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5576

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 19, 2011, 03:13 PM »

Not exactly sure, but it sounds like your problem with OpenBox is there's no bar thingy running by default.
ObConf (OpenBox configuration manager GUI) should help get that worked out.

-Edvard (March 19, 2011, 03:15 AM)

Not quite. I don't have a problem that OpenBox has no bar thingy running by default. The thing is, when I first installed PCLinuxOS, it did have a bar thingy running by default. I think it even had a wallpaper image with the PCLinuxOS logo. Then I mucked around trying to get the packet manager to work and now the bar thingy is gone and the wallpaper is just a blank black screen and I don't know how to get it back.

Going into ObConf I'm guessing the "bar thingy" is called a Dock? All the options for the dock have it set to be enabled, but it still doesn't show. And going to the Desktop preferences shows that there's a wallpaper.png set as the desktop wallpaper, but it just shows a black screen.

As I said, I kind of like the minimalism of it all; the only thing that bothers me is that I don't know why this happened or how to change it back if I wanted to.

Mint is based on Ubuntu, don't know if you'll get any performance increase but I've heard some reports that Mint solves some hardware problems that Ubuntu still has.

-Edvard (March 19, 2011, 03:15 AM)

I knew that Mint was based on Ubuntu, but I've heard people say it runs better, and I have a friend running it on his Netbook and he's pretty happy with it, so I thought I'd give it a try.

5577

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 11:52 PM »

What desktop version of PCLinuxOS are you trying?
KDE? Gnome? Xfce?
If it's Xfce, just hit Alt+F2 and type in: xfce4-panel
The others, I dunno.

Regarding the PCLOS repository bug:
http://www.pclinuxos...p/topic,87377.0.html

-Edvard (March 17, 2011, 01:15 PM)

It's running OpenBox. It seems to be doing the same thing the reviewer pointed out about CrunchBang, which is just a blank screen and no "start bar" or "task bar" or anything on the desktop. Just a mouse cursor and access to everything from the right-click context menu. It's kind of nice and minimal, and at the same time slightly bothersome since I'm not sure what caused it.

That said, I'm not even sure Xubuntu is as lightweight as some promise; it's still Ubuntu under the hood, after all.
I'd go with the Debian Xfce live disk if you want to see Xfce fly.
This might help as well:
http://wiki.debian.o...ebianOn/MSI/WindU100

-Edvard (March 17, 2011, 01:15 PM)

As I said, I did have Debian installed and it seemed to run okay, but since I didn't know about htop at the time I didn't check to see how it did with the resources.

I'm getting ready to try Linux Mint 10 LXDE (I might switch LXDE with OpenBox if that's not too hard to do) over my Xubuntu installation, but maybe I'll give Slitaz a try first.

Thanks for all the other info and help that I didn't reply to specifically.

5578

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 09:27 PM »

For everyone who donated during the fundraiser put this little badge on your shirt when you next go out to dinner:

-mouser (March 18, 2011, 07:47 PM)

I can't afford to go out to dinner after donating to DC.





  It was totally worth it though!

5579

Living Room / Re: First person mario

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 09:20 PM »

This was already done in 2002 by some students at Carnegie Mellon University:

5580

Living Room / Re: Amazing LEGO Great Ball Contraption Breaks World Record

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 03:54 PM »

Too bad it doesn't work very well. They have to keep adding more balls or pushing ones along that got stuck.

5581

DC Gamer Club / Re: Minecraft - An Incredible Indie Game

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 02:58 PM »

Yeah, that's great!

5582

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: UbiSoft: Free Games

« Last post by Deozaan on March 18, 2011, 12:27 AM »

Dang, wish those prices were available in the US.

Though to be honest only one of those games looks interesting to me. R.U.S.E. But I heard it wasn't very good, so no loss there. 

Thanks for the heads up!

5583

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2011, 11:24 PM »

Since you're running the same graphics chipset as the AAO, try Downscaling Switcher, (it was written for the Wind but seems to work on any netbook with the Intel 950 chipset) - it'll switch the screen into a compressed 1024x768 mode.

-4wd (March 16, 2011, 06:00 PM)

Thanks. My netbook is currently booted into Linux right now, but I've got it downloaded for the next time I'm in Windows.

5584

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2011, 10:19 PM »

I ran PCLinuxOS from the Live USB and it was also running on about 97 MB RAM. I decided to install it and when running from an install it was only using about 67 MB RAM on a fresh boot. But I had some problems using the packet manager to download some programs. For some reason it only had one repository enabled and it couldn't connect to that one. It also has a "speed test" program that tests the speeds of repositories and automatically selects the fastest one, but it kept telling me to make sure I was connected to the internet, even though I could browse the web just fine.

I messed around with that for a while and finally got it to download what I wanted. By then the RAM was up above the 120MB mark, so I rebooted to see what it would be on a fresh boot and now there's something wrong with the desktop environment. After logging in, all I get is a blank screen with the mouse cursor on it. I can right click to access most everything (like how Crunchbang did it), but the "task bar" or whatever it's called never shows up. It's just blackness. It's both cool (in that it's very minimalist, like Crunchbang) and annoying (because I don't know how to get it back the way it was before) at the same time.

Also, I installed PCLinuxOS to a separate partition, but somehow it still managed to break my Xubuntu installation. Now when I boot into Xubuntu everything looks great but it freezes almost immediately after I've logged in. Could this be because I told both of them to use the same partition for Swap?

5585

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2011, 05:30 PM »

I just put Bvckup on my Netbook and ran into a (frustratingly) frequent problem with running software on a Netbook: Some of the option screens are too tall for my limited resolution (1024x600) so I can't access the options that go off the bottom of the screen.

Please fix this.

5586

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 16, 2011, 01:43 AM »

I tried Debian, and it felt so similar to Ubuntu (since Ubuntu is based on Debian) that I decided to give Ubuntu another shot. Well, actually Xubuntu, since I've heard that Xcfe is faster than Gnome. Xubuntu's Task Manager says that it uses up 12% of my RAM on a fresh boot, since the machine has 1GB I guess that's just about 120MB.

I didn't know what sort of resource monitor Debian had, so I didn't check.

But if #! can run on under 60MB, it's definitely worth a shot. I guess I'll start playing around with some more distros. I've also downloaded PCLinuxOS.

[EDIT]Hmm... #! is currently using 93.7 out of 1,000 MiB RAM when running from the Live CD (USB, actually). Not sure if that's a good enough advantage over Xubuntu. Maybe it would have a smaller memory footprint running off the HDD rather than the Live USB?[/EDIT]

[EDIT2] And #! won't install. It can't access the security.debian.com repository and it won't install GRUB boot loader. I find that strange because Debian and Ubuntu both install the boot loader just fine. In fact, GRUB is already the main boot loader for this netbook, so it's already installed. So much for #!... [/EDIT2]

I really like the idea of running Tiny/MicroCore Linux from RAMDisk, but sadly I don't know enough about Linux to do anything with that particular distro.

5587

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 14, 2011, 03:49 AM »

It's a silly question I know but....other than being a 'netbook', exactly what is it?

-4wd (March 13, 2011, 05:26 PM)

It's an MSI Wind U120-024US.

5588

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 13, 2011, 04:57 PM »

xPUD: I ran it from USB thumb drive which was fast and easy but I couldn't figure out how to get my wifi to work. It also seemed to forget everything when I rebooted, losing all settings and customization.

-Deozaan (March 13, 2011, 06:48 AM)

Regarding xPUD, it is not designed to be a full always used OS, it's designed to be an 'instant on' OS, (as you find, eg. in ASUS BIOS'), for netbooks for when you're travelling and you don't want to boot into the full OS.
As such there's really no need to store WiFi settings as they're going to be changing as you move around.

-4wd (March 13, 2011, 02:10 PM)

Sure, WiFi settings might change all the time, but it should remember that I already ran Dropbox for the first time and associated my account with it. As for WiFi, it didn't appear to give me an option to type in the SSID. It showed a (blank) list with a refresh button and a textbox to type in the password. Methinks it didn't recognize my wireless card.

I also just tried the Linpus Lite Windows Installer to install Linpus alongside Windows. It won't boot. I have the option to boot into Windows or Linpus and when I select Linpus it flashes two lines on the screen real fast and then goes back to the screen where I choose to boot into Windows or Linpus.

Actually, this post says Debian proper works pretty well, and then you'll have the benefit of the APT package management system and the vast Debian repositories:
http://duopetalflowe...tbook-uses-less.html

-Edvard (March 13, 2011, 07:33 AM)

I was actually just considering this idea myself. I'm most familiar with Ubuntu, so I know some commands using apt-get to download and install the packages I want/need. Debian may be just the thing I'm looking for!

Though the download pages for Debian confuse me. Do I really need to download/burn 52 CDs to install it? Does it seriously require 8 DVDs?

5589

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 13, 2011, 06:48 AM »

I gave the first four I mentioned a try. Here are my impressions:

xPUD: I ran it from USB thumb drive which was fast and easy but I couldn't figure out how to get my wifi to work. It also seemed to forget everything when I rebooted, losing all settings and customization.

Arch Linux: Won't install from USB. I used UNetbootin to transfer the ISO onto a bootable USB drive, but installation failed and kicked me out to the command line. The error message sounded like it couldn't find my hard drive.

Joli OS: I used the .exe file to install alongside Windows. It works as advertised. Even the WiFi works from the get-go. An interesting Cloud OS. It does have a couple of strange problems installing or uninstalling a few programs. I think I still don't want it as my main OS on my netbook.

MeeGo works really well off a USB drive and boots fast! It's pretty cool, too. I need to play around with it some more, but it still seems to be missing something(s).


I can't speak for Arch Linux, since I couldn't even get it to work, but the other three make me feel limited. I feel like I don't have the freedom to install whatever I want and tinker around with stuff. They feel restricted and limited in that sense.

I don't necessarily want a Cloud OS. Is there an OS that has all the abilities of something like Ubuntu but is really light on resources? Like a vLite for Ubuntu. :-D Maybe I need to look into Tiny/MicroCore and DSL...

I just want my machine to feel snappy. This thing is exponentially more powerful than my old 386/66. Why does it feel slower?

I'll look into Linpus Lite and a few of the ones you mentioned, iphigenie. Thanks for the suggestions!

I noticed I have 22 GiB of Linux Distro ISOs in my download folder...  

5590

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 13, 2011, 03:23 AM »

@Deozaan:
You might consider Jolicloud:
http://www.jolicloud.com/

or if you want something slightly more robust, perhaps Arch Linux:
http://www.archlinux.org/

-zridling (March 13, 2011, 01:07 AM)

I tried out Jolicloud (and told you about it) almost exactly a year ago. I thought it was okay at the time, but it was basically Ubuntu Netbook Edition with "Web App" shortcuts. I wasn't going to try it again but wow! It sure has changed a lot in the past year! I guess I will after all.

Here's a comparison with a bunch of links:
http://en.wikipedia...._Linux_distributions

-Edvard (March 13, 2011, 01:45 AM)

Thanks for the information. I'm currently downloading Jolicloud OS, Arch Linux, MeeGo, and xPUD.

5591

General Software Discussion / Re: How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 10:18 PM »

Can anyone recommend a nice, speedy distro for netbooks?

I've really only tried Ubuntu on my netbook (only 1GB RAM), and even the Netbook Edition of that feels slow and cumbersome.

5592

Living Room / Re: More thoughts on micro vs macro donations and the turning point for donationware

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 07:44 PM »

Two points:

1. I consider PayPal to be easier than not-PayPal. Since PayPal already has all the necessary information necessary to make a payment, all I need to do is login, type in an amount, and hit the pay button. Without PayPal, I need to type in my contact information, billing information, credit card information, etc., and hope you take my credit card/debit card. But I do understand that PayPal isn't available all over the world and certain people/places have problems with them.

2. The Humble Indie Bundle is a case of pay what you want (minimum of $0.01) being very successful. But that may also be because the games in the bundle are "normally" about $20 each. So it's a sale mentality, which you brought up with your "$100 software for [whatever amount]" example.

5593

General Software Discussion / Re: Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch - Aaawwweeesssooommmeee

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 07:23 PM »

Wow!

Now I can turn my 15 second musical ditties into full length albums!

5594

Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 01:38 PM »

But you can't really pirate an online service. (In one sense anyways.)

-Renegade (March 12, 2011, 05:05 AM)

True, but in this case I don't think Dragon Age 2 is an online game. AFAIK it just uses the internet for DRM purposes.

5595

Official Announcements / Re: UnReplied Topic Fridays on the DonationCoder.com Forums (URT-Fri)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 01:35 PM »

In my opinion, the link for "Unreplied Topics" ought to show all unreplied topics by default and display a link to show only unreplied topics by new members.

5596

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 04:31 AM »

New LOLMouser for this fundraiser:

5597

Official Announcements / Re: UnReplied Topic Fridays on the DonationCoder.com Forums (URT-Fri)

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 04:29 AM »

I didn't even see this thread until now. Was it ever featured in a newsletter?

Also... only 3 unreplied topics on the entire forum? Wow!

Oh... No. It's just broken. The normal link shows only 3 topics. Two in January and one in February of this year.

The link for "older" topics shows hundreds of them, some as recent as 2 days ago.

Oh... It's not broken. It's just unintuitive.

I am confuzzled.

5598

Living Room / Re: Fox Sends DMCA Takedown To Google To Remove Link To DMCA Takedown Sent By Fox

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 04:15 AM »

There are two types of lawyer, but nobody likes lawyers enough to get to know the difference.

5599

Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated

« Last post by Deozaan on March 12, 2011, 03:59 AM »

Arise, thread, arise! (Necro thread revival!)

Another example of why it's better to pirate when DRM is concerned:

When it comes to EA games, you really should watch what you say.

That's what one BioWare forum-goer learned after possibly being banned by asking BioWare, an EA studio, "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?" The comment resulted in a temporary 72 hour ban, but more importantly meant that the user couldn't play a brand-new copy of Dragon Age II during that time.

-http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/forum-user-gets-banned-loses-access-to-dragon-age-ii.ars

5600

Living Room / Re: Fox Sends DMCA Takedown To Google To Remove Link To DMCA Takedown Sent By Fox

« Last post by Deozaan on March 11, 2011, 04:17 PM »

I know an attorney that would agree. He says: Justice has it's place in the courtroom.

-40hz (March 11, 2011, 09:10 AM)

A Supreme Court Justice would disagree: "This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.