If you’re in a dilemma, just use this post which quickly describes some of the most popular (though not all) desktop environments and window managers. The desktop environments and WMs listed here can easily be downloaded from your distribution’s respective package management system (type “apt-get fluxbox” in your terminal to get fluxbox with apt, for instance).
GNOME
Simple and polished, a bit slower than you’d expect, fairly customizable. GTK!
KDE 3
More windows-like, lower learning curve, lacks cool themeing. Extremenly customizable. Qt.
KDE 4
“Awesome” factor, lacks cool themeing although the default one looks very nice, a bit unstable, faster than you’d expect.
XFCE
GNOME-like, much faster, good GTK integration, nice themeing, simplistic
Enlightenment
Low system requirements, dock, a bit strange (higher learning curve).
IceWM
Very low system requirements, Windows-like, simple, fast, soe me nice themes out there
Openbox
The “geeky” Blackbox-inspiredWM. Right click, menu. Extreme keybinding support. XML configuration files.
Fluxbox
Blackbox fork (thanks guys). More themes!
Links
- http://xwinman.org/
- http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/639/
Recently I listened to a Linux Action show! Podcast where a listener sent an email in which he states that even though Adobe’s “dipping their toes” into open source waters, they are never going to be a part of the community.
I agree with Chris and Brian when they say spitting at Adobe for trying to open-source a part of their software (I believe it’s FLEX) is too harsh. We should welcome major firms to open source. As both show hosts commented, not every major firm can make money from open source, and even though it’s possible, it ain’t easy to find a successful business model.
What do you think?
I am the maintainer of a few public computers in a school library. I didn’t really check, but if I remember correctly, the computers are pretty old 900 MHz Pentiums with 90-128 mb RAM.
Now these computers had XP on them before, but I removed this horrible operating system in order to install Linux. Of course, there is a huge number of distros to choose from, even in the low-end computer niche.
All I needed was a word processor like Abiword, multiple user support with login manager, a basic file manager like PCman, Flash support, a home directory for the user ’student’, a WM, a desktop with a background, and a panel with FOUR icons - Abiword, Net browser, Home and shutdown. Also, I wanted to restrict the user ’student’ not to change the system’s theme, background and configuration files.
The KDE Kiosk Tool is great, though I think you know how fast KDE on 92 mb of RAM runs (if it runs, that is).
The default install of TinyME, a PCFLuxboxOS- based mini distribution using Openbox
You cannot imagine how difficult it was for me to find something even close to this.
Sadly, some of these mini distros have huge flaws which need to be fixed. Others, on the other hand, aren’t really mini distributions.
So, if you have an old computer and you’re looking for a low-requirement Linux distro, don’t choose:
- Xubuntu - too damn slow, changing the desktop environment or the WM actually won’t make Opera or Abiword load much faster. I think it’s the lower levels that cause the lag.
- Fluxbuntu - see Xubuntu
- Vector Linux - not easy to configure, slow installation
If you have an old computer in a public place, don’t choose
- Puppy Linux (no multiuser, isn’t too pretty)
- DSL (constant X server problems)
In reality, the only distro from the aforementioned that I dislike is Fluxbuntu. Puppy and DSL are doing a great job for users with old computers, the only problem is they lack key features for public computers. And they don’t look nice, which I can understand isn’t a priority, but it would certainly be nice.
I’m checking out TinyMe at the moment, a small PCLinuxOS derivative , and it looks promising… by changing the Openbox configuration and a few other things, I think I’ll be able to generate a stripped-down LiveCD for those school computers. It looks alright, too.
SOem of you would probably suggest Debian. Non-base Debian is slow. I love Debian, but it’s way too slow and I’m too lazy to install it from scratch. If I’ll be forced to do this, I’ll rather play with Arch.
What do you think? Do you have any recommendations for a web kiosk computer with low specs? What do you think of TinyME? What is your favourite low-end window manager? I NEED INFORMATION GUYS!
The release date for Ubuntu 8.04, the second Long Time Support of the arguably most popular Linux distribution is approaching. Let’s do a little overview of what we have that0s new:
The Wubi installer will let Windows users install (a pretty retarded version of) Ubuntu onto the Windows partition. Even though it’s an interesting choice, it may create a lot of confusion!
We have GNOME 2.22, the new version of the default desktop environment. It will contain the Cheese web-cam recording app, GVFS, Telepathy and a multitude of other improvements and addons.
Theme updates make the new Ubuntu a very nice OS to look at by default.
Some new apps are the Transmission BitTorrent Client (which I use on my Mac and it’s as least as good as uTorrent), Brasero burning software and of course a few Compiz updates.
Are you ready for April the 24th? I know I am 
