Quackers Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 Trying to give Linux ago, as i only have 1 box at work running it and thats our Asterisk VoIP server running on CentOS, and the most i have done is used ifconfig and vi to edit a few config files. Thought i would try Ubuntu as thats the one thats chatted about a lot, and well, i just did not like the interface at all. Do any other distros have majorly different GUI?
glennda Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 You can change the gui - bet then if your using linux command line is best
jinnantonnixx Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 (edited) KDE underwent radical changes a while ago - it didn't suit me, so I went to Gnome. Guess what - Gnome is undergoing (undergone) radical changes with Gnome 3. I tried Gnome 3, and it's OK. I use Ubuntu with the standard Unity interface. At first, I didn't like it. It was new and strange. I went to/from Gnome 3, not quite sure if I liked it or not. Now, I'm back with Unity and love it. I find it fast, clean and efficient. I can do everything I want in a click or two. For me, OS menu systems seem archaic now. But that's me, I enthuse about Unity but I know many dislike it. Trying to argue with personal preferences is largely a waste of time, but if you don't like Unity, you can change it easily - there's no need to change distros just because you don't like the default desktop environment. For a more traditional interface, you could try the excellent LXDE or XFCE. Installing these interfaces is just a click away in Ubuntu, you can choose your desktop environment when you log in. Edited February 4, 2012 by jinnantonnixx
jinnantonnixx Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 If you want to try something that isn't Ubuntu, Sabayon should be the next thing you look at. Hardly anybody knows about it, but I don't know why. It's a tremendous distro. It's got good hardware recognition, and is very up-to-date. Sabayon | Home
kabads Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 I used to use ubuntu a lot, but since they changed the UI to unity, I can't get on with it. Switched to Linux Mint since December and haven't looked back since. It does what I want out and does it quickly too.
CyberNerd Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 I used to use ubuntu a lot, but since they changed the UI to unity, I can't get on with it. Switched to Linux Mint since December and haven't looked back since. It does what I want out and does it quickly too. ^ This
koryo Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 ^ This Seconded, i do prefer the mint interface at the moment. The whole mint experience seems to be quite nice so far.
jinnantonnixx Posted February 4, 2012 Posted February 4, 2012 Personal preferences, eh! I tried Mint and disliked the menu system - it reminded me of the KDE Kickoff menu which always irritated me. Well, that's the beauty of Linux. I may be the lone voice who loves Unity, but everyone's entitled to my opinion... 1
featured_spectre Posted February 5, 2012 Posted February 5, 2012 Unity is ideal for the tablets but not for desktop At the minute I am working on my own custom distro which installs what I want on the initial install
mister_z Posted February 5, 2012 Posted February 5, 2012 FWIW, you can get Fedora "spins" with different interfaces, see Fedora Spins, including KDE (my preference), XFCE, etc. And with the base install, you can choose either Gnome 3 or KDE, and tyou can even install the cinnamon variant. Cheers.
JJonas Posted February 5, 2012 Posted February 5, 2012 (edited) Mint is currently getting more hits on Distrowatch I running Ubuntu 11.10 but I switched the unity interface for Gnome Classic see How to revert to GNOME Classic? - Ask Ubuntu - Stack Exchange You could also try LXDE which I believe is a good starting point for someone trying to leave Windows Edited February 5, 2012 by JJonas
OB1 Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) You could also try LXDE which I believe is a good starting point for someone trying to leave Windows I Run LXDE at home and Gnome2 at work, both on top of Ubuntu. Don't forget, one of the beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) things about Linux is that if you don't like something, you can change it! I'd recommend sticking with one distro and changing the desktop environment until you find one you like. I tried no less than 8 of the ones here before I settled on my current setups. Most distributions have a simple way of installing new software, e.g. apt-get on Ubuntu or portage on Debian. Desktops can be installed and removed through these systems just like anything else. Edited February 6, 2012 by OB1
Achandler Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 I moved from Ubuntu to CentOS, as CentOS is meant to be supported on HyperV. It works better then Ubuntu did on HyperV anyway, so i'm sticking for now but I'm not a fan of the Fedora/ Red Hat way of making websites, I changed my .confs to look liek ubuntu and it makes way more sense
shenley Posted February 6, 2012 Posted February 6, 2012 FWIW, you can get Fedora "spins" with different interfaces, see Fedora Spins, including KDE (my preference), XFCE, etc. And with the base install, you can choose either Gnome 3 or KDE, and tyou can even install the cinnamon variant. The basic Fedora 16 DVD gives you a choice of KDE4, Gnome 3, LXDE, XFCE or no GUI. I installed it yesterday on a EEE PC, with just a CLI. Personally I use Mandriva as my distro and IceWM, but the latter is perhaps not the best choice for a noob. However if you want to a configure something yourself, IceWM isn't too bad and I think it will give you a nice grounding in editing config files. I also favour rpm based distros
crutchfieldj Posted February 7, 2012 Posted February 7, 2012 If you want to learn unix/linux its worth trying to do as much with the CLI as possible. I recommend Ubuntu Server.
Andrew_C Posted June 11, 2013 Posted June 11, 2013 OK; I'll drag this one up from the archives instead of starting a new thread... I'm looking for a distro to stick on an old, slow laptop. For home use, mostly browsing, but an "Office"esque package would be useful. Needs a GUI, but also needs to be light and Noob friendly. I've got Ubunto on it, and boy is it slow. Any thoughts? (Other than bin it and buy a new one, I'm buying a new house this month!)
difinity Posted June 11, 2013 Posted June 11, 2013 Have a look here, 5 versions to take a look at. Top 5 lightweight Linux distros for older PCs | The Linux Site 1
OB1 Posted June 11, 2013 Posted June 11, 2013 Have a look here, 5 versions to take a look at. Top 5 lightweight Linux distros for older PCs | The Linux Site I had driver issues with puppy, but that was on a decrepit old celeron laptop. Had no issues with Lubuntu on the same hardware, and now use it's desktop environment, LXDE, whatever distro I've got.
jinnantonnixx Posted June 11, 2013 Posted June 11, 2013 (edited) I've used JoliOS/Jolicloud with success on old bits of rubbish. It's a curious cloud-ish distro, a bit like ChromeOS is some ways. Jolicloud - Joli OS It runs like greased grease. Edit: I notice that you can now sign in with a Google ID. Edited June 11, 2013 by jinnantonnixx
jinnantonnixx Posted June 11, 2013 Posted June 11, 2013 (edited) Also, there's SolusOS. This is a nice, fast distro based on Debian stable but with the classic (and very usable) Gnome 2.3. It differs from its mother OS (Debian) as it comes with pre-installed media codecs and more up-to-date versions of Firefox, VLC, etc. It's a very nice distro and well worth a look. Welcome | SolusOS Edited June 11, 2013 by jinnantonnixx
SHimmer45 Posted June 17, 2013 Posted June 17, 2013 wiped my win 7 pc (4GB low power athlon) and installed fedora 18 XFCE on it quite please so far some teething issue due to the fact i havent used nix for donkeys and not for any length of time. current issue is getting mapped network shares to survive a reboot, need to add some entries to fstab i gather
pcstru Posted June 17, 2013 Posted June 17, 2013 We put Mint on some old Samsung P28's and it seemed to work very well.
mats Posted June 17, 2013 Posted June 17, 2013 Lubuntu works well on old hardware. I tried Suse in a vm the other week - very slick and polished but it's red hat based and I know debian much better. Consequently, it also uses RPM and I do love a bit of apt-get magic.
Netwacky87 Posted June 17, 2013 Posted June 17, 2013 I would love to run linux right as I think Microsoft are just going wrong in there OS design, windows 8 just sucks IMO (remember thats my opinion ) I have tried Ubuntu, Mint Linux (which ran like a dog on my laptop) I just cannot get on with Linux, it always seems like an effort to do something on it, nothing seems simple like Windows. Am I doing something wrong? I can do stuff but it just seems like a faff! I would like something that looks like the old Windows XP theme but stable as linux, ideally
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now