Linux Mint Forums

Just a bit of a blog, not a problem as such.

Background = semi retired ex owner of a computer service centre in a medium sized UK town, mostly Windows of course, but I am a big Mint fan.
Since retiring, have been earning pocket money by turning many folk on in my local area to the joys of Linux (mostly Mint 17 Mate).

OK, I regularly get asked to put LM onto laptops and PCs that are of the "XP" era, as of course many of us do. You know, Dell Latitude D600 / Inspiron 510 & 1100 / Compaq NX series etc etc, all IDE / Pentium mobile or Centreno / 2 gig max ram (or 1gig even) that type of thing. (but old Athlon's = bin it )

I have tried many of the "lightweight" (non pae when required) Distros, LXLE / Sparky / Lubuntu / Peppermint / Legacy OS (with it's html5 browser) / etc / even the latest Puppy

They all work fine for me, but I want something that my customers (many of them are "silver surfers") find familiar (read = as close to XP as possible and LM Mate is good for that). However, even the "lightwieght" versions of LM17 don't work well on the older hardware (like listed above). All the other Distros (mentioned above) have window managers / menu systems that are too "different" or have too much geeky software bundled with them (which confuses folk and can be difficult or time consuming to remove) or have daft things that can go wrong (like remove the sys tray bar in Bodhi Linux by mistake and it's gone for good )

So, I went back a good few years and did a build of LM9, updated it as best I could, removed stuff that my customers won't need (Thunderbird, Pigin, HexChat, Transmission, Gimp, TomBoy etc etc). I ended up with a nice clean, tidy LM9 that worked just fine, even the Firefox Flash issue seems to have gone away . I thought, OK, it might no longer be supported, but it works just fine (and on non pae too). Then a well respected regular on here advised against using LM9 in the wild due, to security issues, which is a shame

I even thought about making my own Distro, with all the carp removed and a "normal" menu and desktop look. But then I researched it and realised this was a quite big task. I am surprised that there isn't one all ready, Lubuntu is close but gets no cigar from me (the latest version being not good on old hardware imho).

Anyone care to comment, or point me in the direction of a Distro that would be as good in respect of my requirements (outlined above)?

still got a PC that is still running Mint 9

and for all those who think that is a bad idea:
- another PC is still running Mint 5
( most of that hardware was running win_xp SP2 )
or =< 256Mb
& one reason, around here, for running those versions still,
is that they are more lightweight than the later Linux Systems ..

or you could just run anti_x
antix.mepis.org

LMDE will work on non-PAE hardware! AntiX works fine, too, and is faster on even older machines... but it lacks Mint's userfriendliness. Bodhi Legacy is much the same, just a little more elegant, and not at all easy to use for a newbie, out of the box.
So I'd give Betsy a try.

Pierre wrote:or you could just run anti_x
antix.mepis.org

Ah, I just downloaded that yesterday evening, not got around to trying it yet.

I have a 16gig usb pen-drive with "MultiSystem" on it to boot into (currently) about 7 different "lightweight" versions of Linux, I will add AntiX (15.1) to it today and give it a whirl.

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Note to moderator(s) = Oops, not only did I pick the wrong section, I now realise I am discussing Distros other than Mint My only excuse for the latter is that I was hoping (against hope) that someone would come along and say "Hey, there is nothing wrong with using LM9, you just need to........."

I ran Mint 9 on one of my old machines until 2014, I also think it was one of the best. The only reason I upgraded was that I came back from the wilderness to civilisation, where the internet lives !

Maybe the lightweight Linux Mint 13 Xfce? It's an LTS edition as well, and it'll receive security updates until May, 2017.

Check it out here (screenshots included):
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... /mint-xfce

Last year, I've put that on many old XP machines. The owners were very happy with it (and still are, I presume).

Pjotr wrote:

ghost123uk wrote:It's just what to do with the Dell D600s (etc) of this world, bin them (they work just fine with LM9)

Maybe the lightweight Linux Mint 13 Xfce? It's an LTS edition as well, and it'll receive security updates until May, 2017

Good idea, I had forgotten to include LM13 in my search I actually had it on a D600 of my own when it first came out. :roll

Mods = Looks like we got a Mint result in the end

9 was a great release

13 though should do you, actually Mate even is pretty good on my eeepc

Other than the menu layout, I find little difference between XFCE and Mate (prefer the Mate Menu). What other performance differences are there ?

I have 2 D600s here at present, I feel a "back to back" test session coming on

Xfce is the most lightweight of all the official Mint flavours. More lightweight than Mate, no doubt about it.

Tip: apply this to-do list after installing Mint 13 Xfce:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... -mint-xfce

Bring back Linux Mint LXDE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ulmlxde/
-H

hinto wrote:Bring back Linux Mint LXDE
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ulmlxde/
-H

I keep on procrastinating about it, but one day I'm going to try this.
BTW: hinto--good to see you around! It's been a while since our paths crossed...

Thanks... I've been around... but bogged down in AWS.
-H

Pjotr wrote:Tip: apply this to-do list after installing Mint 13 Xfce:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... -mint-xfce

Just to say thanks for that Pjotr ^^^
I came across your tips pages a good while ago, and use many of them regularly

Oh yes, Mints 8 (my first), 9 and 10 were all really great releases for me - and for friends and family members too. I came to them as a long-time KDE user who could not adjust to the early releases of KDE 4 - the special Minty spin of Gnome won me over completely, despite initial scepticism .

For your purposes, Mint 13 XFCE may be the best of the Mint family to try (as Pjotr suggests).

I started with Elyssa, then went onto Isadora.... I was hesitant about Maya, because I felt that the upstream changes gave Clem and team way more work to do than normal... I love the current version, 17.x

But I did really like the looks of Mint 9- Isadora.

I got most of the looks back by finding and using a Shiki-type theme, and tweaking things like the icon size and/or the dash panel at the bottom.
I forget exactly which. Isadora had those things bigger, and it made it easier for me to get around. So to get that look, I've enlarged things and have used Shiki-Dust and am currently using Shiki-Spidey to make it slightly more Windows like and give it more visible corner controls.... (hey, I'm 63...)

frodopogo wrote: (hey, I'm 63...)

So am I (tomorrow actually).

Yes the look of mint was good, hell I still often use (on 17.x) that swirly green background on some of my customers machines, I judge what I think they would like, techy, flowers, scenery etc. However, out of all the Distros I have used, and boy I have tried so many, just in the last few days even, out of all of them, LM9 offers the best mix of performance, excellent hardware compatibility, stability and the least amount of fiddling to get it "end user friendly" (***). LM9 does all this so well.

I do miss LM9


(***) = By "end user" I am referring of course to the ordinary guy or gal that knows little about computers and just wants to do the common tasks at home with minimum effort and maximum reliability. 90% of my customers just want:- Internet browsing (Including Flash / html5) / Email (online, not via T/Bird) / Music (including phone & iPod type compatibility) / an "Office" suite and Photographs (including camera jpg import). Most of this is covered (with a few add-ons). I remove a lot of what they don't need from the menus, to tidy them up and to avoid "oh my god, that all looks complicated / alien to me" thoughts. In fact I find most "end users" I deal with are happy with using just the 8 or so Icons I put on the desktop.

There is actually still an unofficial Linux Mint LXDE....
but the catch is that it's in GERMAN.

http://www.linuxmintusers.de/index.php? ... ic=30790.0

Note there are live links on the page (that say "download") to download it in either 32 bit or 64 bit.

You'd have to install it, possibly download language packs and then switch the language to English.

I did something like that with Cubuntu, but I can read French.
I can also read German, but I'm not as highly motivated since all of my computers can handle MATE just fine.

Anyway, I imagine it would be challenging doing that not knowing the language being used in the OS.

Oh yeah.... Linux Mint 9 Isadora was great... I ran it for a long time after it wasn't supported.... it wasn't broken, and Mint 13 seemed not quite as polished as the normal LTS's...so I waited till 17.1 to make the jump.

frodopogo wrote:There is actually still an unofficial Linux Mint LXDE....
but the catch is that it's in GERMAN.

The live session is in German, the installer let you choose what language you want