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Thread: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    4

    Exclamation Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Hello!

    For many years I've heard about the wonders of the different Buntu distros.
    However it is until now that I decided to try it. What I did is download the regular Ubuntu 12.04 distro and installed it on a partition alongside my current OS (Windows 8).
    Headaches until dawn. It just runs incredibly slow. Sometimes it will run OK, but then I want to launch a menu or app and it just freezes and hangs there for MINUTES. I tried changing the kernel's swappiness, and I logged using Classic Gnome (with no extras). Nothing. Compared to Windows 8 (which works seamlessly in my Netbook, but it's Windows and I hate Microsofts restrictive environment) this thing is crawling if anything.

    My specs are:
    -Acer Aspire One Netbook
    -Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor
    -Intel Chipset graphics card
    -2GB RAM
    -I gave the Linux Partition System 30GB dedicated HDD space

    Now I Know that often great stuff like this takes some time and work to get it just right, so that is why I don't want to quit just yet. But I am clueless, that's why I started this thread.
    My best guess right now is that I should try a different distro of Buntu (or generally of linux) but I just don't know which is the right for me and my limited Specs.

    What I'm looking for:
    -An OS that is highly customizable
    -An OS that can match Windows 8 in speed and performance on my netbook (I don't really care about boot times, just general performance/smoothness)
    -Something that looks good (as in graphics) and not like if it was brought from the 90's

    I REALLY appreciate your guidance.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    United Kingdom
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    Hidden!
    Distro
    Lubuntu Development Release

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Unity's interface might lag a little on that laptop, but GNOME classic should be fine. That said, Lubuntu (http://lubuntu.net) is the lightest *buntu at the moment.

    Welcome to open source, your attitude is certainly refreshing.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2010
    Location
    Spain
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    Hidden!
    Distro
    Xubuntu

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    I would go for Kubuntu. I suppose it should run smoothly in your laptop, although my experience with atoms says otherwise
    I was told the latest gnome is very good (3.8), and also, if your laptop is suffering, you can change to the gnome fork (included) that looks like gnome 2 (lightweight).
    I suppose the best looking are kde and gnome IMHO.
    One vision, one purpose.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Lab, Slovakia
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    10,783

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Xubuntu will work nicely on that machine. I run it on one of my netbooks.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    4

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Thank you all guys for your responses. I think that I'm going to try with either Xubuntu or Lubuntu after reading a bit more on the web (there are some excellent Performance comparisons such as this one: http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.mx/20...s-kubuntu.html)

    Anybody know how much more limited are X- and Lubuntu compared to Ubuntu as in regards of customization?

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Location
    52.5° N 6.4° E
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    6,806
    Distro
    Xubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    I don't know about Lubuntu but it seems Xubuntu is easier to customise than Ubuntu.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    9

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    If you want a fancy transparent minimized taskbar that shows up if you hover over it's spot with your mouse, than better take Xubuntu, because in Lubuntu it's not really transparant..
    For example, in Lubuntu, when you're in your browser and mouse over the spot where the (minimized) taskbar would show, then the taskbar's backgroundcolor has the color of your wallpaper, so it isn't really transparant. (i hope you understand what i mean, because i don't really know how to explain it)

    It's not a big deal however, and lubuntu is allot more lightweight as Xubuntu. (i use Lubuntu on my 10 year old Athlon64 with 512 mb ram and it runs great)

    If you go for Xubuntu, i would recommend 12.10 because it looks better then 12.04 LTS
    Last edited by ShadesOfGreen; March 27th, 2013 at 10:32 PM. Reason: i is bad in english

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    4

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Quote Originally Posted by ShadesOfGreen View Post
    If you want a fancy transparent minimized taskbar that shows up if you hover over it's spot with your mouse, than better take Xubuntu, because in Lubuntu it's not really transparant..
    For example, in Lubuntu, when you're in your browser and mouse over the spot where the (minimized) taskbar would show, then the taskbar's backgroundcolor has the color of your wallpaper, so it isn't really transparant. (i hope you understand what i mean, because i don't really know how to explanate it)

    It's not a big deal however, and lubuntu is allot more lightweight as Xubuntu. (i use Lubuntu on my 10 year old Athlon64 with 512 mb ram and it runs great)

    If you go for Xubuntu, i would recommend 12.10 because it looks better then 12.04 LTS
    Yeah that's what I've read, however the strangest thing is happening right now, I downloaded the Xubuntu 12.10 iso, but as I'm Installing it, it says it's doing the 12.04... What the...!?
    Attached Images Attached Images

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    9

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    i don't think there is a xubuntu 12.10 with wubi ?
    There seems to be a workaround, http://ubuntu-with-wubi.blogspot.be/...g-xubuntu.html

    but if you are sure you want a specific distro i guess it is better to download the ISO file , make a mountable USB or CD, and install it that way..
    Because from what i read the wubi installer is more like a thing to try out ubuntu, if you want to stick with it it's better to do a clean install the 'normal' way

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Western Australia
    Beans
    11,480
    Distro
    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Help me find the right Buntu for me! (I Don't want to give up yet)

    Changing the whole desktop because of unusual slowness in Ubuntu seems rather extreme.

    I have the same netbook with half the RAM running 12.04 and, while it is not a snappy performer, it is tolerable.

    My thought is that there may be a program running in the background that is crashing and using up massive amounts of CPU time or RAM (causing the system to swap programs from memory to disk). If you can use System Monitor to find that program, you can kill it.

    If you want lots of customisation, you might want to use KDE. Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Gnome Classic are configurable as you want, but have more than a whiff of the 1990s about them.

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