EmpireITtech wrote:Xfce is a good lightweight DE for LM14 (the version you are using).
I'd give that a try.
I'd like to add my vote for Xfce for your system in Linux Mint 14. I recently installed it, not because I wanted to - I had nothing against Xfce or Mint, just had never used either and was attempting to install a different OS entirely, lol - but because I suddenly found myself with an unbootable laptop (that has a non-functional optical drive) and Mint 14 Xfce on my USB flash drive, so I gave it a shot.
First off, I am very impressed with it. I loved GNOME 2. Yes, I know... MATE. And five minutes after I installed LM14Xfce, I was intending to join this site just to ask, "Can I add MATE to my Xfce without loading down a weak old laptop?" But five minutes after that, I had already customized my system enough that I really like the way it looks/works and really only miss the radar map from GNOME2's weather applet (because I had found a thread on tricking NOAA's website into giving me the address for a customized local animated weather radar map for it and thought that was both neat and useful and do not seem to see such a thing in Xfce's weather applet, although I like everything else about Xfce's weather applet 1000% better - which just proves that nothing is perfect, I guess) and having Nautilus as the file manager, specifically both being able to open a second (/third/fourth/15th I suppose) tab in it to be able to easily compare directories and/or move files back and forth, and because the Nautilus in my old OS included the huge list of scripts that TheeMahn added to it as part of Ultimate Edition. Although, admittedly, I only used a couple of them...
But, anyway, the reason that I wholeheartedly recommend Xfce to you for your system is that your specs are an Intel T2500, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and an ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 graphics card. Here are the specs of my laptop: Intel T2250, 1 gigabyte of RAM, and the most crappy graphics solution ever dreamed up to torture users, Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics. With my old system, I could watch local videos, but viewing fullscreen video via the Internet was basically impossible. If I tried to watch a program in Hulu Desktop in fullscreen, I could do so for about 30 seconds and then my CPU would get so hot that the part of the laptop that my left hand rests on would become quite uncomfortable, the CPU would get locked to 800mHz, and the video would skip frames, studder, and quickly become so messed up that I'd be lucky to be able to activate the "leave fullscreen mode" button. Even viewing those low-resolution videos on Youtube in the little (non-fullscreen) form was a case of view a minute or two, pause the thing and wait for my CPU temperatures to drop below 170°F, start it back up, view a minute or two, pause it long enough for my laptop to stop giving me the "feature" of being able to cook an egg on it, start the video back up, pause it again, get frustrated and go read a book. So you can probably imagine that I wasn't expecting any improvement on this situation when I installed Mint 14 Xce, was mainly just relieved that I had ANY working OS at that point (lol), and was only hoping that it hadn't gotten worse from the countless version upgrades that going from an OS based on an older non-supported Ubuntu to one that is based on the newest, shiniest one (which has happened in the past).
Imagine my utter shock when I realized that not only did I not hear the fan running at a pretty good clip just from sitting idle in the desktop... I am now able to view Internet videos in fullscreen! Even the ones that I watch with the Hulu Desktop app, which I assume are encapsulated in some form of DRM at the insistence of the content-providers. Now don't get me wrong, after watching an hour-long video in it my laptop case is still quite warm and maybe the only reason that I can do so even now is that I am poor enough that I am forced to only heat my house to 55°F (and that is when I am actually going to be in it for a while), so I might lose the ability this Spring when the outdoor temperature gets above that and figure it's a given for the Summer when it gets into the 90s - and humid
- early in the day and doesn't manage to cool off much overnight. But even with it being only a little warmer than "it's almost cool enough to safely hang meat in your living room," as one friend put it, I couldn't do this before.
In short, Mint 14 Xfce has done (what I thought to be) the impossible: It has breathed new life into an 8+ year old laptop that was only barely adequate for routine tasks on the day I was suckered into bringing it home from the store (for a thousand dollars!!!, my buddy's new $499.99 i5 3210 6gig laptop with HD 4000 graphics could eat it for lunch and
still starve to death, lol). And since this computer is pretty much the ONLY thing that keeps me even pretending to be sane in the Winter when I have no work, no money, no heat (to speak of), no transportation other than my boots, and precious little food... I am already telling everyone I know that it is the best invention since sliced bread
.
So give Xfce a try - if it doesn't solve your issue, then your problem is not software-related and must be because someone spilled their can of Mountain Dew into it when you were out of the room. And I don't expect that to be the case, because Mountain Dew is the soft drink equivalent of crack and, therefore, had anyone actually done so, they would most likely have still been there trying to lick the pop out through the vents in your computer's case when you returned.
Hope this helps,
MDM
PS:
HEY CLEM: If you are reading this, I cannot thank you enough, and I want you to know that I hope to some day make a donation to help further the cause (fair warning, it won't be much and it might be
next year since last Spring/Summer/Autumn was pretty bad and this Winter has just about ruined me - and still might manage to - so, unless this year is world's better than last year and significantly better than average, I'll be lucky to recover by the middle of 2014. But, anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I - sincerely - hope that you remember that not everyone who might use linux is able to do so on a fancy new (or even acceptable old, lol) computer and that those of us who are able to use your OS on our broken-down old hardware are that much more likely to do so if we ever manage to obtain something better... And that I hope that you intend to continue to create Xfce editions of your fine, fine OS even though I realize (or at least I think so, I'm not sure exactly who is behind them) that you folks have put a great deal of effort into the fancy new MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments.
