<div style="direction: ltr;"><div><font face="Arial" size="2">Hi there...</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> I have a pretty old computer... Celeron 466Mhz,
128 MB RAM, 8.4 GB HDD, Matrox 8 MB AGP 2x card on a 440BX chipset. Not really
fast then... but back in the day, when it was my primary computer (to be read
quite some years ago), I did manage to play with Windows 98, Visual C 6.0, and
much about anything... it did run Windows 2000, and Me at various stages in its
life. Not to mention Red Hat 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 - rather well I might
add.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> Now my (dear) sister is using it - and she
mainly wants Firefox and Gaim, and perhaps XMMS... And yep, you've guessed it -
Linux. Well she doesn't really WANT Linux, more like I only give her
Linux.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> As such I've surfed distrowatch, and the net
(to be read google) to find a lightweight distro to use on that aging piece of
hardware - which still runs well considering.... First stop was Ubuntu 5.10...
really slow... till I put IceWM on it. Next stop was Ubuntu Dapper Drake, Flight
5 - and Gnome 2.14 is really a lot lighter than previous versions were. But,
again, IceWM proves lighter still so that was nice. Then I thought I might try
Ubuntu Light, or... wait a sec... xubuntu! So I fetched xubuntu Flight 6, new
install... and... guess what?</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> Really disappointed here guys... and when I say
really I mean REALLY... Flight 5 with IceWM is faster than xubuntu in all
respects... and xubuntu somehow doesn;t even have the good and thorough menus
ubuntu has... in IceWM I simply migrated all the Gnome menu entries... in
xubuntu... I don't have any. (again, the computer is to be used by a really
novice Linux user - my sis)</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> And why the sluggish performance? Someone over
here said he had an Athlon at 1+ Ghz... well... that's simply too fast to be
able to make a succesfull "light" distro. My Celeron 466Mhz stubles... it takes
some good seconds to simply display the gdm background... and in its day the
Matrox was really a damn good 2D card... (hell, it can even run Quake 3 /
Wolf)</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> The bottom line is - regular Ubuntu with IceWM
is faster and more convenient than xubuntu, so what is the point behind it? and
trust me - xubuntu IS slow... too slow to enjoy anything...</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> I've tried a DSL Live CD - boots faster than
xubuntu, and works faster than xubuntu - but you might argue that it doesn't
really have many things on it - true.... but a Knoppix derivate proved really
succesful, and so I went for "Feather Light Linux", another Knoppix / Debian
derivate... this one has a (small) 128 MB Live CD and guess what... it works
flawlessly! It has pretty much everything an average user needs (to be read - my
sis) including Firefox, Gaim, XMMS, Abiword, and a lot of other things such as
Rox-filer, and a few window managers to choose from, including IceWM.
</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> Right now? That Celeron is running Feather
Light Linux - installed on the HDD, and I am really happy with the results.
Considering that... in its day that old computer did a very good job of running
Red Hat 7.2, I was expecting a "light" distro to perform much like the old Red
Hat - reliable and pretty fast... xubuntu doesn't, but Feather Light does! (and
it even has synaptic).</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"> All in all, I wish you good luck with your
project, though my personal belief is that your project is more or less
pointless. Better results can be achieved by simply using Ubuntu and IceWM, and
really better results can be achieved with DSL, or Feather Light Linux.
</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Kind regards,</font></div></div><div style="direction: ltr;"><span class="sg">
<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Stefan Vrabie.</font></div>
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