Hmm, what should I switch to ?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jimbauwens Sep 17, 2012 9:49 AM EDT |
My main laptop still runs 11.04 with gnome 2.x.
It's fully tweaked to my likings, but now because I'm going to lose updates I'd rather jump to something else. I use my system mainly for programming, so it would be nice if I can keep the smooth workflow that I have. Switching and navigating through windows should be an ease, so I'm not too sure about the latest version of Ubuntu. What I need is a distro that allows me to stay productive. Any helpful tips ? With all the changes to DE's I have no idea what to pick. TIA :) |
| albinard Sep 17, 2012 10:44 AM EDT |
Personal experience: I went nuts trying to use Unity and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool icon hater. When 12.04 came out I tried it with the Xfce desktop, but a lot of the Unity characteristics remained. Now I run Xubuntu, which has much more of the behavior of 11.04 in its Gnome 2 incarnation. I'm really trying to recreate the 10.04 experience, which I think of as the most workable computing experience I've ever found. That's FWIW, YMMV, and all the other clever little disclaimers one usually adds. |
| Jeff91 Sep 17, 2012 3:53 PM EDT |
A lot has changed in the realm of DEs lately - if you have spare bandwidth I'd highly recommend downloading some live CDs of various projects that ship with up to date versions of different desktops and see which works best for you. Personally I can't live without my E17 :) ~Jeff |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 17, 2012 5:05 PM EDT |
http://li.nux.ro/stella/ |
| tracyanne Sep 17, 2012 6:54 PM EDT |
Depends on what you are wanting to do really, however as I pointed out in my review of Ubuntu + Unity it's a pretty usable desktop. |
| jdixon Sep 17, 2012 7:26 PM EDT |
> My main laptop still runs 11.04 with gnome 2.x. Then you probably want the Mate version of Linux Mint 13. |
| JohnPhys Sep 17, 2012 9:20 PM EDT |
As several have mentioned, it really depends on what your workflow is, and what your "pet peeves" are. I've personally stuck with 10.04 (Gnome-2) on my main machines, but I've also started using Unity and Gnome-Shell on a regular basis, and they all have their upsides (I really do miss hitting "super" and typing to find the program I want on my Gnome-2 installs, yes I know gnome-do exists). Unity is pretty usable, but it's got a bug with libreoffice and the dock/launcher that's a bit annoying. My largest gripe with Unity is the "global menu" (where all of the menu items are up in the top panel, even for non-maximized windows). The reason this bugs me is that I love to use "focus follows mouse", but the only menu shown up top is the one of the currently active window. So, if I want to access (for example) a pidgin menu, but when moving to the top of the screen my mouse goes over my maximized web browser, it's the firefox menus that show up in the global menu (since the mouse focused on firefox) rather than the pidgin menus. I could remove the global menu packages to restore the old behavior, but I think that destroys the functionality of the HUD (though I haven't tested this). Gnome-Shell, while being all "icon-centric" like Unity, doesn't have the global menu / mouse focus problems that Unity does, though it lacks the HUD functionality, and you really have to wonder if a given feature will actually be there in the next release, given how GNOME is progressing (why would they remove compact view and split-pane from nautilus!? I waited *years* for those features....). In both Gnome-Shell and Unity I miss the "click once, navigate menu, click again to launch a program" of Gnome-2/XFCE/etc. though. Unfortunately, no plugins/extensions (that I'm aware of) implement this yet in those environments. That being said, "Gnome Classic" or the "Fallback session" or "Gnome Panel" (it seems to go by different names, depending on whether you're referring to how you log in or what package you install, etc.) *is* available in Ubuntu 12.04, and I have been able to tweak it to exactly how I had my Gnome-2 setup configured on 10.04, so you might want to give that a try. That was a long way of saying "Unity/GnomeShell can be good, depending on what you want. You can get a Gnome-2 -esque setup in Ubuntu 12.04 if you're interested in sticking with Ubuntu. Try out what interests you and see what mileage you get!" |
| BernardSwiss Sep 17, 2012 9:53 PM EDT |
> I've personally stuck with 10.04 (Gnome-2) on my main machines, but Is Ubuntu 10.04 (desktop) on the 3-year, or the 5-year lifespan? edit: ==== Never mind, I checked -- it's 3 years. So how reliable is the "upgrade in place" to 12.04? I have an Ubuntu box, but no spare harddrives. I find choosing partition sizes the most time-consuming part of a Linux install on a new disk, but someone else installed my Ubuntu system, and it's all on one partition {shudder}. While I've never had an in-place upgrade go bad, I've also always had a separate data partition and a cloned disk or at least cloned data partition -- Murphy's law is closer to an actual law than I care for, working with computers. |
| tracyanne Sep 17, 2012 11:12 PM EDT |
I've had no problems with the Ubuntu upgrade system. I hasworked fine on every system I've installed. |
| BernardSwiss Sep 18, 2012 1:37 AM EDT |
Thanks for the info. I just remembered that I have an old laptop drive that I actually put aside last winter for just this situation -- though I had intended to repartition the d*** box properly, before the disk got so full. (Good thing I keep my important stuff on the Debian box) |
| HoTMetaL Sep 18, 2012 3:53 AM EDT |
I second the recommendation for an Xfce desktop if a Gnome 2-like desktop is what you're after. I spent months (April to July 2010) on new installs of Ubuntu Lucid for many, many folks and a few businesses. After the Unity usability fail, and also with the knowledge that many of these installs are on aging hardware, I had to find a solution for these people and decided they will all be running an Xfce flavor, most likely Xubuntu due to it's 3-year support deal and similarity to what these Windows refugees have already learned for the past 2.5 years. Here's an informative and dead-honest review of Xubuntu. I pretty much echo this blogger's past and present experiences with it, and Xfce desktops in general. Xfce is really coming around and transforming into something really nice & customizable, and will be perfect for the two dozen or so machines that I wrangle. |
| tracyanne Sep 18, 2012 4:17 AM EDT |
@HoTMetaL Interesting, I'm actually using Ubuntu/Unity on a dual core netbook Intel N280 with 1 Gig of RAM, and it actually works better than Ubuntu Studio (XFCE) as a portable recording studio, using Hydrogen and Audacity together. |
| HoTMetaL Sep 18, 2012 5:57 AM EDT |
@tracyanne: That doesn't surprise me much. Xfce promotes itself as a lightweight alternative to the more popular DEs, but it seems as more features are added and it becomes more Gnome 2-ish, its desktop is nearly as resource-hungry as the other desktops. The main reason for abandoning Ubuntu for these friends, family and customers' desktops is Unity. They've learned and gotten comfortable with a Gnome 2 Linux desktop, and shouldn't have to re-learn how to use yet another, often-confusing desktop. And questions are more quickly answered when I'm also using the same DE. Interesting that you mention Ubuntu Studio, as that is what I've personally decided to go with for my main machine, as I do a ton of audio production on my rig and I like the re-addition of a low-latency kernel (I recognize someone will be along to explain that I can install this kernel on any other distro). Not to mention the Studio team was smart enough to ditch Unity for Xfce. When you say that it 'works better,' can you elaborate just how it's working better than Ubuntu Studio's Xfce desktop on a better-suited kernel? It won't convince me to suffer through with Unity just to save a few megs of RAM, but it may just help others reading this. |
| HoTMetaL Sep 18, 2012 6:09 AM EDT |
@tracyanne: Nevermind. I just found your excellent explanation to my question, although in testing I haven't had the same experience with Ubuntu Studio that you did. But in fairness, I didn't test it as thorough as you did either, and I have vastly different audio hardware. |
| jimbauwens Sep 18, 2012 7:59 AM EDT |
Okay, thanks for the thoughts :) I've bandwith enough, so I'll see if I can make some spare time to test some stuff. Also, I've been wondering if I should test Trinity too, surely seems interesting. |
| CFWhitman Sep 18, 2012 9:10 AM EDT |
@tracyanne:
I've noticed a networking quirk when using Ubuntu Studio (which I have running on three different machines at the moment). When you are installing it, if you connect to the network, it will mess up the functioning of NetworkManager. It will treat any network you set up during installation (even a wireless one) as an always on connection, and ignore any other networks. This is not usually a problem for desktops since they often have an Ethernet connection or use the same wireless connection (although there may be exceptions), but it can be very problematic with a laptop. You can fix this after it's up by going to the network configuration files and removing all references to your initially installed network. However, it's much easier to just install it without a network and let NetworkManager handle your networks after installation. I don't know for sure that this is related to all the problems you had with networking, but I suspect it's at least partially to blame. I have no problems with networking in Ubuntu Studio with either of two laptops and a desktop. It's possible that there is something about your hardware that is different than any of mine that is related to some of your issues as well, of course. |
| cabreh Sep 18, 2012 11:02 AM EDT |
@jimbauwens I just switched to SolusOS 1.2 since it's running Gnome 2 and is Debian based. I've been happy to move back to Gnome 2 from trying several versions of modified Gnome 3. It just works for me and I'll stick with it until I have to give it up. |
| tracyanne Sep 18, 2012 7:07 PM EDT |
@CFWhitman, it would seem more than likely that was/is the problem |
| newspost Sep 18, 2012 8:04 PM EDT |
Fuduntu (http://www.fuduntu.org) is simply the best GNOME 2 distro out there today. |
| tracyanne Sep 18, 2012 8:15 PM EDT |
I'm always a bit wary of a distro with FUD in it's name |
| newspost Sep 18, 2012 8:37 PM EDT |
Quoting:I'm always a bit wary of a distro with FUD in it's name No surprise there. It's all too common to find people of our community spreading fear uncertainty and doubt about things that they don't like, as you have done here. |
| tracyanne Sep 18, 2012 8:49 PM EDT |
ROFLOL |
| jimbauwens Sep 20, 2012 11:11 AM EDT |
I haven't had time to test a distro yet, I'll let you know when I do :) |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 20, 2012 1:43 PM EDT |
How about Terrible Linux? http://raymii.org/cms/index.php?title=terriblelinux Why? It's Terrible!!! |
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