On 06/10/14 22:38, Richard Owlett wrote: >>> 2. Squeeze LTS with Gnome2 - I like it and believe he will like its >>> human interface. >>> 3. Wheezy with KDE - Wheezy is more uptodate and I suspect would want >>> some KDE specific applications. >> >> Have you had a look at XFCE? > > Yes, but not for this project. I'm from the CPM-80 era and think default > Linux installs are just *TOO* big and want to carry small to possibly an > extreme.
I can recall once squeezing (desktop) Linux onto a 100MB hard drive. You wouldn't do that reasonably today. I'll admit I missed out on the early PC era. Much of that took place in the late 70's - early 80's, and I didn't exist until 1984. That said, I do sometimes see some of the older software and it often surprises me what people managed to do with so little. At times one questions whether the IT industry has really moved any further forward. But I digress… >> >> At my workplace I dusted off this old P4-era laptop > > *CHUCKLE* Guess what I was sent. A Sony VAIO with 2.8 GHz P4 w/ 512 MB RAM. > Yesterday I installed Squeeze with Gnome2 - performance not too bad. > Today I added Wheezy with KDE - not sure I would call it acceptable. I used to like KDE as a desktop. Been using it on and off since 1998. KDE3 was the golden era in a way, ran on lots of machines (unless you had <64MB RAM) and was reasonably stable, and I appreciated its flexibility and usability. When KDE4 was released I noticed how much more sluggish it was. I was at university at the time and was limping along with a PII 300MHz w/ 160MB RAM. This machine ran KDE3 okay, not super fast as you'd imagine, but I could deal with it. In the end though, I retreated to a desktop environment I used when I started with Linux: FVWM. I found on that machine, I could get reasonable performance if I used FVWM as the window manager and just brought in select bits of KDE. It is what I use today (on much more capable hardware). That said, I wouldn't recommend FVWM for a novice. Not with the need to hand-edit configuration files. I haven't looked at LXDE lately but was pointing out XFCE on the basis that it's reasonably lightweight and still easily configurable by a less technical user. LXDE may well be more appropriate. It's certainly worth a look. -- Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL) I haven't lost my mind... ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/5432ecb0.3010...@longlandclan.yi.org
