Why not use new repos on old distros?

**tjfitz** · February 15th, 2012

Originally Posted by 23dornot23d

I find is having a partition formatted FAT32 200 Gig ...... the access is always easy to gain for DATA from any system.

I have a FAT32 partition on my backup disk. I call it my "Windows Airlock".

Originally Posted by 23dornot23d

Holy crap! No can do. I only have 60 GB to work with.

**23dornot23d** · February 15th, 2012

Was not saying you need to go as mad as me .... lols ....

The thing with mine - is as soon as the new distro comes out .... it can be put into its own partition - but with 60 Gig you are limited - getting a new USB hard drive soon gives a new lease of life to your computer and more possibilities I mainly bought my first USB HD for a laptop that only had a 40 Gig drive in it - with a 350 Gig HD on it - it made things so much easier.

Check the prices out some HDs have reasonable prices .... handy to have to keep backups too as well as making it possible to run a couple more versions of LINUX .....
just make sure that your BIOS is capable of booting from USB hard drives .... some do not.

If yours will then its possible to treat Ubuntu almost as a rolling release ..... just safe-upgrading when things look reasonably stable but always having the development release as well as your favorite release sitting safe in a separate partition ..... only upgrading that one when you are sure things are good.

As well as being able to add input if you find something that is not quite right .... which also gives the developers a chance to fix things before the next final release.

12.04 is looking good .... but if you read the comments at this very moment in the testing area - it sounds a bad time to upgrade

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1925522

..... but every day another set of upgrades appear ...... and the comments change to reflect the current state of play.

**tjfitz** · February 17th, 2012

I installed Debian Wheezy, and if anything, Debian is even less friendly than it used to be. Maybe Ubuntu spoiled me. Moving on.

Next, I tried Ubuntu 11.10. About Gnome 3...

Seriously. This old machine can't handle such graphical intensity, and this old user doesn't want to completely relearn how to use a desktop. Next.

I guess I'll swing over to the other end of the spectrum and try Lubuntu. I keep hearing good things about it, and hopefully it won't be so vastly different from Xfce or Gnome 2.

**23dornot23d** · February 17th, 2012

I installed Debian Wheezy, and if anything, Debian is even less friendly than it used to be. Maybe Ubuntu spoiled me. Moving on.

Yep - this is what I found too - must admit the debian based distro that I now use is provided by Linux Mint .... and is very good.

Gnome 3 is growing - but if you want you can install lubuntu-desktop from it ......

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptitude
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install lubuntu-desktop

**tjfitz** · February 18th, 2012

Originally Posted by 23dornot23d

Yep - this is what I found too - must admit the debian based distro that I now use is provided by Linux Mint .... and is very good.

I just went to the Mint website. I presume you're talking about LMDE? Of it, they say, "Expect some rough edges." Has it been smooth for you?

Originally Posted by 23dornot23d

Gnome 3 is growing - but if you want you can install lubuntu-desktop from it ......

It would be cleaner to simply install from the Lubuntu CD.

Following your suggestions, I have read up on the rolling releases that are out there. They all seem to be less concerned with user-friendliness that I'd like. Most likely I'm just going to stick with an Ubuntu variant (depending on your opinion of LMDE). Maybe when the next release comes out I'll try doing like I proposed at the start of the thread just to see what happens!