Favorite Linux Distributions

No worries. Yes, general and music playback.

 

You might try Lubuntu, it is supposedly even lighter than Xubuntu.

I also found that the web browser I was using made the biggest difference on my old computer. Using something lighter than Firefox or Chrome increased performance quite a bit.

 

Yes modern browsers are a real challenge on older hardware. Probably the biggest improvement can be made by using an SSD instead of a hard disk. Even the very cheapest, no name SSD will do. On my desktop I moved / and ~/.Private (ecryptsfs container consisting .mozilla, .ssh, .config/google-chrome, .claws-mail, Mail and so on) onto a Zheino* 30GB SSD which cost next to nothing. I have many hundreds of browser bookmarks and use several extensions and Firefox load time from newly booted session is now a second or two instead of 15 or 20. Chrome is also very snappy now. The PC boots up very fast indeed. The desktop is decent enough, a Core i3 with 8GB RAM, but my Eee PC netbook with only a 1.6GHz Atom CPU and 2GB RAM is also snappy now that it is solid state only.

You can read reviews and see benchmarks showing that cheap SSDs are really poor under certain intensive read/write loads, even worse than HDD in some cases. However, on machines that are basically running a web browser, multimedia player, office suite etc you will never see those situations and never experience anything other than performance that is many times better than any single hard disk offers.


*Nope, I never heard of them either. Performance is fine, TRIM is fully supported and non-problematic. It cost me the equivalent of US $24. I'm satisfied. My Eee PC runs a Sandisk 120GB SSD that cost about twice that and also works well and supports TRIM without isssues.

 

Firefox is slower compared to Chrome on both my ancient desktop and newish lappy, running Xubuntu and Ubuntu Mate respectively. I'm actually very happy with Chrome and find it plenty quick - faster than my phone and the hospital/employer computers. Besides, I need Chromecast to watch crappy European cycling feeds on the tele from the lappy.

 

In my experience Firefox is always slower to load than Chrome on every OS. It can be noticably slower to render web pages, though this varies. The reasons Firefox is still my primary browser are the options it offers and the extensions available. I won't be holding my breath waiting for Google to make a browser that syncs between desktop and mobile without making me identify myself and disclose everything I do with my web browser so that I can consume annoying ads which interest me not at all. Firefox lets me sync between Windows, Android and Debian while allowing me to keep the synced data encrypted and private. It allows me the option of not offering them my browsing/searching/download activities/history. Google's Chrome does not. On a decent desktop there is barely a perceptible difference in performance. On my Android devices I find that Chrome usually feeels snappier. However, I still prefer Firefox across all platforms in the same way that I still prefer to wear clothing while walking down the street, regardless of the aerodynamic or supposed social advantages of wandering about the city naked while being overtly receptive to unsolicited invitations.

 

Add inertia, and that's why I continue to use it too. It has many faults. I even have to use an add-on to make it not look like chrome!

I do use chrome on the phone, and I do not look for moment-to-moment syncing. Out the many hundreds, there are only a few bookmarks that are important to me and they don't change very often. Once in while, I start Chrome on the desktop, import my Firefox stuff, edit out the historical clutter, and then let that sync to the phone.

I block ads on the desktop. I block ads on the phone.I know Google is watching my every move, but at least I don't see the resultant advertising.

The aerodynamic advantages of nudity, on the other hand... well, that's a different matter altogether!

 

I just upgraded my Mint 17.1 32 bit to 17.3 64 bit.

It was just an experiment: I never found out why, but last time I tried 64-bit it wouldn't work at all.

Without stopping to think about it, I did something stupid, which was to mount my existing /home on the new install. It worked! However, the yes, stupid thing was thinking that I could use it to run with either 17.1 or 17.3. I spent a short time with no desktop other than some wallpaper. This was not a proper upgrade but just a new installation on a new partition. But it did not take too long to have both working, and working independently (thy no longer share a /home).

My previous install was never entirely glitch-free after it had been copied across from a failing hdd. My new install seems just fine.

 

Reusing /home should work by default unless there is some really big difference between the old and new OS. In your case the important difference is possibly not the minor version increment from 17.1 to 17.3 but maybe the fact that 32-bit distros are typically single architecture i.e. 32-bit only, whereas modern 64-bit Debian/Ubuntu based systems are multi-architecture, meaning that your 64-bit OS can also run 32-bit binaries. To accomplish this there are some changes to the directory structure. For example, as well as /lib and /usr/lib you will also find /lib32, /lib64, /usr/lib32 and so on. It may be that some start up scripts/configs in /home/<your_user> needed adjusting (or just deleting and being automatically recreated). Mind you, Mint is notoriously a Frankenstein type combination of various bits old, new, unmaintained, insecure, shiny etc. and if it does some weird unexpected shit....you should have expected it ha ha. see https://lwn.net/Articles/676664/

btw I've used the same /home for different distros plenty of times. It has some potential pitfalls if your desktop environment has big differences from one version to another but esentially it is supposed to work and it almost always does.

 

Long time Linux user here, main distro is Arch for my laptop and server/htpc/etc box. For relatives i usually set them up with Elementaryos which has been awesome. Never get any support calls like i get with windows then again i'm weary of supporting people with windows especially if i charge them to fix their shit, they tend to expect you take over the warranty.

But yeah arch is awesome, lightweight and fast and i like the K.I.S.S. principle. Right now i'm using Plasma 5 which is quite nice, never was much of KDE guy but this is alright. But i hop around allot, wish pantheon/gala worked better under arch. That desktop enviroment from elementaryos is just so well done but i want to tinker and arch is one if not the best for that. Great thread btw guys, should've found this one sooner!

 

Throwing my hat in the ring for Arch for desktop/laptop use. You really do have to put in some time to update periodically though, or you may find that some major dependency/config changes have occurred and you need to do some cli surgery to un-hose your system. For that reason, I prefer either Debian testing/Ubuntu for servers. CentOS ain't bad either, but if you're doing active/new development, the newer packages on Ubuntu/Debian testing can really come in handy. Going to echo existing sentiments in that I find Arch's config organization better than the Debian/RHEL families. I still dislike systemd/journald, but that ship's long sailed.

I'm also a big fan of tiling window managers - they're fast, lightweight, and I don't spend time making sure I can see crap on my screen.

 

Thanks for that. I've always been a late starter and I am new to 64-bit Linux.

I'm not very keen on changing distros (althought I've done Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and Mate, albeit that they are pretty closely related) but I am not particularly married to Mint, although I am married to MATE desktop as being the way that I like to do things.

The only thing I've found so far that just doesn't work (well, it runs, but gives only a black rectangle) is Google Earth.

 

amd64 (the 64-bit architecture of AMD and Intel) has been around for over 12 years. The last time I found a problem related to architecture was in 2011 and that was a problem with large file support in 32-bit x86 in DTS libraries and apps (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=639593). Now that amd64 can also run multiple other architectures it means that x86 32-bit is essentially redundant unless you have old hardware that is 32-bit only, or has less than 2GB RAM. My 64-bit Debian desktop runs 32-bit wine apps perfectly and I have also used it to run build environments for embedded devices (ARM & Coldfire). Google Earth works too; I build it using googleearth-package which downloads the Google binary and makes a regular Debian package for you to install.

btw the MATE desktop is available for systems other than MATE. For example if I wanted to install MATE desktop environment on my Debian PC I would run, as root or using sudo, "apt-get install mate-desktop-environment mate-desktop-environment-extras" and that should give me the whole thing. I'd be suprised if you couldn't do something similar on other well supported distros such as OpenSuse or Fedora.

 

When UEFI came out...the pain!

GPT was also a major pain in the ass when it was rolling out.

 

I tried to do my first Linux install this past weekend. A duel boot system with Win7 on one SSD and Linux on another. I properly dorked it up and froze the SSD. Round 2 this coming weekend. I was presently surprised to learn that my Oppo HA-1 will not need drivers for Linux.

 

I had issues with a Linux install with W7 on one HDD and Xubuntu on another separate HDD. Disconnecting the W7 HDD and having only the HDD connected that I was installing Xubuntu on fixed my problems. Reconnect the W7 drive after install, make sure your Linux drive has first boot priority, and you shouldn't have any problems selecting which OS you want to boot to in the Grub menu when powering on.

 

I think I did that once. Perhaps I should try again. It is not very important to me now, except for my collection of places. Google Earth was there before Street View in Google Maps, and now even where there is no street view (like the country I live in) there is still G'maps satellite. I suspect that deleting all the cache and config files, as you mentioned before, might be good for this one. Will get around to trying that. Then I'll have to transfer my places from my 17.1 install. I'll put that one on the round tuit list.

Was happy to find that my favourite WinXP Solitaire binary works just fine. 32-bit, and under WIne!

Yes, I ran it under some other Ubuntu version before adopting Mint. One of the reasons I adoted Mint is that they incorporate Compiz, and Compiz has one or two functionalities (actually not the amaze-your-neighbours spinning cube, and all that stuff) I'm attached to. I like Emerald too.

I have no doubt that Arch is the way to go for true techies, but I am now a very-reluctant-and-occasional techie. Have often found useful stuff in the Arch documentation. Good documentation (and not assuming the user is just never going to want to know) is a great thing, and was a big part of my falling in love with Unix 20-plus years ago.

 

I knew something was wrong when my boot menu had two options for the same SSD. I had two installs of mint on the same SSD, which I did not know how I accomplished. Thanks for the tip of disconnecting the windows HD install while installing Mint.

 

Arch is my favorite, and I've tried a bunch. You can't beat rolling-release distributions for having the latest packages always; even though it sometimes causes minor headaches, it's the way to go for having bugfixes and updated software. It also has an amazing package management system, with an extensive user package system that's easy to use, to compile packages and install automatically.

Arch forces you to be quite aware of what's going on inside your system, and isn't for people new to Linux (which is fine), but it has a great community and wiki for any issues you may have. It's super easy to customize, too, since you're installing from the ground up, you can install exactly what you want and nothing more.

 

If you are doing a Ubuntu-derivative install, then, when it asks the big question about what to do (replace, install alongside, etc) the right answer is probably going to be Do Something Else... and take manual control from that point. I will have already created the partitions I am going to use or re-use before the install, using gparted. If you are not sure what us where on you disks (or "disks") use gparted to check them out.

May yet go there one day. Should probably have done so when my Unix brain cells were still glowing. Spent too many years in front of WinXP out of sheer inertia, forgetting what I knew. Even the last few years in the office were like that. Unix gives so little trouble, once set up right: the office workload was mostly damned stupid Windows problems.

But yes... one day, if I wake up with techie fever, I just might add Arch to the collection of possible-to-boot operating systems on my HDDs.

(at the moment, that is two Mint versions, Ubuntu 12.04 (coming up for deletion really: I always keep whatever I was last using around) and dead WinXP)

 

I am sure you would be able to handle Arch, it really isn't very difficult. I was able to handle it just fine after a month of ubuntu and no real computer experience. If you have a basic level of reading comprehension you can just follow the build guide. The first time I did it I had no idea what I was doing, I was just following the instructions. Arch is really just a set of well managed building blocks. Everything that I am using comes straight from the official repositories. Sudo pacman -S packagename is all you need to know to get a workable system. I have a couple of build guides bookmarked as well so if you actually want to try it I can give you the links.

Unless you want to use a super minimal system, have a desire to be bleeding edge with the rolling release model, or just want to learn a little more than a normal distro allows, I don't see any huge advantage in using arch. I ended up switching to it because it seemed like the easiest way to mess around with tiling window managers. As of right now the applications I added are suckless terminal, bspwm (window manager), firefox, meh (for images), zathura (pdf viewer), bar (status bar), and ldm (for mounting external drives). 9 times out of 10 a simple google search will find an application that does what you want.

That being said, a couple of weeks ago my window manager, bspwm, underwent a complete syntax overhaul that broke all my scripts. It was an easy fix, but it definitely taught me to be aware of the changes I am applying. To be fair it wasn't really an Arch issue, but it does illustrate how you need to be slightly more aware of your application choices when using a distribution that allows you more freedom. I am intrigued by Gentoo/Funtoo, but for now I have no reason to change from Arch. Arch lets me mess around while still making my life easy.