Karmic Cousins. Familiarity Breeds Content.

[Sean Moran]

I've been in love with Ubuntu for over two years, but still stay with Karmic because of the desktop ever since Lucid. I know well enough where to find the right files in the /usr/share directories and Maverick was an improvement, but Natty Unity is a bit too cumbersome for an old laptop with 1366x768, and the classic Natty was so buggy that I had to reboot back to Karmic just to get a post on this forum without freezing the machine.

I've set my hopes on Oneiric but that's still months away, and historically already doomed to disappoint my hardware and ever-loyal user, so I've taken the sensible approach and downloaded a few dozen .isos for Fedora and OpenSUSE and Debian and al kinds of other derivatives, all there to burn to USB Flash drive. Now I realise how long that might take to test them all out one by one.

I'm looking for a current distro with the current kernel and the same sort of apt-get or at least dpkg that I've learned with Ubuntu over the past two years, and most of all, something with a nice familiar desktop and panel ie. GNOME or something with the same ease of customisations. I'm also looking for something minimal, with a basic GUI of 300-400Mb if possible, although I know how to slim off the excess from a Live-CD.

If you know of a suitable alternative distro to help me maintain my loyal devotion to the inherent core of Ubuntu until the Oneiric beta comes to light, please share your recommendations.

[FuturePilot]

Debian

[Sean Moran]

Debian
Thanks mate. If you reckon I can tweak the desktop to roughly the same sort of GNOME that I'm used to with Ubuntu, then I'll get on with it tomorrow morning. I'll take your advice, and thanks for simplifying the range of choices that would have had me testing unknowns for the rest of the month.

Three or four other good suggestions should see a fair decision by the end of the week, so please provide more advice if appropriate, but I reckon you've got me off to a good start Mr Pilot. Thanks.
:KS

[FuturePilot]

AFAIK Debian is still using Gnome 2.x so you will have the old familiar Gnome desktop.

[walt.smith1960]

Have you tried Xubuntu? Some feel XFCE is comparable to Gnome2. I've not had any major problems with Natty classic but it seems everyone's experience is different depending on hardware and user expectations. There are at least a couple Gnome 3 projects afoot and it sounds like ubuntu 11.10 will have gnome-shell in place of Gnome classic.

[Sean Moran]

Thanks again to both of you. I'm running a Compaq CQ60 laptop (named Lucy) that I bought back in November 2009 and she runs Unity okay after downloading the nVidia 185 drivers from the software center, so we're not quite into our golden age as yet, but not too lavish with the desktop resolution. Should be fairly bug free with a wellknown make and model.

I did have a look at Xubuntu a few days ago, but it came back to the panel arrangement. The way it shoves everything to either the left or right of the panel is something I could learn to work around given time, but I've4 spent years now perfecting the usual GNOME panels with the left - centre - right on top, and the optional bottom panel, and it's like clockwork. So much of my daily productivity relies on having those top and bottom panels and Application - ... - System menus configured in the Intrepid/Jaunty/Karmic way, that I'd prefer Xubuntu with the GNOME I know, and then I could get on with the work.

There migbht be good cause to get used to Ice or LXDE or XFCE, but if I can stay in the tradition of Linux and Ubuntu, I'd really like to persevere with GNOME until Oneiric sees Ubuntu come to their senses.

Debian looks like the way to go, but thanks for the good suggestion on the Xubuntu side, and I'm a bit of an old fogey to be so stuck in my desktop ways. It's still a strong possibility if Debian can't be trimmed down to 350Mb on a Live-CVD like I do with Karmic, but any other good suggestions are still welcome. I'll make a start tomorrow, and it's not even 10pm here yet, so please let me know what else to test out along with Debian and Xubuntu - both good choices.


---o0o---


One possibuility on the Xubuntu option, is, perhaps, what might happen if I installed the current Xubuntu 11.04, and then added the GNOME desktop, after which I could remove certain parts of the XFCE desktop. Would that result in Unity as the default GUI for Xubuntu? I think not, but it takes an awful lot of bandwidth, and I still haven't managed to download the GNOME files to test it out.

Anyone ever tried Xubuntu 11.04 -- XFCE ++ GNOME?

[Sean Moran]

Time for me to see about putting the laptop to sleep, so thanks for both suggestions. Tomorrow I'll finish of downloading GNOME for Xubuntu, and test that out. I'll also run up a Live Debian system on a USB stick and see how that looks. I'll report back tomorrow night.

Thanks for your help and good sleep with happy dreams to you both. ):P

[Spice Weasel]

If you were only going to try Debian with GNOME I would recommend you try Debian with XFCE/LXDE as well.

[kaldor]

If you go for Debian, get Debian Testing branch. It's more up to date than Stable.

If you don't mind deviating from Ubuntu, Scientific Linux is a very stable option.

[ikt]

Natty Unity is a bit too cumbersome for an old laptop with 1366x768


Compaq CQ60 laptop (named Lucy) that I bought back in November 2009

ehhh? I'm running Natty Desktop on a similar specced laptop no problems :s



Also I think you might have mixed up your idiom:

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/familiarity+breeds+contempt.html

[Oxwivi]

Bodhi Linux (http://bodhilinux.com/)

[Sean Moran]

ehhh? I'm running Natty Desktop on a similar specced laptop no problems :s



Also I think you might have mixed up your idiom:

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/familiarity+breeds+contempt.html


Thanks for pointing that out, mate. 9-)
(I meant content as in data production rather than contentedness, but the two go hand in hand hence the pun).

It might be the way that we use our systems that makes it work for you and not me, but Ubuntu Classic couldn't seem to keep from freezing on me, everytime I'd click on Wanda the Fish. Try adding Wanda the Fish to your panel, with or without fortunes installed, and see if the desktop stays alive.

Thanks for further suggestions, and I still haven't gotten onto page 2 yet, but first to report back on last night's plans regarding Xubuntu and Debian:

Xubuntu 11.04 turned out a bit like a game of snakes and ladders after I installed the GNOME desktop. Same as Ubuntu 11.04, as could be expected.

I tried Debian 6.0.1 and for reasons I haven't figured out, the USB stick wouldn't get to a GUI but kept dropping to a debug shell, so I reverted to the debian-live-507 iso onh the USB and it ran up a GUI, but that would be on par with running Ubuntu Karmic, and the purpose is to find a decent contemporary distro.

In the midst of such a dire emergency, my autonomic nervous system came to the fore before I could blink I found my web browser back at distrowatch, and hope to have a couple of versions of Mint-11 CD and LMDE downloaded sometime before midnight tonight.

Now I must continue reading the page 2 replies, but that's roughly how things have progressed today. Thanks again for taking the time to help out with another one of my eccentric pursuits.



---o0o---

Bodhi
--------

I looked at one of the early alphas of Bodhi, and I liked its compact .iso size, and the little green whirly-gig on the desktop, clever yet subtle (one day when we have the time to spare, you must let me know how you managed such a clever desktop trick, Oxwivi!).

I have downloaded two or three more of the later Bodhi distros, but haven't yet found myself in the same hotel room long enough to take the time to try them out.

Does Bodhi run something resemblant of a GNOME desktop?, because if I recall, the name itself relates to Enlightenment, which is all good, but if I went that way, then two years of work with GNOME related distros would have to be chucked out the window.

[Not unique]

How about Lubuntu (LXDE) it uses less resources like Xubuntu but has had some better reviews, worth looking at.

[Sean Moran]

How about Lubuntu (LXDE) it uses less resources like Xubuntu but has had some better reviews, worth looking at.
LXDE is next on my list after testing out GNOME over Mint,. so thanks mate. It's like having my wife run off with another man, but it means a lot to still have some friends when Ubuntu has left me.