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Lubuntu or Xubuntu

lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
I need to reinstall Ubuntu on my daughter's netbook. I guess I don't have to, but it's time for an upgrade. She currently has Ubuntu 8.04, and it's /just/ usable. I don't think 10.04 will work as well, and Ubuntu's just getting too big for her machine. It's a Asus 2g Surf, and it has 512mb ram, and 2gb hd. So... Which of the 2 light variants do you guys like best? Looks are important, and I guess that's what it comes down to since the standard Ubuntu packages can be installed as necessary. Which DE has he most polish?
 
I think I would go with Mint 9 LXDE. It's not on your list, but IMO it looks nicer than Xubuntu.

TBH I'm not a fan of Xubuntu at all. It's barely any lighter than Ubuntu; it's become much more bloated over the years. I would stick to an LXDE based distro for older hardware.
 
Hmm... Maybe I'll give that a try. I tend to stay away from the Mint distros since they aren't a primary release, but I guess that's kind of dumb. I'll give that, and Lubuntu a run in a VM, and see which I like better.

Edit:
MintL looks like a winner. I like the default packages a bit better, and it's nicer looking out of the box. I'll put it on her machine in the next couple days, and see how it works on her hardware :^)
 
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Peppermint has attractive graphics, but it seems very heavy on the "cloud" crap in the default layout. Maybe I'm Luddite, but I don't like the idea of requiring a network connection to perform required work. I want everything local. That way I know I have it, even if it has reduced functionality from losing net access. It's easy enough to add and subtract things from Linux, but MintL is pretty close out of the box. I wouldn't have to change much to get it where I want it. Peppermint would require significant changes.
 
Sounds like you already made your decision but have you checked out the netbook version of Ubuntu? I installed it on a very old laptop, seems like a slimmer version than the standard releases.
 
I'm using Mint and, for me, it seemed to perform better than Ubuntu for some reason.

I haven't tried the light version of Mint though.
 
mc866 said:
Sounds like you already made your decision but have you checked out the netbook version of Ubuntu? I installed it on a very old laptop, seems like a slimmer version than the standard releases.
Click to expand...

Is it slimmer? I haven't been following the netbook releases. I thought it was just a few gui tweaks to allegedly make using a netbook easier. I say allegedly because I prefer a standard desktop to the netbook remix. The remix looks nice, but it isn't as usable imo.

I got MintL installed, and I'm not really digging it tbh. It's taking up a crap ton of drive space, and LXDE isn't as usable as Gnome. It's using almost every bit of the 1900mb I gave it for /. I need to see what straight Ubuntu's using on my netbook. I may just install Ubuntu, and pare out some of the packages.
 
lxskllr said:
Is it slimmer? I haven't been following the netbook releases. I thought it was just a few gui tweaks to allegedly make using a netbook easier. I say allegedly because I prefer a standard desktop to the netbook remix. The remix looks nice, but it isn't as usable imo.
Click to expand...

I guess I don't have actual proof that it is slimmer. The old laptop I installed it on is a celeron 800 with 768MB of memory and it works very well for every day browsing and music playback. Boot times are much quicker than XP so I guess it gives the impression that it's a bit slimmer than the standard version.
 
I ended up going with Ubuntu :^D

I really don't see much benefit in using LXDE. The performance increase is very modest, and it comes at the expense of features and usability.

MintL was very buggy from the start. Partitioning drive was a PITA. It came throwing up an error about /cdrom being mounted. No cdrom on the netbook at all. As near as I can tell, it was do to the swap file on my install usb that unetbootin created. I had to partition the drive in stages to get it to work right :^/

Once in the O/S, it was very feature poor, and configuring it the way I wanted was tedious, and incomplete by the time I bailed on it.
 
its funny, because i never see debian being a primary option for alot of people, yet, its easy to use, has tons of software, has incredible configuration ability, and is light.
 
Tbirdkid said:
its funny, because i never see debian being a primary option for alot of people, yet, its easy to use, has tons of software, has incredible configuration ability, and is light.
Click to expand...

I thought of Debian, but by the time I got configured, it would virtually be Ubuntu. I don't think there would be a great performance difference between them with the full load out.
 
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