Yeah, I agree that a RAM upgrade would probably be helpful, but
unfortunately, a RAM upgrade it probably not a very likely option. It's a
laptop, meaning the RAM is harder to find and more expensive (SDRAM
SODIMMs), and it's a Dell, which means it's a bit finicky about RAM. But
the main issue is that both the RAM slots are full, making the
cost/benefit of adding RAM worse. And, being a graduate student, I'm
poor.
Probably more info than you wanted. :-)
Nick
On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, David Zakar wrote:
As far as "alternative" desktops go, I've liked XFCE the best. Still, I
think a memory upgrade might be worthwhile (if it's possible), because
GNOME and KDE seem to do more and more these days. A Celeron 800 w/
512mb of RAM should be more than enough to run either of their latest
releases comfortably.
-DMZ
On Tue, 2006-04-04 at 12:30 -0400, Nick Cummings wrote:
I really like having a nice Desktop environment where things can be done
with a minimum of hassle. While I generally feel I'm up to the task of
figuring out most software, it's not how I prefer to spend my little free
time. As a result, I've been using Gnome and KDE desktops for the last
few years and have generally been pretty happy with both. However, one of
my machines is older (Celeron 800 w/ 256 MB RAM) and both of these
desktops are a bit sluggish there, so I'd like to take a look at switching
to a lighter weight desktop.
I realize that features take system resources. I'm willing to do with a
few less features (and I'm completely willing to get rid of most of the
eye-candy features), but I'd like to still have a fairly user friendly
desktop, perhaps "the next step down" from Gnome and KDE. What
suggestions do people have for desktop environments I should check out?
In the past I've heard people suggest desktops built around Xfce, IceWM,
Blackbox, and Fluxbox. Are any of these good candidates? Will I really
see any significant difference in responsiveness? Given how happy I've
been with Ubuntu, I'm tempted to try Xubuntu, the Ubuntu spinoff based
around Xfce4.
Thanks,
Nick
