I just upgraded a pair of Pentium III systems to 14.04, using Xubuntu. Either could be a “daily user” for modest needs.

I agree about the problem of inhibiting adoption… There are other issues, too (such as multi-media packages that have to be installed after the fact).

I read Jaime’s blog regarding issues with Xscreensaver, and while I like it, I decided against further use. (Security issues, mainly.)

I used to install & use Gnome 3 with each distro, but after having some installation issues, I tried Unity 7.. and now I find it to be a reasonable “daily user” itself.

Example. Xscreensaver is an ancient but good technology. Gnome created a panel that is called gnome screensaver, but it is a GUI for xscreensaver. In current gnome panel, the traditional version of gnome, screensaver is installed and runs, but gnome’s screensaver tool is gone and there is no apparent user interface. So you are running a screensaver but have no controll over it. A similar situation exists with Debian menu vs gnome menu. Not to mention unity and gnome 3s complification of desktop icons and menu items, making that basic technology unavailable to regular people.

Linux could be just as clean and smooth as a Mac if this chaos was brought under controll.

True… However, what irks me is that you’ll install and see, e.g., the Unity desktop after login (what you intended), but having installed Lubuntu first, you’ll (unexpectedly) see its LXDE “greeter” panel on boot-up, and find other residual elements of its interface here & there. It feels very “Frankenstein” as a result.

By installing Server first, then manually installing your desktop of choice after first boot, you’ll get the consistent desktop interface you’re expecting throughout. (Might save someone a re-install after finding out the long way.)

LXDE is lightweight enough to be a good choice for very old (Pentium, P-Pro, and P-III) systems with RAM limitations. Also a good choice for a simple GUI on a home file server if you really can’t stand dealing with the command line.

I’m writing this waiting for updates to gel on a Windows Server 2003 system… still being patched, still kicking, still in use. Part of me wishes it would die so that it really would be “done”. (It’s getting close.)

Because there’s no funding for it any longer. So when it’s done, it’s done.

Well, for the time being, that is. Something will replace it eventually (hopefully I can ensure it’s Linux — Debian is fine), and then there’ll be more work to be done.

However, when you *do* install a GUI desktop, Ubuntu makes the mistake of NOT enabling Network-Manager for you. It doubles this flaw by not telling you any of this!

Here’s what you do: Edit (as ‘root’) the ‘/etc/network/interfaces’ file and comment out the lines for the interface (eth0, typically). Then reboot (I’ve never had success trying to simply restart networking services).

When you get back to your desktop, the familiar network management interface will then be working as expected.

Really, they should at least inform you of this on first bootup. Better: They should offer to do this for you (and do whatever-it-takes to save you a reboot at the same time).

You start by installing the *server* edition of Ubuntu. The server ISOs *are* small enough to fit on a CD, rather than a DVD (typically around 600 MB, since they don’t have the GUI packages present).

Once installed (or during installation, as an option, for the latest versions if you’re on the net), you can ask to install the GUI desktop of your choice. This will, of course, require a network connection…

If you do a straight server installation, and then boot to the command line when done, you then log in and enter this:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

And it will spew forth a list of some 1200 packages to download and install. (Which is why the CD installation will seem to go oh so quickly…)

If you prefer the Xubuntu desktop, you instead install “xubuntu-desktop”. Etc.

I do this for most of my desktop installs. Why? Because they fixed the problem of the desktop installer not having LVM (yea!) but they still haven’t added RAID support to the desktop DVD.

And they took away the “Alt Install” disk and broke installation from a desktop trial session into a manual RAID config… Oy! Now you can only install to RAID from the server CD. Desktop installed separately… But it works fine.