[TriLUG] Debian on a laptop

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:52:25 -0500
Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Grawburg <grawburg at myglnc.com> wrote:
> 
> > And remember, I MUST use Debian so as to keep me "in-sync" with the
> > Raspberry Pi I have coming.
> >
> 
> I have no idea why that's a hard requirement, or if it is.  Ubuntu
> systems are Debian-based so that's probably good enough for you.  I
> use Lubuntu 12.10 on a Dell Inspiron 1720 with GeForce 8600M GT.
> I've been running Lubuntu for about a year now.  It is non-bloated
> and significantly faster than my Vista installation on the same
> machine.  The main Ubuntu was bloated.  Tried Xubuntu, can't remember
> why I blew that one off.  Many of my decisions were driven by power
> management issues, since I'm often running my laptop off my car's
> deep cycle battery.  I get longer battery life on Lubuntu than I did
> with Vista.

Lubuntu comes "from the factory" with the LXDE desktop. If you need a
desktop environment that positively, absolutely must act right at all
times with no bugs, LXDE is the best. From what I've seen, LXDE has
none of the quirks that Xfce exhibits. I love Xfce and use it
constantly, but I always make sure LXDE is installed so if Xfce
malfunctions at a bad time (like when I'm giving a presentation), I can
just switch to LXDE.

My one quibble with LXDE is that, same computer, same mouse, same OS,
LXDE's mouse will be considerably less sensitive, so I might need to
move the mouse several inches to go from screen top to screen bottom.
Acceleration based workarounds aren't much better than a slow mouse. So
far the only solution I've found is to get a mouse that's really fast
on its own right. IIRC Logitech M325 is one such mouse. If any of you
know how to speed up the mouse in LXDE without just cranking up the
xset acceleration, please let me know.

Thanks

SteveT