[conspire] (forw) Re: InstallFest on Apr. 13th

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:41:28 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Ronald Schild <rschild at gmail.com>
Cc: installers at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: InstallFest on Apr. 13th
Reply-To: installers at linuxmafia.com
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Ronald Schild (rschild at gmail.com):

> I am unable to make it today to Menlo Park. I am so sorry for not
> being able to attend today. From your initial response, you are very
> helpful.

Ah, well, you're always welcome.  We had a pleasant group, and I made a
from-scratch pizza featuring some early pickings from my vegetable
garden.

> I still would like to install a Linux O.S. on the netbook here. I
> started looking into Mint, and it looks like what I need and want.

Yes, I get the impression you'd like it.  If sticking with GNOME, you
will want to decide whether to try first the MATE or Cinnamon desktop
variants.  (They also provide supported KDE4 and XFCE desktop
environments.  Each of the four is a separate DVD for i386 and a
separate DVD for x86_64.  CABAL burns each one to media for the
convenience of visitors -- and also a large variety of other distros:
http://linuxmafia.com/cabal/installfest/#distros )

> P.S. - What is your take on KDE? I have used a SuSE version with KDE
> and rather warmed up to it. Please let me know when convenient.

I haven't really played around much with KDE since KDE3 days, so my
experience is out of date.  Both GNOME3 and KDE4 have become very
heavy-weight desktop environments, which is to say that they run a large
number of service processes and are heavy drains on CPU and RAM.  FWIW,
many people really love KDE, though there are vocal users who resented
the changes introduced in the change from KDE3 to KDE4, and who truly
detest KDE4.

My _personal_ preference is to use no Desktop Environment whatsoever,
and just a nice clean window manager with no DE.
(The 'tl;dr' version is:  DEs appear to mostly appeal to people who like
drag and drop file handling.  Since I don't, I would rather eschew DEs.)

More about that (recommended, if I may be so bold):
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug/2013-March/057971.html
Note in particular the recommendation to visit Matt Chapman's 
site comparing DEs and various window managers:
http://xwinman.org/


----- End forwarded message -----