04-27-2014, 03:31 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-27-2014, 04:17 PM by Oedipussy Rex.)
I have been using a flavor of Ubuntu Linux exclusively for -- has it been seven years now? We'll call it 7+/-. Even before Canonical opted for Unity over Gnome Shell or Gnome 3, I had switched to XFCE mainly because I wasn't very fond of Nautilus, which had a tendency to bog down when changing directories, especially when a directory had more than ~1,000 files (yes, I often have directories with more than 1,000 files in it), and the lag only got worse when the files were pictures, pdfs, videos, or any mime-type for which Nautilus would create a preview. So of those 7+/- years of Ubuntu, all but maybe two were with Xubuntu, with short two-hour to two-day stints checking out the progress of Unity before deciding that nope, I don't like it.
Until today. Today I've decided that with one of my two "new" laptops, I'm going to give Lubuntu a try with its PCManFM and OpenBox WM. I'll be putting it on the HP Pavilion dm1 mini laptop I got from my sister when the TrueCrypt she had put on the hard drive at the boot level got borked. (Not only was nobody going to get at her files without knowing the password, no one was going to get any further than BIOS.) With a duo-core AMD-64 (2x800mhz) processor and 3gb Ram this 10"-screened, screwed up keybinded, (the f1-f12 keys have the multimedia functions as the primary, so when you press f2 the screen dims, so you have to press f3 to brighten it then fn+f2 to pull up the name-change dialogue, and don't ever forget to press fn before f12 unless you don't mind turning off the wifi), mousepad-and-buttons-in-one pain-in-the-ass was the most powerful computer I'd ever owned for the next two weeks when the <$400 Toshiba laptop I had ordered came in.
So yeah, I'll be loading a relatively lightweight OS onto a relatively powerful (by my standards) computer, then removing almost all of the user applications in favor of more robust versions (like LibreOffice over Abiword and Gnumeric). We'll see how it goes.
Well, so much for that. The Lubuntu installer had no way of logging into the wifi network that I could see (this laptop doesn't have a lan port), plus I couldn't change the keyboard. I use Dvorak, not that piece-of-goat-excrement qwerty. Seriously, I'm a poor enough typist as it is, I don't need the added frustration of having to look for that goddamn j or k or u or whichever letter that is never in a logical place. I mean, why do they bother calling it the home row if you never spend any time there?
So it looks like I'll be installing Xubuntu again. Maybe I'll look into changing the desktop packages after the upgrade.
Until today. Today I've decided that with one of my two "new" laptops, I'm going to give Lubuntu a try with its PCManFM and OpenBox WM. I'll be putting it on the HP Pavilion dm1 mini laptop I got from my sister when the TrueCrypt she had put on the hard drive at the boot level got borked. (Not only was nobody going to get at her files without knowing the password, no one was going to get any further than BIOS.) With a duo-core AMD-64 (2x800mhz) processor and 3gb Ram this 10"-screened, screwed up keybinded, (the f1-f12 keys have the multimedia functions as the primary, so when you press f2 the screen dims, so you have to press f3 to brighten it then fn+f2 to pull up the name-change dialogue, and don't ever forget to press fn before f12 unless you don't mind turning off the wifi), mousepad-and-buttons-in-one pain-in-the-ass was the most powerful computer I'd ever owned for the next two weeks when the <$400 Toshiba laptop I had ordered came in.
So yeah, I'll be loading a relatively lightweight OS onto a relatively powerful (by my standards) computer, then removing almost all of the user applications in favor of more robust versions (like LibreOffice over Abiword and Gnumeric). We'll see how it goes.
Well, so much for that. The Lubuntu installer had no way of logging into the wifi network that I could see (this laptop doesn't have a lan port), plus I couldn't change the keyboard. I use Dvorak, not that piece-of-goat-excrement qwerty. Seriously, I'm a poor enough typist as it is, I don't need the added frustration of having to look for that goddamn j or k or u or whichever letter that is never in a logical place. I mean, why do they bother calling it the home row if you never spend any time there?
So it looks like I'll be installing Xubuntu again. Maybe I'll look into changing the desktop packages after the upgrade.
Getting me free admission into gaming conventions for a decade