Mint Linux on my netbook: Xfce!

Hi,

I just thought I'd post a little update on how Mint Linux has been going on my Lenovo netbook. It's been going pretty well actually. I've had very few issues with getting it running how I want it, and have not experienced any of the quirks I used to come across with Linux in the past, such as some feature suddenly not working because something had changed I couldn't track down what it was etc.

There was was only thing that kept getting in the way. Clearly my little netbook was a little underpowered, so I would sometimes have some very "pregnant pauses" while the system would catch up with what I was trying to do. My user experience within a single application, like Thunderbird or Chrome was generally fine, but switching applications, or moving files around in folders etc was at times, a little painful.

This was all in Gnome, which was the default desktop environment installed. I was just putting up with it, but then I realised that there are alternatives in Linux, so hey, I may as well check them out.

A quick Google pointed out my options. It became apparent that as you go down in memory footprint and system requirements, the user experience is pared down as well. I was prepared to have a less sophisticated interface, but I still wanted it to be reasonably user friendly and at least support the basic window based operations that I've been used to since my Amiga and then Windows 3.1. I had tried some of the really basic windows managers/desktops for Linux in the past and came away very frustrated with their lack of even basic features or clunkiness to do simple tasks.

I ended up trying Xfce. In Mint, this was super simple. I simply typed in xfce in the search box off the bottom menu, selected the xfce meta package that came up and waited while it all installed and configured by itself.

I then logged out and logged back in, remembering to change the option at the bottom of the the log in screen from Gnome to Xfce. After that, no surprises, everything just works, even the Gnome apps that I had become used to using. I'm still checking everything out, but it seems there is a substantial amount of cross compatibility between the two systems, but with Xfce appearing to be much easier for my netbook to deal with.

The overall user interface is very similar in terms of "slickness" etc, especially if you take some time to customise it away from the default wall paper etc. I haven't found the same degree of theme support yet, but to be honest I can more than live without that if it means a smoother experience on this low end hardware.

Which it does...

So it looks like Xfce for me now, and so far so good.

Later.