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I have experimented with several excellent lightweight distros, from straight "bare-bones" Debian with Openbox, to AntiX, SalixOS (Slackware-based, very minimal Xfce desktop), Bodhi, a couple of...

12.04 is not "broken." It's not even slightly damaged. Not even smudged, not a speck of dust. It's perfectly fine for the hardware it runs on. When I upgraded to 14.04 I found that the new and...

My brief tenure on 14.04 was considerably slower and more problematic than 12.04. I broke a promise to myself not to go to the next LTS until Precise reaches end-of-life, but I got curious... Trusty...

I enthusiastically recommend LXLE 12.04 for that old machine. It is a remix of Lubuntu that offers different configurations (called "paradigms") of the LXDE desktop. One that looks like XP, another...

I'd be happy to accept correction if I have misreported or misrepresented anything. I know that there's "more to the story" on Mandrake, but I was not certain enough of it to include it. Feel free...

Where Linux distros go when they die...

Whether or not a distro survives the departure of it's main/lead developer depends a lot on it's community, I think. The same kind of thing is happening to Mepis with the retirement of it's lead...

It took me quite a while to completely make the switch, even though I started using Linux a couple of years ago. I thought I still needed Windows for stuff beyond "e-mail, web browsing, and...

And if you want the wonderful stability and reliability of lightweight Debian, but also want more up-to-date applications that are rigorously tested with older hardware in mind, have a look at MX-14...

Mint is switching to only LTS releases now, except for Debian Edition which is "rolling."

Linux Lite is a superb remix of Xubuntu that is super "mom-friendly." On my own very low-spec machine I have become very fond of MX-14 (an Xfce version of AntiX, built on Debian Stable). My review...

Well, that seems to be true of Ubuntu as well these days. And not just the OSes, but most applications as well. I suspect it won't be long before I won't be able to use even my old favorite Xubuntu...

I too had some minor issues with Thunderbird, and liked the older version better. Seamonkey (also a Mozilla product, built from the old Netscape suite which was awesome) has an e-mail client very...

If you have plenty of room on your hard drive and want to try it out first - installed rather than from a LiveDVD, so it'll be a faster more realistic experience - then you can get Xubuntu and...

Ubuntu has improvements in font rendering, hardware compatibility, and configuration that Debian doesn't offer. Depending on the version you choose, the Debian (Stable) repositories have older...

I'm running Xubuntu on an old relic with only 1/4th of your computer's resources and it runs fast and nimbly. No 3D-acceleration needed, and just a little bit of "eye candy" to make it sweeter. I...

I LOVE me some Debian! But I love my Xubuntu more. Because it works, right away, without hours or days of tinkering and trial-and-error to get it work and configured the way I want. The two distros...

A new user wouldn't know you were joking. The difference in demand on resources between Xubu and Lubu is minimal. So using the word "bloated" to describe one which so closely compares with the other...

Be sure to mark this SOLVED so others with a similar issue will learn what you did! I definitely learned to avoid adding PPAs, especially on an "older" LTS version. My vital applications are safely...

Something has corrupted the boot software. The xubuntu desktop has nothing to do with choppy video playback, and merely using a different desktop environment is not the solution. I use Xubuntu...

Too much "swappiness," perhaps? I'm guessing, since I routinely reduce my "swappiness" with every new installation (but I have a very old, very low-powered computer). From this web site:...

I had a boss like that once... the only way to get any improvements in the way things were done at work was to make it look like it was his idea. If it was his idea, it was "great" and "let's...

I actually tried Ubuntu first (after Windows XP), but had read so much in other Linux forums in which people complained that Ubuntu was "a dumbed down kiddie distro with training wheels," that I...

I'm not aware of any! But I do find it curious that so much cool stuff that Ubuntu has never finds its way "upstream" to Debian, even though Debian and Ubuntu share many of the same developers!
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I Linux because this.

It's a paper I wrote for English Composition class, my first college course since I was a kid. I've been a 'nix user for about 3 years, and the more I use it, even for...