Linux Mint E17

[AlbertP]

If I remember correctly, the old NT 4.0 computer has 512 MB of RAM so it should run. Anyway, it's not till November that I can get access to that box and at the moment, NT 4.0 runs just fine on it.

The computer only needs to run 1 program, to scan barcodes and save them somewhere, and I'm unsure whether that program runs in Wine. I'm also not quite sure if the barcode reader is supported by Linux. So maybe I need to stick with Windows there.
But I'll probably try Linux in November.

edit: The computer has become redundant; I haven't been able to rescue it.

[nunol]

512MB of RAM is enough to run Mint 11, a E17 desktop with Ubuntu or Debian as base should work fine.

[wlake]

My latest desktop using merlwiz79's ppa for E17 on top of Mint 11. Thanks to merlwiz79. His boot is better than mine. I'm running this on an HP laptop with Nvidia proprietary driver. On a cold boot I'm at 139 MB.

screen2.jpg (108.8 KiB) Viewed 4163 times

[athenroy]

I'd support an E17 version as well! I tried the eLive version and to it's credit it detected all the Windows machines on my network and gave me access to them, but as you say, no support and the hidden fee. Puppy Linux has a MacPup version that uses E17, don't laugh, the latest 525 version is getting pretty sophisticated, now! I tried it this morning, it's that new! Other than that, probably PCLinuxOS would be the way to go on E17. If you want a flashy distro you can also check out Ultimate Edition. It would be nice to have a Mint E17, though!

[athenroy]

Sorry, didn't see the above screen shot and info!

[nunol]

I'd support an E17 version as well! I tried the eLive version and to it's credit it detected all the Windows machines on my network and gave me access to them, but as you say, no support and the hidden fee. Puppy Linux has a MacPup version that uses E17, don't laugh, the latest 525 version is getting pretty sophisticated, now! I tried it this morning, it's that new! Other than that, probably PCLinuxOS would be the way to go on E17. If you want a flashy distro you can also check out Ultimate Edition. It would be nice to have a Mint E17, though!

You also have Bodhi Linux, a nice E17 distro based on Ubuntu.

[merlwiz79]

My latest desktop using merlwiz79's ppa for E17 on top of Mint 11. Thanks to merlwiz79. His boot is better than mine. I'm running this on an HP laptop with Nvidia proprietary driver. On a cold boot I'm at 139 MB.

I was just seeing how low I could go with leaving the basic startup apps.
I was missing network manager since I have Exalt installed.
I would recommend using Network Manager as it has more capabilities.
Now that I re-enabled everything I'm at 160MBs for memory usage.
That's still low for what it can do.
I'm getting tired of Thunar though as it's slow to open when you 1st use it.
I think they have it searching the network the instant you open it instead of when you click network.
The only things I don't like about e17 is that they make it hard to configure for distros and they are taking for ever to make it.
Really how many years is it now that it's been in development?
DR17 or E17 has been in development since December 2000.
Wow going on 11 years now!

[AlbertP]

Indeed, in 11 years of development they have made a great DE. (Note that other DE's are even older, Gnome 1997, KDE 1996)
And in 20 years, many people from all over the world have made the great platform where it can run on: the Linux kernel.
Now they only have to make a proper SiS 741 driver and I'm happy. Anyway, Vesa is a bad driver but at least internet works here.

[merlwiz79]

Indeed, in 11 years of development they have made a great DE. (Note that other DE's are even older, Gnome 1997, KDE 1996)
And in 20 years, many people from all over the world have made the great platform where it can run on: the Linux kernel.
Now they only have to make a proper SiS 741 driver and I'm happy. Anyway, Vesa is a bad driver but at least internet works here.

Well I don't think you understood my point.
Gnome devs haven't been working on Gnome 3 for 11yrs or KDE devs on KDE 4 for 11yrs.
They have been working on e17 for 11 years.

[brim4brim]

I'd appreciate it if a designer could make Linux Mint theme for E17.

I have it setup on LMDE but most of the stuff (including the themes) on exchange don't work at all for me. I got one theme I look to install and work. Some of the others installed but don't look right with recent changes to E17.

I think they really need to sort that stuff out. It seems a lot more disorganised than Gnome or KDE but a nicer place to work and very light weight, runs faster than any other DE for me on my machine though I got E17 compiled from source by using Easy_17.sh script which is the best way to get it setup on Mint at the moment. Very easy and the script can update the install afterwards too but doesn't have a notifier about updates or anything. Worth a look though, most of the best gadgets are installed with E17.

[Colonel Panic]

Sorry to contradict, but I think 512 MB is barely enough to run Mint 11. The installer hangs around the timezone setter, for one thing.

An E17 Mint sounds good though.

[AlbertP]

The Mint 10 Live CD needed an awful lot of RAM (450+ MB) when idling. But Mint 11 32-bit just runs fine on 512 MB machines, consuming 200-250MB when idle and 400-500MB during install. 64-bit needs a bit more RAM, so doesn't always install fine on 512 MB RAM.

But this also depends on the hardware. A computer with lots of cards in slots and lots of devices connected usually has quite some loaded kernel modules, even if you don't use that hardware.

[Colonel Panic]

Yeah I think you're right, the problem seems to be in the installation. I've seen someone else say (on a different distro's forum) that his installation on Mint 11 LXDE slowed to a crawl at the same point mine did, and he also had 512 MB of RAM. Once it was installed though, he said it ran fine.

I'm going to make a suggestion soon, for those of us with older computers; how about a text-based installer, such as some of the Slack-based distros like Vector and Zenwalk have?

[nunol]

The text based installer was already suggested in other threads but is not necessary because you can install Mint 11 with less than 256MB of RAM.

If you have 512MB of RAM or less make sure you have a SWAP partition before running the installer, if necessary use Puppy or other low RAM distro do create the SWAP partition.

Mint 11 has a boot option you can use to run the installer in a low RAM mode, it's the "only-ubiquity" boot option. Use without the "".

With a SWAP partition and the "only-ubiquity" boot option it's possible to install Mint 11 on a computer with only 192MB of RAM but it's very slow. The lowest RAM computer I use Mint 11 is a 256MB Toshiba laptop but the main OS on that computer is Mint 10 LXDE with a few things removed to save RAM.

[Colonel Panic]

The text based installer was already suggested in other threads but is not necessary because you can install Mint 11 with less than 256MB of RAM.

If you have 512MB of RAM or less make sure you have a SWAP partition before running the installer, if necessary use Puppy or other low RAM distro do create the SWAP partition.

Mint 11 has a boot option you can use to run the installer in a low RAM mode, it's the "only-ubiquity" boot option. Use without the "".

With a SWAP partition and the "only-ubiquity" boot option it's possible to install Mint 11 on a computer with only 192MB of RAM but it's very slow. The lowest RAM computer I use Mint 11 is a 256MB Toshiba laptop but the main OS on that computer is Mint 10 LXDE with a few things removed to save RAM.

Thanks for replying. I'll give that boot option a go.

Best,

CP .

[merlwiz79]

I'm slowly updating the PPA with the latest svn downloads from yesterday.
The wizard seems to be broken since they changed it and forced [url="http://connman.net/"]ConnMan[/url] to be used by default no matter what.
Not sure if anyone would use ConnMan as it's probably missing features that Network Manager has.
ConnMan can't be installed with Network Manager or Wicd which is what a lot of people use.
Which you can enable in Startup apps.
It has always been disabled in the Debian packages so I built a patch to remove it from being compiled and loaded.
I then had the wizard skip it.
It also has a lot of configurations skipped by default and won't show when set to display them.(menu select, ibar, extra desktop files, default icon theme, battery, cpufreq, temperature, backlight, mixer, composition, favorites and desktop links)
I have setup a default config install for ibar if you use the wizard.
I tried to add default settings for the desktop links and fileman favorites but that one doesn't seem to want to copy the files.
I also forced the profiles to select the menu I created for Enlightenment since the wizard didn't select it like it was suppose to.

The Wizard is only run on 1st login or if you select it to in profiles.
All settings can be fixed through Enlightenment settings.

[psykonerd]

Re : E17
I discovered E17 last week, and boy I was excited. It's so beutifull, beyond words. I installed Sabayon-xfce and gave the command "sudo equo install enlightenment" and bam !! it was there beutifull ass HELL

[Sammaul]

Bodhi is a very nice distro using E17...I run it on a older desktop that has gig of ram and Athalon Dual Core...out of the box install, runs superquick, and it beautiful. All I had to do was install LibreOffice, and Firefox. I install it on friends older machines to save them money...run Linux instead of forking over cash for a new machine when ya don't need too! And to a person, once the settling in period was over, they all feel it is a better OS than the Windows(usually XP) OS they used previously. Obsolete this Microsoft!

[Goz]

Yeah, that's why I so desperately want a mint one. E17 has the potential to be the best DE ever. I think if a distro like Mint did it, it would be... Any suggestions how how we can get one started?

I agree..And add in ecomorph and you'd have one seriously stunning desktop on your hands!

[Goz]

MoonOS sadly doesn't have ecomorph, something I feel that the Linux Mint devs would gladly implement.

So true. I think ecomorph would be the icing on the cake and take the os to a whole new level.