Installing on an old Eee PC 900

[Johnny Rosenberg]

2012/10/28 Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>:
> On 28 October 2012 18:03, Johnny Rosenberg <gurus.knugum at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2012/10/28 Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>:
>>> On 27 October 2012 13:51, Johnny Rosenberg <gurus.knugum at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> What is the lightest/fastest Debian based Gnome distribution out there?
>>>
>>> Debian.
>>>
>>>> I want Gnome 3 but no Gnome shell.
>>>
>>> You can't, as others have said. The default shell for GNOME 3 is GNOME
>>> Shell. The 2-panel layout is only available in Fallback Mode, for 2D
>>> graphics users. You can't install it without GNOME Shell, AFAIK.
>>>
>>> If you want a classic 2-panel GNOME-style desktop, try Maté. If you
>>> want Ubuntu with Maté, try NotaLinux. Warning: it's old code, much of
>>> it superseded, with only a few developers. It might not be all that
>>> secure and its future is uncertain.
>>>
>>> If you want something lighter-weight with a 2-panel layout, try XFCE.
>>> It is the default desktop in Debian 6, I believe.
>>>
>>> Me, I would probably put Lubuntu on that spec of machine. It's what I
>>> run on my 2004 IBM Thinkpad X31 and I like it.
>>
>> I have Lubuntu on it right now. It sucks badly in many aspects, I
>> don't really have time to go through all that right now, sorry.
>
> Well, if you don't have time to tell us what's wrong with it, then we
> don't have time to help you to fix the problems or guide you toward
> something better. :¬P

Well, Lubuntu is not the subject of this thread, that's why.

But I can at least say that one of the many problems is that the
update manager doesn't seem to work very good. Every time I try to
update, it says that some daemon died. I'm not sure which one, but I
can check it out if someone in interested. There are 152 updates
waiting at the moment… Maybe I can update in the gnome terminal
instead, I didn't try that.

And before that happened the first time, I was told that there was not
enough disk space (SSD) for updating. Maybe that was true, I didn't
check it out any further.

>
> But to answer your question: no, you can't have Debian with GNOME 3
> without GNOME Shell, and GNOME 3 is a lot bigger, slower and heavier
> than LXDE and /anything/ with GNOME 3 on it, in any form, will take
> more RAM, be slower to start and less responsive than Lubuntu is.
> Ditto XFCE, ditto Maté.

I have read a little about Debian now and I found that most of its
packages are extremely old anyway (Gnome 2.30, when was that? 2009…?),
so I decided it's not for me.

>
> There is not much out there that is lighter and faster than Lubuntu.

And that's not my question. My question was about which is the
fastest/lightest GNOME 3 distribution. Nothing more, nothing less.

> Things that are:
> * PuppyLinux (runs as root all the time, so massively insecure & dangerous)
I tried to install that on my Eee, but since it lacks a CD drive I
tried with a USB stick, which failed. When starting up something was
missing, I don't remember what right now, because it was a few months
ago. I never took time to fiddle with it; I guess it was not highest
priority by that time.

> * DamnSmallLinux (obsolete as the creator & the maintainer fell out
> and the former has been unable to keep it updated on his own)
> * Crunchbang (worth a look, but does not have a "desktop" as such)
> * Maybe possibly VectorLinux if you use IceWM or something

Vector was one idea I had too, but somehow it failed, or there was
something that made me reject it, I don't remember… Maybe it was just
the lack of Gnome.


Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ