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Ubuntu Goes Low Spec!
Ubuntu Lite: An Alternative to Xubuntu? The people in the know claim that Xubuntu is just the ticket for people who are looking to use their older low spec machines. Be this as it may, it has been my understanding that you really do not want to operate with less than 128MB of RAM. |
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Comments (11)
Even the reviewer, who makes a good case for lightweight linux and even for Ubuntu in general says he would just ignore this one.
Quoting:The people in the know claim that Xubuntu is just the ticket for people who are looking to use their older low spec machines.Actually, that's the way Xubuntu started out. Xubuntu keeps adding bloat. I've moved off of it completely.
Plus I've had panels mysteriously disappear from Xubuntu with no instructions on how to restore them.
Gnome used to have that problem but someone told mw how to get them back.
Gnome used to have that problem but someone told mw how to get them back.
It depends how you define "low spec". There are some who argue 1 ghz and 256 mb of ram is low spec.
If you want to use a modern distribution on old hardware, you have to be ready to customize it yourself. An Automatix-type script with good documentation is the only way to make something like this work for new users. Just replacing gnome with xfce on Ubuntu is not much of an improvement. That hideous Xubuntu gnome imitation is embarrasing. If you want to see an xfce desktop done right, look at Dreamlinux.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu lite (and the author points this out) is that only about one in a million Windows users would not consider Linux a joke after seeing their website.
If you want to use a modern distribution on old hardware, you have to be ready to customize it yourself. An Automatix-type script with good documentation is the only way to make something like this work for new users. Just replacing gnome with xfce on Ubuntu is not much of an improvement. That hideous Xubuntu gnome imitation is embarrasing. If you want to see an xfce desktop done right, look at Dreamlinux.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu lite (and the author points this out) is that only about one in a million Windows users would not consider Linux a joke after seeing their website.
I used to have that problem with XFCE with or without Ubuntu. It had to be re-loaded from the command line. "xfce-panel", I think. It's been a long time since I had that problem. I'm talking at least a year.
I have to agree about Dreamlinux. They did a really nice job on that.
Xubuntu was headed in the right direction initially. Before there was Xubuntu proper, I had worked with a few others on some documentation for starting with Ubuntu, stripping it of Gnome and all the other bloat we could come up with, then adding in XFCE plus things like Thunar (I think) for convenience and some very other minor things. It took some tweaking to get the USB stuff to work correctly - this was before any of us knew much about how to manipulate udev. It worked really well. If I remember correctly, it was from that original set of docs that Xubuntu was built. But then more and more got piled on which IMHO was the complete opposite of what we were trying to do. Might as well have just used Ubuntu.
Xubuntu was headed in the right direction initially. Before there was Xubuntu proper, I had worked with a few others on some documentation for starting with Ubuntu, stripping it of Gnome and all the other bloat we could come up with, then adding in XFCE plus things like Thunar (I think) for convenience and some very other minor things. It took some tweaking to get the USB stuff to work correctly - this was before any of us knew much about how to manipulate udev. It worked really well. If I remember correctly, it was from that original set of docs that Xubuntu was built. But then more and more got piled on which IMHO was the complete opposite of what we were trying to do. Might as well have just used Ubuntu.
That's my biggest problem with Ubuntu in general. One person gets something in his head (everyone needs application X, I don't have an 800 mhz computer, so the heck with anything less than what I use, everyone needs proprietary drivers, or whatever) and they impose it on everyone. Sometimes I want to pull out my hair and say "leave me alone". That's why, after a year and a half with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu, I have moved to Debian and not looked back. Ubuntu doesn't even feel like a Linux distribution anymore.
I read Shuttleworth's blog on the topic of proprietary drivers, and was shocked. He wasn't even open to the idea of an installation option excluding proprietary drivers. If you don't like them, you can install them and then uninstall them. That attitude is now present in every aspect of K/X/Ubuntu development, and as a result their popularity might be peaking. The developers think they know more than the users about what the users want. When you run off all the non-newbies, you won't have much of a community IMO.
I read Shuttleworth's blog on the topic of proprietary drivers, and was shocked. He wasn't even open to the idea of an installation option excluding proprietary drivers. If you don't like them, you can install them and then uninstall them. That attitude is now present in every aspect of K/X/Ubuntu development, and as a result their popularity might be peaking. The developers think they know more than the users about what the users want. When you run off all the non-newbies, you won't have much of a community IMO.
I have got to agree with you bigg. Its not just Ubuntu, although they appear to be leading the pack. As a side point I wonder at what point that an X server in general became part of the accepted definition for a minimal system though. It is entirely possible to browse the web, chat in IRC, check email, write your novel, or pretty much anything except video games and movies without an X server.
My normal installation proceedure requires that I intentionally install the X server. For personal systems that can end up being delayed for as long as a month on my daily use machine. Even after I it is installed I have a habit of running test systems under QEMU/Kqemu and those almost never get X unless there was something specific I wanted to test that required it.
My normal installation proceedure requires that I intentionally install the X server. For personal systems that can end up being delayed for as long as a month on my daily use machine. Even after I it is installed I have a habit of running test systems under QEMU/Kqemu and those almost never get X unless there was something specific I wanted to test that required it.
Yep, I've moved away from Ubuntu as well for the same reasons. Now, I look at the individual machine and what I want to accomplish with it and choose from there. Actually, I still use Ubuntu on one. It runs my Jinzora server because it does that well. All the others run Debian or something Debian-based.
It's a shame. When you look at how Ubuntu started out it had promise. The idea of a gazillion different buntus to serve whatever need you had sounded pretty good to me. But then somebody said, "Yeah, but let's make them all the same!"
It's a shame. When you look at how Ubuntu started out it had promise. The idea of a gazillion different buntus to serve whatever need you had sounded pretty good to me. But then somebody said, "Yeah, but let's make them all the same!"
Quoting:That's why, after a year and a half with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu, I have moved to Debian and not looked back.
Almost same situation here, but I chose Gentoo to fix the problem. Now, AFAIK, Gentoo and Debian both have drawbacks: -Gentoo: You have to compile it when installing and when updating, USE-flags is a bit of a hassle. -Debian: Slow release scheme, always outdated software. I even found inetd on a standard Debian install, though everywhere I read about inetd, they tell it isn't secure and you should not be using it. Less configurable than Gentoo IMHO.
So, I find myself asking, What distribution combines
For me, the system that meets that requirements could be FreeBSD or NetBSD, but the problem is
Any distro out there?
PS Isn't configurability a correct English word? Firefox-spell checker says it isn't.
Quoting: PS Isn't configurability a correct English word? Firefox-spell checker says it isn't.
Checking the dictionary program, gnome-dictionary, I don't find configurability or configurable.
Googling "define: configurability" returns two glossary entries of questionable authority.
Going to http://m-w.com , configurability is not found in the dictionary.
Personally, I would have thought at least 'configurable' would be an acknowleged proper word. And I would have been wrong.
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