Lisi Reisz wrote: > My husband's box is currently running PCLinuxOS 2009. A dying HDD > necessitates a fresh istallation. > > ***I would be very grateful for help in speeding up the boot process, and > suggestions for a suitable DE or WM.***
i hate to say this on a debian list ;) but i was pretty impressed about the increased boot speed of (x)ubuntu 9.04 and especially using the new ext4 file system. i use this both for beefy desktops and my tiny small netbook and boottime is about 20 secs till the login screen. > > He finds the PCLOS very slow to boot up after the Libranet that he had > installed previously. > > This seems like a good opportunity to install something better and faster. > > I am thinking of Lenny. Stability is important, and there is no call for > anything up-to-date - at least until his processor or motherboard dies. ;-) Lenny is stable for sure and can provide for a great desktop, although i guess it does require some more fiddling under the hood before you have it as you want it probably when compared to PCLOS (never used PCLOS myself) > > It is reasonably important, tho' not a deal breaker, that the visible layer > should look and feel the same as his present one. What is under the hood > will not bother him at all, because he will never raise said hood. > > The details of the desktop are unimportant, but it is important that there be > icons over which I have control. He is used to being able to do one click on > an icon to open the few things that he actually uses, i.e. four or so > applications, a shortcut to a specific document, the lock/shutdown icon and a > clock. Currently the document icon is on the desktop and the rest on the > panel, which is at the bottom of the screen. It would be nice if these > details were the same, tho' it is not essential. /usr/share/applications is where you find the program icons ( .desktop files) > > XFCE is currently looking like the front runner, but I fear that it may be en > route to getting bloated. Opinions, please. Because of Knoppix, I have had > a good look at LXDE, but so far it does not appear to be very malleable, and > support seems a bit thin on the ground. He currently has KDE, which was > part of a fast boot process in Libranet, but is an obvious candidate to go if > I am trying to speed things up. I use XFCE myself mainly because i find it a more stable and sane environment compared to Gnome or KDE, they say its a bit lighter on the resources and thus faster, but my personal experience is that the speed is much more influenced by the programs you have running in the background like cups, HAL, bluetooth and your choice of applications you run on top of it. > > ***I would be very grateful for help in speeding up the boot process, and > suggestions for a suitable DE or WM.*** if its real speed you want you might want to take a look at the likes of fluxbox or icewm it all depends on your comfort level when it comes to tweaking the system and requirements. Randall > > TIA > Lisi > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
