PDA

View Full Version : [ubuntu] Deciding between ubuntu / xubuntu / kubuntu



pure life
June 20th, 2008, 04:12 PM
Hi everyone. I have been looking around the forums for a few days and trying to decide which version to install on my PC. Its an older machine with Pentium III 1000mhz and only 256RAM. I have a 40gb harddrive on which windows xp is currently installed. The slave drive is 60gb and external WD My Book is 500gb. What I would like to do is a clean install on the master drive.

This is all very new to me, so thanks in advance.

dnns123
June 20th, 2008, 04:15 PM
Xubuntu since you have lower specs... but this is just my guess, I've never tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu on a P3. My Xubuntu works on a P2 300mhz 64mb laptop :P

pure life
June 20th, 2008, 04:22 PM
Also: Any specific advice on partitioning the drive?

dnns123
June 20th, 2008, 04:27 PM
Well, you could give U/K/Xubuntu atleast 10GB as it's main partition and use the 60GB slave to store data.

pmlxuser
June 20th, 2008, 04:48 PM
if you are a graphical enthusiast then you might wana use Xubuntu, since it uses a Xface which doent consume alot of ram and has some fancy transparency setting and the like.
However you can still run ubuntu 7.10 on that kind of machine, i run 7.10 on a p3 machine with 196 Ram it perfomrmed Ok. I am just saying I've never tried 8.04 on that machine.

So i would suggest if you have a afst internet connection to install Ubuntu 8.04 try it out if it doesn't work fast enough the you would just install Xface and make it your default session (with an option of completely removing gnome of course)

Am not sure about Kubuntu...

jaithehulk
June 21st, 2008, 05:07 AM
Xubuntu wld be the textbook answer....as it was especially made for lower spec PCs..it uses Xfce which uses very low resources..
I hav used Xubuntu on PIII 650Mhz 128mb Lappy it worked fast [;)]...
Still I think KDE version 3.xx do wrk fine on lower specs..So u can try Kubuntu..
I wld suggest not to install Ubuntu or the gnome environment on ur PC.. cuz it will definitely be slower than Xubuntu..

analoog
June 21st, 2008, 05:13 AM
a reason to choose for the standard gnome (ubuntu) is that most people use it, so you might have better support and more people are working/involved on ubuntu then xubuntu if I am correct.

If gnome or KDE is faster is an on-going controversy. You can try the live-cd to see what fits you most (remember that the access/transfer times of a cd-rom are not as fast as from an harddisk.)

housam
June 21st, 2008, 07:43 AM
With your specs , xubuntu will be the right choice to avoid a lot of troubles . ubuntu / kubuntu need at least 384 MB of RAM . for partitioning , as advised above you need 10 GB for the root ( / ) partition and also 512 MB for the swap partition .
if you want to make a dual boot with windows , before resizing that drive make sure to backup your data .

pure life
June 22nd, 2008, 05:28 PM
Thanks for all your input. I have chose to start with a clean full install of Ubuntu on my main drive and use the other for storage. Things seem to be running pretty well. The only thing i have noticed so far is that I cannot turn on visual effects. I am going to try it out for a few days and see if it is quick enough for my needs, which is basically photos, videos, internet browsing and managing a lot of music.
Thanks again!

dakal
June 22nd, 2008, 08:19 PM
You don't need to decide on one or the other, you can always add (or remove) the ubuntu-desktop / xubuntu-desktop / kubuntu-desktop packages later on.