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Note: Typed this out last year but never got around to posting it.
I’ve been meaning to install Linux on this notebook for quite some time, and finally got around to it Friday.
I started using Linux back in 2002 with Mandrake, and I loved it. They later renamed it Mandriva, and I kept using it. Then I found out that they were disbanding and patches would stop coming, so I switched to kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a KDE desktop instead of that God-awful Gnome desktop. It ran happily on an old HP tower for years until the old tower had a severe hardware failure. I still need to take its hard drive and video card out and install them in the old Dell, which isn’t on my network because it’s running XP.
My first notebook I had like this one was stolen in a burglary five or six years ago. It was the same model as this, and it ran kubuntu very well, far better than its native Windows. With Windows I had to run a program from the ISP to get wi-fi working on it, but it just worked fine on kubuntu without my having to do anything.
So Friday I put it on this notebook dual-boot, since I need Microsoft Word even though I hate Microsoft Word. Knowing it would take a while I plugged in its power, and plugged it into the network for more speed. It took ten minutes to get my part of the installation done, and watched the news as Linux installed.
I booted it up when I was done, and egad, KDE! What have you done?! Yes, it’s a beautiful desktop, but it isn’t the same KDE I’ve been using for almost fifteen years.
What the hell, you stupid wet behind the ears software designers, are you NUTS? Look, you dumbasses, changing an interface all around for no good reason is just brain-dead stupid. I don’t want to learn a brand new God damned interface unless it’s instantly recognizable as an improvement, and this is about the same stupid move Microsoft made with Windows Eight. Look, you morons, if I wanted to learn a new interface I’d install Gnome or something.
Next I wanted to hear music, so I needed on the internet. I tried to connect to my server but simply couldn’t get on with the wi-fi. Strangely, I was able to connect with someone else’s unsecured wi-fi. It had gotten on the internet easily with the network card plugged in.
Someone had said that Libre Office could read and write .doc files well, so I tried it. First I opened an Open Office document, and the font face was some cartoonish sans serif font instead of Gentium Book Basic.
Then I opened a .doc file, and it opened, although instead of Courier it had a different sans serif face.
I wanted to get at some files on my external hard drive, so I plugged the network cable in. It indicated a connection, and I could get on the internet through the router, but the external drive didn’t show up.
I doubt that’s the OS’s fault, though, since it wouldn’t let me connect with my own wi-fi but was fine with someone else’s. I’m pretty sure it’s that damned modem-router that the cable company makes me rent. I’d change ISPs if I weren’t planning to move next Spring.
At any rate, KDE now sucks. Someone said XCFE was good, I’ll have to try it.
(Note: I've been way too busy)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10 2016, @10:47PM
kubuntu
Another distro that is built around KDE is Chakra Linux.
https://chakraos.org/ [chakraos.org]
Note: M$ (who "loves Linux") has recently produced something or other that they, confusingly, also call Chakra.
native Windows
"Pre-installed" is the term you seek.
The only example I can think of of "native Windows" on "general-purpose hardware" is M$'s own Surface RT where any non-Windoze OS is verboten.
wi-fi [...] just worked fine on kubuntu
Teacher says [google.com] "Every time someone says that, a mommy penguin has another cute baby penguin."
it isn’t the same KDE I’ve been using for almost fifteen years
[...]I don’t want to learn a brand new God damned interface
We previously discussed the Trinity desktop environment (a fork of KDE 3.x).
Trinity Desktop Environment R14.0.0 Released! [soylentnews.org]
Someone had said that Libre Office could read and write .doc files well
[...]the font face was some cartoonish sans serif font instead of Gentium Book Basic
On the other site, there is a thing on the front page (well, sometimes--it rotates) that shows the 5 most popular SourceForge items.
#5 is Microsoft Fonts.
Have you installed that?
Note: It comes with a EULA; be sure to read every word of that before clicking "Accept". 8-)
...and, of course, if you stick to plain-vanilla fonts rather than whoopdedoo fonts, that will work well for *everyone* who tries to read the file on his own box.
instead of Courier
What happens if you use LibreOffice to create a file with a Courier font and open that with M$Orifice?
(I'm going to guess that the problem is with M$'s product--specifically, another version-related inconsistency.)
Someone said XCFE was good
Xfce is no longer an initialism.
It started out as the X Forms Common Environment, built with the X Forms widget set but they dropped that toolkit almost immediately.
Xfce is significantly *lighter* than KDE4, so there -may- be some functionality in the GUI that you got used to and now find lacking.
Unless you're a really avid GUI tweaker, I'd bet against that.
Additionally on the toolkit topic, KDE uses Qt and Xfce uses GTK+ (like GNOME does).
You could end up with dependency bloat if you want to continue using the same apps you used to with KDE.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday March 11 2016, @03:40AM
It may be that your wireless network uses WPA encryption, but the wpa_supplicant utility isn't installed, isn't configured, or wasn't started. Here's an example wpa_supplicant.conf:
network={
ssid="YourSSID"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="YourPassphrase"
}
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday March 11 2016, @07:08AM
I can vouch for XFCE. It uses GTK+, but GTK's actually a lot lighter weight than QT. I run XFCE 4.12, the latest stable. The desktop is very fast to load, only comes with the essentials, the interface is extremely customizable, and the Thunar file manager is lightweight yet powerful. I'd definitely give it a go. Went to XFCE when GNOME 3 came out, I haven't looked back.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 1) by tractatus_techno_philosophicus on Friday March 11 2016, @04:45PM
I completely cut the cord with Microsoft after Windows 10's Orwellian "features" became common knowledge. We all have a choice of how we wish to pursue computing, and I personally don't enjoy being treated like livestock.
Over the past 7 months, I've tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint, Debian, Slackware, Absolute (based on Slackware) and Puppy. While I absolutely loved Mint's ease-of-use and its development philosophy, Xubuntu won out because of its speed, usability and amazing driver support (my GeForce GT 740M runs flawlessly, as my FPS in Counterstrike will attest).
If you like a classic-looking desktop, Xubuntu is for you, as Xfce is familiar to all of us who have been using PCs for the past 20 years. Having a community of developers behind you as big as Canonical's does not hurt either.
No moral system can rest solely on authority. ~A.J. Ayer
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 14 2016, @01:10AM
Just for the record, I'm using Devuan with xfce.
Devuan's philosophy seems to involve not throwing away tried and true subsystems that work, among other things.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 14 2016, @02:46AM
Just beware of bugs, call MiB
And don't forget to try out that slackware thing [slackbook.org]. It's the most Unixy Linux!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday March 18 2016, @11:47PM
Yeah, I followed a similar path from Mandrake 9.2 until Mandriva 2011 or so, at which point I jumped to Arch. KDE4 on Arch isn't all bad, and I usually only did two tweaks to get it usable -- change the launcher menu back to an actual damn menu, and shrink the taskbar back down to a reasonable size.
But I too started having issues with KDE. I've got a 2.8GHz Core i7, an SSD, an Nvidia GTX 860M and 12 gigs of RAM. And KDE was still SLOW. Sometimes unbearably so. And it crashed -- not as often as Windows, but still enough to be obnoxious. Or it would crash halfway, some components would die and others would keep running...it was a bloated mess.
So I decided to try Enlightenment. Tried it a few times in the past and never really figured it out, but I'm so glad I finally did. It's got some instability too, but nothing major. Mostly it just sometimes thinks a program crashed when I closed it intentionally (it pops up a dialog window just telling you that something crashed). Otherwise it's great. Due to some graphics driver issues (I swear, this is the LAST DAMN TIME I ever buy an Nvidia card...) I had to switch back to KDE recently and basically I just got no work done for a week until I got Enlightenment working again. Just having more than one window open at a time in KDE felt...claustrophobic.
Basically I'm using Enlightenment as a halfway tiling window manager. No taskbar (it's an option; I disable it) -- I never hide or minimize windows, and I put a clock/notifications/etc all on my desktop with some Conky scripts. So I've got a HUGE virtual desktop (2x3) that I flip through with keyboard shortcuts. I use ALT+arrow -- it's far quicker to reach down and tap that than to scan a taskbar for the right window. I always keep windows in the same location so switching windows is pure muscle memory at this point. And I think seeing the windows slide off the screen like it's physically moving around helps with the mental context switching too. Usually I have just one or two windows on each virtual desktop (17" screen, so I often do ~60% width for a browser/editor and ~40% for a terminal -- semi-transparent terminal so I can still see Conky). And the programs menu is super+m or click an empty spot on the desktop -- and since I don't stack windows I'm always on an empty desktop when I want to open something anyway.
Took a little longer to do the initial configuration exactly as I wanted...but it was definitely worth it. Of course, between the unfamiliar UI and the Dvorak keyboard layout, nobody else can ever use my computer. But that's just a nice bonus ;)