A bit of a dilemma

[Grant A.]

Well, it's official, my puny laptop can't handle Ubuntu anymore. My problem is not that it is slow, but that it makes my CPU usage skyrocket, and that it makes my laptop run scalding hot.

Is there any relatively light-weight distribution that is well-known, trusted, and as easy to use as Ubuntu? I used to run Arch on my laptop, but I got very tired of having to maintain the thing.

Specifically, here are the things I'm looking for:


Has APT
Can be installed to an HDD
Has repositories
Uses GNOME, Fluxbox, or XFCE
Has an excellent community
Mono free (Not for patent/FUD reasons, but more for the reasons that mono is a huge package.)
Does not load everything into RAM like Puppy.
Fast
Lightweight
Stable
Secure
Intel i810 graphics card drivers
Has flash 10 in its repositories
WPA2+AES support
Wireless support
Excellent Documentation
Low Maintenance


Thanks in advance for the help. :D

[vinutux]

Well, it's official, my puny laptop can't handle Ubuntu anymore. My problem is not that it is slow, but that it makes my CPU usage skyrocket, and that it makes my laptop run scalding hot.

Is there any relatively light-weight distribution that is well-known, trusted, and as easy to use as Ubuntu? I used to run Arch on my laptop, but I got very tired of having to maintain the thing.

Specifically, here are the things I'm looking for:


Has APT
Can be installed to an HDD
Has repositories
Uses GNOME, Fluxbox, or XFCE
Has an excellent community
Mono free (Not for patent/FUD reasons, but more for the reasons that mono is a huge package.)
Does not load everything into RAM like Puppy.
Fast
Lightweight
Stable
Secure
Intel i810 graphics card drivers
Has flash 10 in its repositories
WPA2+AES support
Wireless support
Excellent Documentation
Low Maintenance


Thanks in advance for the help. :D


Try Xubuntu official xfce version of ubuntu www.xubuntu.org

.

[Grant A.]

Try Xubuntu official xfce version of ubuntu www.xubuntu.org

.

Thanks, but I've tried Xubuntu before. For an XFCE distro, it's very bloated.

[DeadSuperHero]

Try WattOS: http://www.planetwatt.com/

[ell02]

idk if it meets mono but crunch bang is ubu based and was good.

[vinutux]

dreamlinux (www.dreamlinux.com.br) - debien based but gr8 one

Fluxubuntu (http://fluxbuntu.org/)

U-lite (http://www.u-lite.org/)

Lubuntu (http://www.lubuntu.org/)


opengue (http://opengeu.intilinux.com/Home.html)

.

[renzokuken]

crunchbang - http://crunchbanglinux.org/

based on ubuntu so has all its repos available

[JohnFH]

Well, it's official, my puny laptop can't handle Ubuntu anymore. My problem is not that it is slow, but that it makes my CPU usage skyrocket, and that it makes my laptop run scalding hot.


Have you looked into why the CPU usage is sky high rather than immediately jumping to another distro? What's the spec of your laptop?

[stwschool]

I vote Crunchbang as it's UBU based but very very light and efficient. So, if your existing machine can run ubuntu it'll run crunchbang with the same low-maintenance but the added bonus of being fast as a fast thing.

[stwschool]

Have you looked into why the CPU usage is sky high rather than immediately jumping to another distro? What's the spec of your laptop?
Good point.. which programs are specifically using a lot of RAM? (System -> Admin -> System Monitor to find out)

[gnomeuser]

If it ran perfectly before then it is very likely a bug. Please go and file it.

[directhex]

... if CPU use is an issue, you don't want Flash

Flash can make my i7 cry

[urukrama]

Is there any relatively light-weight distribution that is well-known, trusted, and as easy to use as Ubuntu?

Debian. Use Debian Testing if you want stable newer packages.

[RiceMonster]

Try zenwalk for a nice Xfce distro.

[3rdalbum]

Mono is not huge. It's 36.3 megabytes installed (and a lot of those I'm sure are just dependencies for some other Mono programs I have). By contrast, libboost takes up 338 megabytes on disk if you have the development headers too.

Ubuntu should not push your CPU so hard that your computer gets hot, unless you're doing some intensive computing. I'd investigate the cause of the excessive CPU use before looking at different distributions, as it's probably just a runaway process that can be disabled.

[malachi1990]

If you have the time to do so, install the command line only system and build up from there. I noticed a fairly significant reduction in ram on my system (~350 on a default install to about 200 on a customized environment).

But do make sure its not a bug in a piece of software (firefox often has memory hemorrhages if you have multiple tabs open). You may also need to make sure that any fans on your motherboard are properly attached (I had a similar problem on my laptop until the guys that fixed it told me the fan for the gpu was loose).

[pelle.k]

Jaunty doesn't activate the "ondemand" governor of the CPU like previous versions did, since powernowd is not a part of the ubuntu-desktop package any longer. You might be affected by that.
If that is the case, here is the bugreport about that , https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/343354
There is a simple solution though, install cpufrequtils or powernowd (no configuration necessary, just reboot once). It works in most cases.

[slakkie]

If you have the time to do so, install the command line only system and build up from there. I noticed a fairly significant reduction in ram on my system (~350 on a default install to about 200 on a customized environment).


+1 - Would be my advise as well.