[TriLUG] Desktop build?

[Steve Litt via TriLUG]

Z-man via TriLUG said on Sat, 4 Dec 2021 16:18:16 -0500

>I have an older laptop with 4 gig of Ram running Winblows 7. Does
>anyone have suggestions on which desktop version I should use? I am
>most familiar with Ubuntu.

I think the primary question isn't so much the distro, but the software
packaged.

To start, I'd use a low resource WM/DE
(WindowManager/DesktopEnvironment). I mean much lower than XFCE. I'd
recommend going to LXDE, or if you don't need a panel, all the way down
to Openbox. Also in the running would be the incredibly tiny IceWM, but
you need to replace its buggy start menu with something of your own
(perhaps UMENU2). FVWM and WindowMaker are also good choices for a low
resource machine. You don't need to drop all the way down to skeleton
WM/DEs like i3 or jwm; unless you want to, of course.

Whichever WM/DE you use, be sure to augment it with dmenu from Suckless
Tools. Any loss of productivity from dropping to a simpler WM/DE will
be more than offset by the huge productivity of running programs using
dmenu.

I'd use Chromium instead of Firefox, but if you use firefox, I'd
recommend getting rid of those directories with filenames like
cnk287g9.default-default-1 every month, and starting a new such
directory. Of course, doing this will blow away your Firefox
configuration, but as this directory gains tens of megabytes, Firefox
performance gets worse and worse.  I have a freestanding bookmarks
program available at any browser, so I can blow away to my heart's
content.

Whatever browser you use, ruthlessly keep house. Immediately close any
browser tab you're not using. Be aware that Facebook is an especially
resource consuming page, so close your Facebook tabs unless you're
actively facebooking. When possible, use a more svelte browser like
dillo, Midori, elinks, etc.

This is my personal prejudice, but I always prefer to boot to CLI and
then run startx, rather than booting all the way to a WM/DE. Doing this
in Ubuntu is harder than in Debian, Devuan, Void Linux and the like.
But as I say, this is just my pet prejudice.

You can use any WM/DE you want on Ubuntu; just install the package.
That being said, I'd advise using Lubuntu, which is Ubuntu with LXDE.
By doing that you also automatically get the Openbox Window Manager,
which is even lighter than LXDE. I use Openbox with UMENU2 and dmenu,
and am happy as a clam, even though, with my 6 core, 12 thread
Ryzen with 64GB of RAM and an NVMe root partition desktop, I could have
used uber-pigs Gnome or KDE quite easily.

Other people have been suggesting Arch and the like, so in case you
decide to get a distro closer to the metal, I'd recommend Void Linux.
I've been using it for 6 years and love it.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques