No because everything will happen on the flash drive. Use Dual boot only if you want the choice of booting to one or the other. There are advantages/disadvantages to everything.
I started off with dual boot but used Windows less and less. Eventually I just installed WinXP as a Virtual machine inside my Linux box for those rare times I need to use Windows. You can also use WINE on a linux box but I don't.
Subject: How to make GNOME 3 act like a civilized desktop
The ability to make GNOME 3 behave like a civilized desktop is actually *already* in there.
There are two steps required to make GNOME 3 act the way we want it to:
1. Enable "fallback mode" in which the botched abortion called "gnome shell" is eschewed in favor of the original "gnome panel" software. Debian makes this easy because they give you a choice between "gnome" (shell) and "gnome classic" (panel) at login time. Elsewhere you will have to select it manually by going to System Settings --> System Info and click "activate -- force -- Fallback Mode."
2. Those who did manage to find this mode so far have been led to believe that the two panels which appear by default are fixed and unconfigurable.
As it turns out, the poorly documented trick is that YOU HAVE TO HOLD DOWN ALT in order to manipulate them. Most, if not all, of the functionality we want is still there as long as you're holding down Alt. You can move taskbars around, add/remove items, eliminate or add taskbars, etc.
The developers need to be smacked with a clue-by-four over this. The entire debacle that took place was unnecessary only because they made a couple of bad decisions on how to activate certain features and then completely failed to document it properly.
Oh, and this should go without saying, but if you're on Ubuntu, you're stuck with the broken smartphone mockup called Unity unless you bring in some third party repos. How to do that is beyond the scope of this writeup, and you're probably better off ditching Ubuntu entirely at this point.
Subject: Re: How to make GNOME 3 act like a civilized desktop
Subject: Re: How to make GNOME 3 act like a civilized desktop
I'm hearing lots of good things about Linux Mint, and there is a lot of noise about it being the successor to Ubuntu in terms of easy for new users, but I haven't tried it myself because, well, I'm not exactly a newbie :)
dothebart will be happy about this: [ http://goo.gl/C0PQn ]
nginx has overtaken IIS and is now the #2 web server in the world behind Apache.
I'm running it at home because it's more lightweight than Apache; all I really need it for there is to serve up firmware to my phones.
Subject: Re: How to make GNOME 3 act like a civilized desktop
I'm hearing lots of good things about Linux Mint, and there is a lot of noise about it being the successor to Ubuntu in terms of easy for new users, but I haven't tried it myself because, well, I'm not exactly a newbie :)
I've tried Linux Mint 12. It's nice for new users that are just starting out with Linux. It uses the traditional desktop that Gnome3 has built-in. Very clean and easy to work with. There's very little setup you have to do manually, the desktop is nice and clean, and it's set up specifically for users that have recently switched from Windoze and want something slightly familiar, but with the standard linux twist.
I, on the other hand, prefer a custom setup. I haven't quite switched to plain ol' Debian, but I may in the future. Right now, I'm using Ubuntu 10.04.03 LTS Server Edition with xUbuntu desktop added via tasksel. I wanted LXDE, but it wasn't an option for 10.04's tasksel.
--
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com
use unetbootin, it offers the download of different distribution, and writing them on cd/dvd/usb/...
I have an older Toshiba laptop (don't worry, i got it for free, i would never pay for crappy hardware).
Anyways, I tried loading Ubuntu 11.10 on it but it doesn't have the graphics power to handle Unity and it takes forever to load the GUI for login and attempting to do anything in there is just pain of waiting.
I've resolved to do the same thing I did with my old desktop (my local web server) and install the server edition on it then install the GUI from apt-get or tasksel.
My problem is, I need a desktop that can run on near non-existant graphics power that can be added through apt-get or tasksel. I've tried xubuntu and lxde and they seem light enough, but I'm wondering if the linux guru's here have a better suggestion.
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http://sdkproductions.hopto.org
That all depends on how much pain you can withstand. There are the flux/openbox things which always look a bit retarded and nerdy to me.
There is windowmaker, which was lightning fast on my olde pentium2 with 256mhz and neomagic craptop gpu.
Then I switched to enlightenment16 because it looked better and had transparent terminals. Now I am using enlightenment17 because it looks even better and has a very low footprint. There should be a PPA for it somewhere, but expect it to be misbehaving. I roll my own on gentoo, almost always works flawless.
So, try e16, if avaiable.
I had never previously heard about these:
moonOS is a complete and fully functional operating system based on the GNOME, LXDE, Enlightenment DR17 window managers and powered by the popular Ubuntu Linux Distribution. moonOS has it own File Hierarchy System and use Appshell Framework. moonOS is perfect for any Desktop, Laptop PC or even for a Virtual Machine. moonOS's focus is on Utter Speed, Low Memory and Great Looks!
(There are three editions, each using one of the abovementioned DMs)
Macpup is a small,light OS. The .Iso is only 164 MB.It runs in ram and is very fast. It is not a striped down,bare bones,basic core OS. Macpup is a full featured systemright out of the box with apps for office,graphics,multimedia,internetand much more.And it looks really cool.
Uses Enlightenment DR17. They have a youtube video preview on their page.
Subject: Lightweight Linux for old Toshiba laptop
Hm, longtime no Citadel. Anyway...
You didn't mention how old your Toshiba laptop is. What vintage are we talking about?
I got a pretty basic $400-$500 Toshiba laptop back in 2007. With only 1 Gb of RAM, it was too weak to run Vista. I loaded ubuntu on it at the time and used it exclusively. The 1 Gb of RAM wasn't an issue. Updated it once in 2008, and steered clear of updating ubuntu with all the unity stuff.
XFCE sounds good in theory, but it really isn't using that much less resources than Gnome.
Know what did it for me? A few months ago, needing a fresh change, I put Linux Mint 11 on it. It runs beautifully. The Gnome interface that attracted so many to unbuntu in the first place, not messed up. Plus, you'll be familiar with everthing if you're used to ubuntu, since it's based on it. I am really enjoying it once again.
Ubuntu dropping support for KDE.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/canonical-withdraw-financial-support-from-kubuntu/
I don't really like KDE, but I dislike Gnmoe3 more than I dislike KDE, I was thinking of switching. Still will most likely go with another distro.
Subject: info: Malware devs embrace open-source
No points for guessing that they're making it easy to disable the universally-hated Unity desktop.
As long as gnome-panel continues to be available, we're ok, and it seems that Ubuntu is *reluctantly* on board with that.
I may have to write a "make it not suck" tool, which automatically does the following to any Ubuntu or Debian build:
1. Make gnome-panel ("classic") the system default
2. Remove the top panel
3. Configure the bottom panel with: launcher, window list, indicators, and clock
4. Restore the file manager icons on the desktop
This is also known as "the way people *expect* a desktop computer to work."
I know how to do all of these things manually and it doesn't take long, but it would be nice to share a one-step script to restore the normal computer behavior.
http://enricozini.org/sw/nodm/
nodm replaces xdm/gdm/kdm on a computer used by a single person (say, a laptop).
You configure it with the name of a user who is automatically logged in on boot, and the session script to run. It's very nice to avoid the footprint of a full-blown display manager, and if you consider your laptop to be physically secure enough to avoid needing user/password login, it's convenient.
I had mine configured to run /usr/bin/gnome-session-fallback directly. The problem I encountered was that gvfs didn't work properly when I did that; every removable media volume that I attached would appear in the list but when I attempted to open it, permission was denied. I was also presented with the keyring prompt whenever I attempted to open my Chrome browser.
So obviously there's some other step in the login process that was being missed when I called gnome-session-fallback directly from nodm. If anyone has a clue on that I'd be happy to hear it. This is on a standard Debian build.