbox are pretty much the same thing (except openbox doesnt have a default dock). they can use the same themes.

and another thing...i LOVED fluxbuntu...its just everytime i would update after an install the system would break :( i hope they continue to develop it

tel93
July 26th, 2008, 04:05 AM
they can use the same themes.

No they can't. You're thinking of Blackbox. (versions 0.65 and under)

snowpine
July 26th, 2008, 10:54 AM
fluxbox and openbox are pretty much the same thing (except openbox doesnt have a default dock). they can use the same themes.

and another thing...i LOVED fluxbuntu...its just everytime i would update after an install the system would break :( i hope they continue to develop it

I agree, Openbox is nice, too, and if you are looking for a nice Openbox distro, check out Crunchbang. It is not quite as light as Fluxbuntu--it falls somewhere between Fluxbuntu and Xubuntu--but is much more user friendly (whatever that means, and imho) and has a small but active and growing community.

Sorry that Fluxbuntu updates are not working out for you. I have successfully upgraded Fluxbuntu all the way up to 8.04.01 on two different computers with no errors, so it is possible. If you want, you can post your error messages/strange behaviors here for us to troubleshoot. There is a forum at community.fluxbuntu.org but it is pretty dead over there, and for all intents and purposes the project was abandoned months ago. It is wonderful raw material for those of us that like to tinker, however. :)

darrelljon
July 26th, 2008, 04:43 PM
Hi DarrellJon, I think that you will find that Fluxbox is a different frame of mind. Looking at your Computing Minimalists blog (which I just bookmarked, looks interesting!) I think you will enjoy the no-icons-on-the-desktop feature of Fluxbox. (Fluxbuntu has 5 application icons by default, but I got rid of them by disabling the Rox-filer pinboard--which has the side benefit of freeing up a few mb's of ram--and setting my background with ~/.fluxbox/startup instead.)

Thanks. Surprisingly I like lots of icons on the desktop. The minimalism I advocate is mainly in terms of resource usage.

tel93
July 26th, 2008, 06:53 PM
I agree, Openbox is nice, too, and if you are looking for a nice Openbox distro, check out Crunchbang. It is not quite as light as Fluxbuntu--it falls somewhere between Fluxbuntu and Xubuntu--but is much more user friendly (whatever that means, and imho) and has a small but active and growing community.

Sorry that Fluxbuntu updates are not working out for you. I have successfully upgraded Fluxbuntu all the way up to 8.04.01 on two different computers with no errors, so it is possible. If you want, you can post your error messages/strange behaviors here for us to troubleshoot. There is a forum at community.fluxbuntu.org but it is pretty dead over there, and for all intents and purposes the project was abandoned months ago. It is wonderful raw material for those of us that like to tinker, however. :)
huge +1

ertrules22
July 28th, 2008, 02:29 PM
I'm assuming that's the default Fluxbuntu theme? It looks really nice.
Yeah, that is the default theme. That's what it looks like on a first time boot, and every time after that. Oh, and if anyone wants to know, I feel dumb, but to change desktop stuff, like backgrounds, I found by accident that by right clicking up in the top left corner, it brings up a different menu with different stuff on it. Just in case there was someone wondering. I feel dumb, but hey, that's what experimenting is all about! :lolflag:

snowpine
July 28th, 2008, 02:35 PM
Yeah, that is the default theme. That's what it looks like on a first time boot, and every time after that. Oh, and if anyone wants to know, I feel dumb, but to change desktop stuff, like backgrounds, I found by accident that by right clicking up in the top left corner, it brings up a different menu with different stuff on it. Just in case there was someone wondering. I feel dumb, but hey, that's what experimenting is all about! :lolflag:

Yes, the 5 icons at the top left are put there by the rox-filer "pinboard", so right clicking on them brings up the a rox-filer menu instead of the fluxbox menu, which is where you change the background.

Personally, I like an icon-free desktop, so I commented the rox-filer pinboard out of ~/.fluxbox/startup, and used fbsetbg to set the wallpaper instead. So it looks exactly like the default Fluxbuntu, except no icons on the desktop and it uses about 5mb less ram.

One other tip I just discovered over the weekend, if you have a different distro but love the Fluxbuntu theme, just install fluxbox, then you can install the fluxbuntu-artwork package from the fluxbuntu installation cd. :) Then, use fbsetbg to set the wallpaper and choose the fluxbuntu theme from the fluxbox menu.

ertrules22
August 12th, 2008, 02:03 PM
Hey thanks for the tip snowpine, I might consider getting rid of the icons. I don't really use them much, and it would definitely make that system faster. Thanks. Oh and thanks to anyone who has visited myblog. (http://toynemesisarmy.wordpress.com)
We have had lots of visitors, and I am starting to build my first full computer (I've tinkered, but never built the whole thing:lolflag:)
It will be perhaps the first Cardboard box computer to run Fluxbuntu in the world... maybe :)

snowpine
August 12th, 2008, 02:24 PM
Hey thanks for the tip snowpine, I might consider getting rid of the icons. I don't really use them much, and it would definitely make that system faster. Thanks. Oh and thanks to anyone who has visited myblog. (http://toynemesisarmy.wordpress.com)
We have had lots of visitors, and I am starting to build my first full computer (I've tinkered, but never built the whole thing:lolflag:)
It will be perhaps the first Cardboard box computer to run Fluxbuntu in the world... maybe :)

Hi I just read your follow-up blog post ("My Fluxbuntu Adventure 2 Weeks later") and you did a really nice job summing up my own experience with Fluxbuntu! :) It sounds like you've had some challenges, but think of how much you are learning. I really hope that the Fluxbuntu project continues, so it can continue to grow and improve, and I hope your cardboard computer is a success!