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Old P4 2.4 1GB RAM for inlaws, 10.10 or Mint 9?

mc866

mc866

Golden Member
So after weeks of remotely trying to clean their old XP machine from malware I've just decided to wipe the drive and get them over to Linux to hopefully reduce the amount of malware/virus issues they have been having.

That said which distro between Ubuntu 10.10 and Mint 9 will be more light weight? Better suited for basic PC users for the transition from XP? Better functionality out of the box?

Am I missing anything here? Generally all they use this machine for is web browsing and video calls with their kids. I was going to move them to Win 7 but I figure if they have to make a transition to a new OS anyway why not give linux a try so I'm not always fighting off the malware.
 
Either just use Xubuntu if you want a lighter weight frontend. I've been running the xfce version of Mint 9 lately myself. Mint comes with flash and codecs for video and music already installed which is nice but it is pretty simple to install them in ubuntu too.
 
I'm not a fan of Mint. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 on my bedroom machine, and it's similar to yours, except it's a P4 2.8ghz. 10.04 would be a good choice since it's a LTS release. You won't have to worry about major updates for awhile.
 
mc866 said:
That said which distro between Ubuntu 10.10 and Mint 9 will be more light weight? Better suited for basic PC users for the transition from XP? Better functionality out of the box?
Click to expand...
Given your parameters...

I would choose Mint 9. And, I'm running Ubu 10.10 on my primary machine.

Traditionally Ubu x.10 distros tend to be flaky. x.04 releases usually work great.

Also, Mint will be less of an adjustment for Winders users...
 
Thanks for the info guys! Funny thing is that I started with 10.04 and it didn't seem to be working correctly, I couldn't see a secondary hard drive, I guess it didn't mount it by default. So I upgraded to 10.10 and it seems to be working very nicely.

I think I'm going to give Mint a try this afternoon and see how it does. 10.10 seems snappy enough at this point. Way better than the XP install they had previously 🙂
 
I've found Ubuntu 10.10 to be very fast and excellent overall.

My one problem with it is the fact that my computer crashes intermittently during suspend/resume. I'm trying Mint Debian to see if that fixes it.
 
I'm typing this on a Mint 9 xfce install right now. Overall I think I like 10.10 better, not sure if that's because I'm not as used to the Mint/Xfce and more familiar with the ubuntu gnome gui or what but I think I may move it back to 10.10.

I like the fact that Mint has more packages installed by default, but I made a backup of the 10.10 install I had with most everything all setup anyway.

Speaking of mint or xfce, does anyone know how to add say terminal or firefox to the quick launch or menu bar next to show desktop?
 
Nevermind, I figured it out. I had to mess with the Xfce panel settings and create my own launch icon for firefox. I just assumed there may be an easy way to do it.
 
Good luck with the switch! Make sure that you have Flash and a decent media player installed, in order the help with the transition.
 
ultimatebob said:
Good luck with the switch! Make sure that you have Flash and a decent media player installed, in order the help with the transition.
Click to expand...

If the OP is looking to have those enabled without a lot of fuss or configuration, Mint 9 ought to do fine.

Really though, both Mint 9 and Ubuntu 10.04 have the same support cycle, Mint usually is a little more refined overall.
 
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