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Recommend Debian based image for VMWare Player on W8?

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MilesAhead:
Just to update:  I downloaded Mint 16 64 bit iso.  I installed it. Defragged.  It was still sluggish but I saw a suggestion to enable 3D accel. in VM settings.  That really makes the difference.  No more "software rendering mode" on startup.  Stuff I type in Firefox echoes right away.

I'm still trying to figure out how to switch between cinnamon and mate.  But now it's not urgent.  :)

40hz:
I'm still trying to figure out how to switch between cinnamon and mate.
-MilesAhead (May 13, 2014, 06:04 PM)
--- End quote ---

Should be a piece of cake after you install the MATE metapackage. (It's huge btw... a 111 MB download that unpacks to 291 MB on disk. Yoiks!)

From within the Cinnamon desktop, just open Software Manager and do a search for mint-meta-mate.

Install it and reboot.

On the GRUB startup menu you should see the option to select either Cinnamon or MATE to boot into.

You'll need to reboot each time you want to switch the desktop environment.

 :Thmbsup:

MilesAhead:
It's probably weird since it's a VM.  The software manager shows mate as installed.  But in any case I can mess with it if I really install on the metal.

The 3D accel. seems to be the reason the Windows VMs seemed faster.  The easy install must enable it by default.  Mint16 wasn't in the Linux list.

MilesAhead:
I do like this Mint.  Not sure if I want to follow it to 17 as I heard it's going down the Ubuntu tree and I'm prejudiced against that distro.  :)

I still haven't figured out how to try out Mate but that's small potatoes.  What I have finally figured out is with the VMWare Tools for each Guest OS installed I don't have to mess around with copying files via network etc..  Even clipboard sharing is enabled.  Nice to be able to just paste a url from a browser running on the Host to the one running on the Guest. File drag and drop between the Host and a Guest works as well.

This is more useful on a Windows Guest OS because I can just drag the entire Firefox Portable folder to the Guest window to keep them in sync.

If I had 8 GB on this Laptop I think the VMs would be perfectly fine for light use.  With only 2 GB for the Guest the boot up is a bit slow.  Just a slight lag in browsing.  I'd be very curious to see how they run with 4 GB ram.  But the best thing is the Player is very intuitive.  Not a lot of rtfm involved.  :)

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