I have completed three cycles of Installations and it is time for me to report.
One of the reason for updating one of my spare / old computers, was to get LibreOffice 4.0 into one of the distributions.
After a week of testing to my amazement I have to report that Peppermint and Lubuntu are good enough distributions to have in your system or on one’s USB stick (in addition to one’s choice of major distribution).
At a time when there is a rapid change in hardware and software and tablets are taking over PCs and Cloud is supplying the utilities, the change in one’s mindset to accommodate the challenge is mandatory for survival in the IT world.
1. Peppermint 4
Peppermint is trying to sit on the middle ground.
It is cloud ready with its window’s desktop taking a light weight window manager for fast booting.
It takes Google seriously and uses it chrome browser efficiently.
It has no utilities to boast on especially office packages but uses Ubuntu repository for retrieving any of the latest packages amounting to over 33,000.
I downloaded Abiword which is an excellent word processor and writing this report in Abiword.
It is three in one.
It is light weight .
It is Google enhanced.
It s Ubuntu ready (repository).
It is not a proper Linux image and cannot be booted on a USB stick using UnetBootIn, unlike Joli OS.
2. Joli OS 1.2
It is a cloud distribution with many cloud utilities.
It can be installed and can be carried on a USB stick.
However one is hooked to the OS provider unlike Peppermint and one has to be signed up with an email address.
3. Lubuntu 13-04
It is Ubuntu based without Unity desktop.
Instead it uses one of the best light weight desktop which is LXDE.
It can be carried in a USB Stick and the whole distribution fits in a CD.
It as Abiword which is very handy.
4. Knoppix 7.0
In my assessment it tops the list.
It is breezy.
It is LXDE.
It has many utilities including Gparted.
It can now be installed on the hard disk.
It needs a swap partition and reserFS file system.
Its grub is no the best though still probably uses Grub not Grub 2.
5. AntiX-Debian Based
This is one of the best for old computers.
It is light weight and one can chose either Debian Wheezy (stable) or testing repository for packages.
Its Grub is one of the best.
6. Ubuntu 13.04
Now then where does Ubuntu Unity fits in.
Surprisingly it fits in on both side of the divide.
It is small and can be fitted to a mobile phone (given time like Andriod), tablet and the PC.
It is cloud ready with Ubuntu One and Music store.
It is a clear winner.
It still has rough edges with the Plymouth and the Unity desktop but it has taken the lead and adapting fast to the IT jungle with the survival of the fittest mentality.
Its repository is full with Debian based trusted and tested packages.
It might even beat and give a run for the money as far as Debian concerned given the rapid changes in the horizon.
What will happen to KDE?
Only a few will survive.
In that context SuSe is in the forefront.
7.SuSe 12.3
Latest version is pretty good
It has in addition LXDE in its DVD.
It has the best partition tool.
Best Grub-2
It has the best configuration tool (YAST).
It lets the user knows what is happening (minor details are omitted) in every stage and one can fall back.
it has a pleasing desktop.
It has shed its weight and still supports old hardware.
It has a good community.
It is a versatile desktop but yet to be cloud ready (because of its desktop weight) as like the light weight champions mentioned above.
8. Current (not old versions) version of PCLinux
It has the worst partition manager and the grub file.
It dose not recognize other Linux distributions except Knoppix, which is very strange.
It configuration is pretty standard but not while installing.
It hangs up and freezes in the middle of the installation.
It is very slow in installation.
For the fist time in my experience it burned my Graphic Card (128 VGA) and I had to fall back to 64 bit Card to restore my old computer.
It tried to install plasma on a 128 card after installation without me prompting which resulted in the accident.
If it burns a Redon graphic card of a user he may even throw a fit.
I must tell you I have burned few RAM cards before I started using at least 1 GiB but never a graphic card.
I buy old computers mainly for testing and upgrade them to my liking with RAM and graphic cards and I have an array of old graphic cards removed.
One cannot buy them now and they are hard to find.
I had to fall back to 64 GiB graphic card which is retrogression in technology but still the computer does do the basic function including cloud computing.
This why I say never buy an old laptop and very soon I may have to say do not refurbish old PCs since tablets are on the market.
I may retire with a tablet or an ebook reader with Chinese taking over tablet market one can buy five (5) for the price of one iPad.
That is a real progress in the third world.
One has to be stupid or fabulously rich to buy an iPad.
This is what I recommend to my students (medical and dental) who will soon become professionals in their own field and be using tablet (palm computer of the yesteryear) for referring medical texts and pictures for their postgraduate training.
PCLinux is trying to do to many tings at the same time after Textstar retired.
I am going to give it up sooner or later.
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