[wellylug] Linux for portable / laptop

[Stephen Judd]

On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 04:54 +0000, Nathan Bentley wrote:

> Can anyone make a recommendation of the best distro, or a laptop
> specific version that I could try first off?

A few things I've tried recently with pros and cons:

- Ubuntu Natty is really pissing me off. Lotsa "helpful" services
consuming RAM and CPU, and the new Unity UI is annoying to me (though
quite possibly a good choice for others, so try it). I personally would
stay away from stock Ubuntu on older hardware at this point on grounds
of resource usage alone. I was an Ubuntu fanboy up until Natty, but my
experience with it in dual-monitor environments and on older kit has
really soured me.
- I replaced Natty on my older Tecra with Debian and the gnome-desktop
package. The Debian installer asks you if you want suitable packages for
a laptop. The netbook's using less RAM than Natty and the fan is going
less. Debian's stock Gnome is ugly looking but everything works. I
installed NetworkManager and it's a nice little environment now.
- On my new netbook, I am running Linux Mint. Mint is a very slick
Gnome-based environment. I am very much enjoying using it. It seems to
be getting near the promised 6 hours of battery life. It is using about
450MB out of 2 GB according to the Gnome system monitor. 
- On the same netbook, I have tried an LXDE based desktop in two
flavours -- Lubunut (LXDE with Ubuntu base), and the lxde pagkage on
Debian. Lubuntu is definitely lightweight, quite slick, and worthy of
your investigation. Debian's lxde has a number of rough edges that would
be annoying or frustrating if it's a long time since your last Linux
experience.

Xfce-based distributions like Xubuntu are worth looking at too.

In summary: Natty is nasty, Lubuntu's lightweight, minimal Debian is
decent if you're prepared to tinker a bit. I would burn a Lubuntu iso to
a flash USB drive and play with it if I were you.

Stephen