just switches from ubuntu hardy to lubuntu natty

**dan0804smith** · September 9th, 2011

hey to i made the switch because i only have 1gb of ram on my laptop (duel 1.6ghz as well). between the ram and and the cache i had to ram left and my system was slow, so i switched to a less intensive OS.

im a little bit disappointed because i feel that there is less support in this OS. i cant seem to find a live ram usage applet for my top panle. i got the cpu one, but it wont let me adjust the settings to view ram (the option to click is just gray).

im thinking about switching to mint because i think that this is a little to light for me. what are your thoughts on this? do you think mint will max out my ram like ubuntu?

does anyone know where i can get a live ram monitor applet?

**blueridgedog** · September 9th, 2011

Conky will show you ram usage and a million other things, and has a light footprint.

http://conky.sourceforge.net/

As far as a lighter distro, try a few - puppy comes to mind.

**ajgreeny** · September 9th, 2011

I've tried Mint 10 lxde edition, and I use Lubuntu 11.04 on both an old laptop and my netbook to great effect. On the old laptop I run conky as suggested by blueridgedog which gives me the screenshot attached with a lot of info.

I found Mint to be a bit more bloated than Lubuntu, and admit I much prefer Lubuntu, but you may differ from me, of course. LXDE may not have the gui configuration options that gnome users are used to, but it is very easy to find info on everything I have looked at for getting it to behave and look just as I want it.

**kerry_s** · September 9th, 2011

indicator-multiload

look here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...3#post11235513

**whatthefunk** · September 9th, 2011

Yep, conky is the way to go.

**amjjawad** · September 10th, 2011

Originally Posted by dan0804smith

im a little bit disappointed because i feel that there is less support in this OS.

Hi there,

Please don't feel disappointed at all. LXDE Project is still young IMHO and it just needs more care and support. I used to be active on Ubuntu Forum and try to help in many issues but then I decided to dedicated my time for LXDE and Lubuntu.
I'm now also active on LXDE Forum which has few people who are posting.
Why? because usually LXDE or let's say Lubuntu works Out-Of-The Box in most of the cases and there are less things to do.
Lubuntu 11.04 simply rocks if you ask me. Lots of improvement over 10.04.

I suggest and advise you to support LXDE and/or Lubuntu (it's hard to talk about them apart) if you feel there is lack of support.

i cant seem to find a live ram usage applet for my top panle. i got the cpu one, but it wont let me adjust the settings to view ram (the option to click is just gray).

In System Tools, there is "LXTask 0.1.3" which is installed by default with Lubuntu 11.04 and that should tell you how much RAM is being used, etc.
I'm surprised that you didn't find it.

As others already suggested, Conky is another way but why not use the native apps?

im thinking about switching to mint because i think that this is a little to light for me. what are your thoughts on this?

Are you talking about Mint LXDE or Mint GNOME?
If you are talking about Mint LXDE then I don't see any point of switching because if you ask me, both Mint LXDE and Lubuntu are almost the same.
Beside, the support you can get here for Lubuntu is much more (IMHO) than the support you might get (or might not) on Mint Forum.

Lubuntu will be an official variant of Ubuntu soon.

do you think mint will max out my ram like ubuntu?

I'm sorry, I didn't understand?

does anyone know where i can get a live ram monitor applet?

Already answered

**ajgreeny** · September 10th, 2011

Originally Posted by amjjawad

I suggest and advise you to support LXDE and/or Lubuntu (it's hard to talk about them apart) if you feel there is lack of support.

In System Tools, there is "LXTask 0.1.3" which is installed by default with Lubuntu 11.04 and that should tell you how much RAM is being used, etc.
I'm surprised that you didn't find it.

As others already suggested, Conky is another way but why not use the native apps?

Are you talking about Mint LXDE or Mint GNOME?
If you are talking about Mint LXDE then I don't see any point of switching because if you ask me, both Mint LXDE and Lubuntu are almost the same.
Beside, the support you can get here for Lubuntu is much more (IMHO) than the support you might get (or might not) on Mint Forum.

+1.

I totally agree with amjjawad. As I said above I find Lubuntu absolutely brilliant on my old laptop, and even having used it for some hard work for 46 minutes it was still using only 141MB of my ram; seems pretty good to me, and at idle just after bootup it uses about 90MB max.

**kerry_s** · September 10th, 2011

The thing about ram is, if your not using it your wasting it. Linux uses cacheing it keeps apps you use in ram for faster access, so it may look like it's eating ram but it's nothing to worry about.
Just use your pc & let it do it's thing.

**ajgreeny** · September 11th, 2011

Originally Posted by kerry_s

The thing about ram is, if your not using it your wasting it. Linux uses cacheing it keeps apps you use in ram for faster access, so it may look like it's eating ram but it's nothing to worry about.
Just use your pc & let it do it's thing.

I am aware of that, but a distro that only uses 100MB when idle is still a heck of a lot faster than one that uses 400MB at idle, and it also leaves a lot more ram for actually running applications doing some work, not just running the DE.