i would like opinions for some versions of linux that are light weight and most of all easy to use. most of all, easy to use. i've got older versions of puppy linux, DSL, and austrumi linux. all of these are light weight and can run in memory or something. but i want to be able to use some features and access my hdd copy/paste useless txt files all over the place, internet access and other unnecessary activity. i have just never found them very easy to use. ubuntu/knoppix and the variants 'seem' easy to use and all, but bigger than i want. opinions please. {update} i want to mention that i'm not looking for technical details or specifics. i'm looking for something for my wife 'that just works'. i dont really care about frills and thrills. internet just needs to work and be able to save the occasional word (or MS Office compatible) document. most of all i'm looking for speed and ease of use for her sake.
try the latest puppy.. maybe installed to usb. check their forums for the bleeding edge and modified special purpose apps. bloody M$ proprietary formats are a bugbear for any open source users.. M$ change things at will ignoring standards. abiword deals with M$ .doc format docs.. usually.
Yeah puppy's pretty speedy even running from cd,sabayon fluxbox is pretty minimal both the gnome & KDE versions,to be honest linux doesn't bog down the comp like windows does even tho linux can have a stack of programs installed if using full install,tho 9.10 KDE with it's vista like prog menu & eye candy can play games with an 8-9 y/o comp i have,in the end every thing has a learning curve the more you use the software the easier it becomes
I use Puppy as my main distro now as it does everything i need. Very easy to access any hard drive partitions on the same PC, plus any USB devices, here sda1 (C: drive, Windows 7) is mounted, plus sdc1 (a 4GB USB stick) and sdb1 (a 1GB Sony MP3 player) ~ Here is 'Pnethood' scanning the network and showing all network shares off the main media PC ~ Here it's playing TV (Freeview) via a Freecom USB DVB-T stick ~ edit- it even runs Seti@home ~ (I don't run Seti all the time, on any machine, but being as this Puppy machine is on most of the time i thought i might as well run Seti on it).
that's all fancy and good, but that's more than what my wife needs. i'll keep experimenting with settings and stuff to see if i can make puppy an easy environment for her to use. can you post info on the different types if IM programs there are, and/or how well they interact with facebook/myspace/youtube? i ran into trouble with youtube. puppy kept crashing, but i didnt know what to look for to stop it. i guess i should hit the puppy forums instead of AD. well i'm off...
My point was simply to illustrate that all the basics are provided in/with Puppy, and for me it's sometimes easier to get a message across with piccies. The whole point of Puppy is that you don't have to experiment and mess, most everything works 'out of the box'. What version of Puppy are you using ?, plus what's the spec of the PC ?. As you'll see in my screenshots i use Amsn and Pidgin (though i prefer Amsn), you'll see the icons down in the taskbar at the bottom of the pics. I don't waste my time on facebook and myspace type sites (sorry, i feel strongly about such sites, my disdain for them is hard to hide!) but i do frequent youtube from time to time. I keep all the specific 'pet' files ie programs/packages that i've added to the 'out of the box Puppy' (not that there's many) that i download so i can point you towards known working programs such as Amsn, Pidgin, etc etc, but as i say, most everything just works without installing anything, that's the whole point of distro's like Puppy.
@ creaky Is that a dock i see me wants or is it taskbar As tho the admin heard you asking about distro's there's one on the Home page this morning,link provided is downloads section,it's based from debian sorta looks like xp http://www.afterdawn.com/software/alternative_platforms/linux_software/simplymepis.cfm screen shot at distro watch http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis
It's Enlightenment, used it for years at work, was ecstatic when i found it running under Puppy ~ http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=macpup - saved me having to install it myself. Haven't used Mepis before so don't know anything about that. edited for spelling
Sweet! The second part of my post above yours was for the OP,it's the first time i've seen a distro being mentioned on the home page since that's where i go 1st when i'm here,i figured what a coincidence
gentlemen, thank you for your assistance. i've got puppy linux. 4.3.1 or whatever is latest. had it since last week, but still need to really test it. i'll finally get a chance to test it for real in a few days on my wife's pc. until i do, i'll probably give it a go on my P2 300MHz Acer from '98-'99 just to see how well one of my super old proprietary boxes can handle it. i've seen and heard of mepis. it was about 3+ years ago when i heard about them. didnt give them much of a chance back then. but as for myself, i've always been interested in learning to use linux, just never making time to sit down and use any single distro for any given amount of time. too busy being swallowed up by the microsoft machine to tear myself away from it for too long. i got my first real taste of linux back at my friend's house. sitting up trying to dual boot 98 and some gnome variant, about 10-ish years ago. since then i've come across or thought about using: knoppix, ubuntu & variants, puppy, redhat, DSL, linux mint, mepis, geexbox, austrumi, pclinuxos, myth(buntu), and probably 4 more that i can't remember right now. i do like knoppix and ubuntu but that's probably because i've tried to use them more than the others. it had a wide range of HW support right out the box. puppy, austrumi, dsl are decent because they're small and i can load them in ram on most computers to free up my CDRW or whatever. i think that's neat. the others, i never really gave a lot of thought about for whatever lame reason that i didnt give much thought about. anyway, i've got a plan. time to put it in motion. thanks.
mepis is an antique.. maybe somebody updated it, but really I wouldn't bother. My memory of it is from the days when the choice was slackware or debian.. or roll your own. I roll my own. I love the converted creakster.. he never heard of puppy till I started spamming their new releases in the linux forums. The way that little distro has grown in the last 4 years is awesome (asy hi to Alienjeff for me if you post on their forums) Puppy will work very well on your p2 .. as long as it has 128 ram.. any less and you will have to build your own setup from some distro core install and add bits like a desktop and browser to it as you go. Sounds hard, but really it's not a bother. I have a lovely homebrew debian running on a 486 with 32mb ram. Check out the puppy forums for install options. I'm interested in the frugal install, but I haven't tried it.. too busy messing with QNX
