[geeks] Distro recommendations

[N. Miller]

On Sep 23, 2007, at 2:54 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> N. Miller wrote:
>> I start with Xubuntu on desktops for the quick, painless install and
>> it's (relative) light weight, and go from there by adding the
>> "regular" Debian repositories.  I was an fvwm2 maven as well until I
>> started using Xfce.  I suppose if you have up-to-date rc files for
>> fvwm, it'd be more of a no-brainer, but I didn't, so I took the path
>> of least resistance and stuck with Xfce.
>
> I looked at xfce, but from what I can see of it, I really don't  
> like it.
>  If I had to use it, I'd probably end up disabling and/or replacing
> every single feature that they list as reasons for using xfce.  I'm  
> sure
> it's very nice, if you want something that does what it does, but I  
> don't.

Like I said, it was the path of least resistance.  It took maybe  
30-45 min to re-image the box, and that included the 15 min. I spent  
double-checking that there was no data on the box I wanted to keep.   
After that it was partition, install, enable full root sudo, and "apt- 
get install" all the packages I needed.  I spent more time waiting  
for downloads than I did OS configuration.

The install time was on par with OS X installation, in my  
experience.  I haven't installed full-blown Debian from scratch, so I  
don't know if it would take longer or not. And given my anti-IT  
mindset at the moment, I didn't feel like futzing with it to find  
out.  I guess full-time OS X usage makes me even more impatient with  
that *don't* "just work".

=Nadine=