Advice for OS needed

To quote Mina - “Despite being a bit tired of the constant advertising…"
And other moderator getting perturbed…

we now have … #150 above

it makes a lot of sense to have their two main distributions (ubuntu + mint) as categories.”

I am also very tired of the constant advertising of ubuntu and mint and find this duplicity, hypocrisy and double standards quite amusing… add on 124 x Howard and all the Fanboys it starts to challenge Fawlty Towers and Monty Python… :rofl:

Even more amusing… :joy: "being as newcomer-friendly as possible…” :rofl:
What :flushed: ubuntu newcomer-friendly as possible… :confounded: :scream: priceless… :rofl:
Hilarious… funniest thing I’ve read on it’sFOSS
Who would want to start out with ubuntu-20 with all sorts of issues “very heavy on resources” - eating up CPU and RAM making it so slow, even with 6GiB RAM. Visitor rating 7.5 Distractions and gliches too… what a pile of Cr4p for a beginner to contend with…?
I should know - started out with ubuntu 16.04 LTS which I have just wiped from my Dell E6420 along with Win10-Pro. Should have done this 12 months back.

Guess what I have installed, visitor rating 8.7 (Wife; Maggie uses it too for banking - emails etc; we are both OAPs) - just to see how fast it is, before checking out Parabola - based on the Arch distribution, Parabola is a complete, user-friendly operating system, suitable for general “everyday” use, while retaining Arch’s “power-user” charm. Or some other Arch distro perhaps…?

Thanks for the good fun - take extra care to stay safe :mask:

Edit: Just dived in to repeat the ubuntu test with Trisqel v9 on the same Dell E6420 laptop…


As ALL can see 1.0GiB RAM (ubuntu 1.7GiB) so ubuntu grabs 70% more resource and 15% av CPU with ubuntu 20%.
This confirms DistroWatch’s findings - ubuntu is SLOW whereas they found Trisquel was highly responsive. As for ease of use there is just no comparison…

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My dear @Andy2 : You got me completely wrong. I want the forum to be as newcomer friendly as possible. It is simply a fact that most new users start their journey into Linux with Ubuntu or Mint without being aware of their similarity.

In addition, I still find it disturbing how you constantly describe the great and mostly voluntary effort of people to create user-friendly distributions as “pile of crap”. Whilst it is fine to point out the strengths of other people’s creations, I don’t consider these kinds of comments to be in accordance with the spirit that should keep the FOSS community together.

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Hi Mina - I trust that you did actually read the review this time…? You did so…! Well; as you and I have clashed before on reviews by this very experienced unbiased tester - I can’t understand your reasoning at all - It takes a certain amount of arrogance to dismiss his findings as Akito does with mine…! Without a shred of evidence so far…
Just substitute “what a pile of Cr4p for a beginner to contend with…?" with the very experienced author’s “distribution does not feel polished or smooth once it is installed - lot of little problems, distractions, and glitches too. I’d recommend passing on this release and hoping things get ironed out in time for Ubuntu 21.04.
Further he notes “Software would consume 100% of my CPU endlessly, even after 20 minutes of waiting for a result.” - However, clicking the Livepatch icon brings up a message saying Livepatch is not available for this release. Which I suppose raises the question of why it was included in the menu for 20.10."
I think I called out this ubuntu quite correctly - you do not have to put up with any of the crap above when using Trisquel…
Perhaps this explains DistroWatch’s user rating of just 7.5 for ubuntu and 8.7 for Trisquel? There again I suspect you two know better…?

When potential Linux users check out it’sFOSS to find what to use - first up they get ubuntu - no bias or bad advice here then…?

1 ubuntu … quote “Easy to use” - Surely the funniest advice on the web… :joy:
2 Mint… quote “Performs great with older hardware” what a joke… :joy:

At least I try to redress the current imbalance and provide some good advice (AFAIK)
Then, when they install default ubuntu-20.10 - to be confronted with all that crap listed above - it will put some newcomers off for life. Surely we can do better than this…? :thinking:

https://ubuntu.com/blog/tag/microsoft

https://ubuntu.com/wsl

Wo…! Shock Horror it’sFOSS has never heard of NSA’s compliant mega dollar Mzoft tied up with Canabolical…? Wo! never heard of IOM registration for tax avoidance - F1 champ has… he buys his jet aircraft from there.
Get real - give me a break - who are you trying to kid…?

Apr 1, 2016 7:51 am PDT 

Before I post a link to an article, I always check the date. The article is, as seen above, very old and barely any bad points mentioned are still valid in 2021.

P.S.: Perhaps it also has a meaning, that it was posted on April 1st…

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Will look a bit deeper for you - I was a bit short of time…
The hook is still the same as it ever was…
Follow the money… Not that charitable jive :laughing:

@Andy2 I actually did read the review and to me, it looks fair and professionally written. The issues, the author points out, seem to be a bit more than little annoyances. To name issues like stalling programs in reviews is of paramount importance to developers: Often enough, a small patch can fix these things.

However, this doesn’t invalidate the fact that most newcomers to Linux will start their experience with Ubuntu or one of its derivatives, often Mint. Therefore, I stand with my position that it makes sense to feature those distributions prominently on this discussion board.

As far as your devastating review of Aquil Roshan’s itsFOSS article goes, I won’t discuss it as I haven’t tried enough distributions deeply enough to offer a truly founded opinion. As I stated on earlier occasions: When something works for me, I stick with it. My workhorse distribution has been Kubuntu for the last ten years or so, and I am still happy with it, without claiming that it were the best distribution ever. Even though I am also quite happy with the Garuda installation on my laptop, I don’t see myself replacing my desktop OS any time soon: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

I reckon that you do a fine job pointing out that there are well-designed alternatives to Ubuntu and Mint, but I cannot overlook the great job that their respective developers have done in order to ease previous users of closed source operating systems the step into the open source world. That’s why I go ballistic when somebody tries to denigrate their efforts. Being a Linux user for 20 years and an IT-professional/developer for almost as long, I know how far we got in terms of everyday usability and ease of administration in these years and how much work went into these achievements without the backing and resources of multi-billion-dollar companies.

You say, the statement Linux Mint performs fine with older hardware was a joke. I don’t think so. I reckon that different generations have different notions of what qualifies as older hardware. For a 23 years old student, a computer from 2015 qualifies as old whilst for you and me with a couple more decades lived, it is a crisp and modern device.

Regarding the MS/Canonical deal, I can’t say much. I haven’t looked into the details and I don’t use Windows anyway. If I had to, for professional reasons, I always used the Cygwin environment to have the GNU tools at hand and especially the X-Server for remote work on Linux machines, so it simply wouldn’t occur to me to install Ubuntu under Windows.

Still, I fully understand Canonical’s interest to put food on the table of their employees.

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Hey @Mina very good response - well intentioned and softly spoken too. I am quite happy to leave it at that - we just disagree - fine.

Tri-v9-Lightweight-01

What I can’t understand is your apparent lack of understanding of the simple data in my test posts - #136 Mint performance on old hardware “look at those CPU cores running at 62% just watching the same video in the same tab page as before - that’s 220% more than Trisquel…” If you look at the CPU chart you can even see them peaking at 100% hence my laughter at it’sFOSS quote “Performs great with older hardware” what a joke… and the RAM usage increase also. Perfect recipe for life in the slow lane - even at 70 years of age I still like fast and snappy hence my recommendations for any version of Ttrisquel. :slightly_smiling_face: :clap: Is there anything stable out there that is faster I would be glad to know - thanks…???
Regarding age of hardware I have now also installed Trisquel v9 on my fairly modern power user quad core Dell E6420 and conducted the same tests which of course confirm I am still in the fast lane in my Radical on my way to “broke the Nürburgring Nordschleife track record with a time of 6 minutes 48 seconds driven by Michael Vergers. Remarkably, the record lap was done on the same set of tires that were used to drive the car from factory in England to the track in Germany.” I have helped the Radical team and the Trisquel team of Spanish students inspired by Richard Stallman.

Trisquel do not operate out of an IOM - Isle of Man tax haven and are quite strapped for cash though grants and donations do help.
So this belief or distraction over hardware age - two decades - is just plain nonsense SFAIK.
Not mentioning the dreadful SNAP issue with ubuntu - the huge Elephant in the room is that Msoft is Closed Source software that infects your devices. You would have thought it’sFOSS would have got right behind the gnulinux project and the FsF principles - but no; they promote the direction of closed source commercial spyware…!
Before all the Fanboys and groupthink leap in - please check out the four basic freedoms first and check if it applies to ubuntu or mint for that matter.
Would you buy a new car with so many known faults… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :thinking: :laughing:

Please ALL; do take EXTRA care to stay safe… :mask:
regards - Lone Voice :wink:

Hi to all and especially to @easyt50 Howard (as he so kindly asked): :wave:

Yesterday I did it, I really did it. I finally did a fresh/clean install as I didn´t want to wait until next April.
I opted for Lubuntu once again. :blush:
So I am on Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS now.

Installation went well. It was done in about 20 mins. After that: updates of course.
Those consumed about 15 mins. So all in all everything went very fast indeed.

Lubuntu 20.04.1 runs smoothly as far as I can say and it´s still very lightweight. :+1:

Some minor issues (not so minor to me) are still giving me some headache though. :slightly_frowning_face:

But thanks so much to all of you :kissing_smiling_eyes: for your great help and advice.
It´s so much appreciated.

Many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’d rather say: Thank you for giving us the welcome pretext to engage in this lovely discussion!

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@Mina:

Hi Mina,

thanks so much for your kind words. :heart_eyes:

I´ve certainly been enjoying the discussion as much as you have.

As for those issues: it may very well be that I´ll turn to you all for help once again if I can´t resolve them on my own.
In that case I´ll open up a new thread.
I hope you won´t mind. :blush:

Thanks again and many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think, I speak for every regular visitor of this forum when I say: Any person as lovely and polite as you will always find help here, as long as it doesn’t exceed our respective or collective knowledge.

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Hi @Mina,

thank you so much for your kind words. I feel very honored. :blush:

So I take the liberty of posting a new thread here:

Many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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On
DELL Latitude e4310
and
HP p6506f
and
DELL Latitude D830
I have tried to install both
parabola-dual-openrc-lxde-2020.08.03-netinstall.iso
and
parabola-x86_64-systemd-lxde-2019.06-pre-complete.ixi.

And the first thing I get is :
This computer does not satisfy some of the recommended requirements for installing Parabola.

Well, that is very polite.

But is it notifying/enlightening me that it can do better than MS without helping to solve the problem ?

YES, it tells me that I have to comply to the trend.
PITA

Any reason why you chose Parabola? Any reason why not try Zorin OS Lite?

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Good question: I am trying them all ; is my best answer.

I did try Zorin-OS-15.3-Core-64-bit.iso
and it was ok

please see my post dated 4 days ago

My first Debian attempt - And a second one

I tried the second one (2019.06) and the live version worked fine. I didn’t try to install it, preferring to stay with more up-to-date distros. If Zorin works for you, I’d stay with that. Otherwise, experiment away! That’s part of the fun of Linux.

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Another reason is that Parabola is within this list

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oh, a little over a year or two, I think. and here it is 2013, haha.
Anyway I’ve tried a lot of Distros lately and ended up with Triquel. My hardware is running, little movement in the system- just how I like it. The only thing I had to install is the AMD graphics driver.

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Prepare for being mentioned a million times and being spammed with PMs the whole time. :weary:

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Hi all,
I know this is a rather olde thread, but I just wonder why nobody mentioned OpenSuse here?? You have Leap as stable release and Tumbleweed as rolling release. I compared Linux Mint 20.1 with both of them and Mint was tausing more memory then both of them. I was quite surprised as I would have thought that OpenSuse with KDE is very ressource hungry, but it does not seem to be. Leap 15.2 was taking least memory on my virtual machines out of these 3 distributions.

But I must say that i like Mint for its simplicity… :slight_smile: