Hello, As of now I'm trying to reformat a friend's laptop. It's an old one. Sony VAIO, with a 512 MB of RAM, Intel Pentium 4 3 Ghz with an 80 GB of hard drive. ATI video card I think. The user is just someone who access Facebook, Yahoo! Messenger and a bit of Skype. Most of the time, the user plays a game called Slot Machine from Slot Plus Casino. It's a free game that simulates a Slot Machine game with virtual betting stuff. Now, I hate Ubuntu because of the Unity thing. I did some research. Linux Mint and OpenSUSE. Apparently, I'm confused. Linux Mint has KDE and GNOME as well as OpenSUSE. Which of the two (Linux Mint vs. OpenSUSE) will I install and will I use KDE or GNOME? What's the default Desktop Environment that comes with Linux Mint and OpenSUSE? Which is better KDE or GNOME? The user is really used to Windows XP. I can't use Windows 7 because the DVD drive isn't working properly. It can't read DVDs but CDs are okay. I also can't install Windows 7 via Network Installation. I don't know how to do a Network Installation of Windows 7. I only have 2 laptops (mine) with Windows 7 installed. Anyway I'm waiting for everyone's reply. As of now, I'm burning Windows XP into a CD-R.
Mint 12 or Mint Debian are better IMO. I did like Mint LXDE as it's very fast and works well on older hardware, but they've not released a new version yet. Personally I think KDE looks too child like and is slow and bloated compared to some of the other options.
When I've got to pick between the two I will always use GNOME. Mint 12 contains the option to use GNOME classic too
Me too GNOME but what about for a non-tech savvy person and a windows xp person who only uses it for internet stuffs and slot machine game stuff? KDE?
GNOME even for them. Its easy enough to use I think, and GNOME 3 is even more user friendly, especially in Ubuntu. Correction: Ubutnu using Unity with the Ubuntu software centre is the way to go for ease of use.
yes, in ubuntu before. but unity is really user friendly, like really idiot-proof but i kinda don't like it though. GNOME is a lot better or for a super user friendly 5 year old kid experience, i think KDE is up for it. what do you think?
I'd either use GNOME or Ubuntu with Unity. Unity is just as easy to use as KDE but looks more adult I think is the word, when compared to KDE. You also have to think about the software centre that Ubuntu has which will make it easy for your friend to install updates or applications in general.
The market is nowhere near as good as Ubuntu's software centre. I'd recommend you download and try them out in VMware player or VirtualBox, see which one you like best.
will do that later.. well for sure Linux Mint is okay since it's Ubuntu based. For OpenSUSE, hmmm, it's from Novell right? so I guess they're stable and okay?
I am currently using Mint 12 KDE version. I like it, because the DVD iso has alot of packages already, so when you do an install you have foxfire, gimp etc there from the start, where Ubuntu/Kubuntu dont, and have to be downloaded and installed - though is pretty straight forward to do, but it takes time. I prefer the KDE interface, and the abillity to make it look pretty much the way i want it to look... I like the taskbar on the bottom, with icons only, and when you launch the application it is on the launching icon (like windows 7) using the icon-tasks plasmoid. Anyways at the end of the day, it the look you prefer, and the biggest difference between the distros are the amount of packages installed by default i have found.
Both Good Not a bad idea. Um... about the market, not true. Opensuse in my opinion is way better because they let you choose what repositories you can get from the software manager such as pacman, opensuse, etc... They also make updates real easy with tumbleweed, which is a rolling release option.I heard that ubuntu jumped on the bandwagon with this as of shortly. I dont like gnome for these reasons: Gnome3 is still an infant, and if you use gnome2, you are using legacy software that is being phased out. What's the point in that? The only people that have gnome3 on lock is Linuxmint team with their Cinnamon desktop. I personally like KDE. It has all the bling(compiz) already built in with sexy apps. If you're not into that, it's not a problem since it's made for professional use as well. Well there's my two cents.
There are PPAs and other custom repositories for Ubuntu as well. Ubuntu users can also add their own repositories, same as openSUSE. What makes Ubuntu more attractive on this front is that if there is a popular software application or theme, there is usually a dedicated PPA for it: Minitube, VirtualBox (latest stable), LibreOffice (latest stable), Firefox (Beta, Aurora & Nightly), Chromium (Dev & Beta), Opera (latest stable & Next), Audacious (latest stable), Midori (latest stable, dev & Nightly), Beatbox (latest stable). Because Ubuntu is such a popular platform, it gets a lot of the latest software faster. The possible exception to this is GNOME. The only contender I can think of is the AUR on Arch Linux which is sometimes more up-to-date than the Ubuntu PPA for a particular application. The KDE versus GNOME debate is old and pointless. It all depends on your needs. The last consistent GNOME desktop was version 2. Version 3 makes significant interface changes every update: 3.0, 3.2, 3.4 are most consistent with each other. 3.6 breaks consistency (see Nautilus and the confusing use of menus) but will likely be more consistent with 3.8 (which brings a whole load of touch-friendly interface items such as big, space-wasting buttons and white-space). KDE had their own major shake-up with version 4.0 but matured by 4.5 and is very usable by version 4.9. It's usable but I have not had a very stable experience with KDE: Desktop composition is interrupted for obscure reasons (not my graphics card; I've got an NVidia with 512 MB of dedicated graphics), Plasma crashes whenever it wants to (sometimes every time I try to shutdown my laptop. Applications crash whenever they get grumpy and it's been a nightmare for me losing data in big chunks. The experience of other's experience may differ.
I did try Linux Mint 13, it was great. I can play multimedia files right away, run Java apps, unrar, ... without installing more packages