12-07-2015, 03:34 PM
As an addendum to my previous posts on distro hopping, I wanted to say that I recently tried a couple more distros from a live usb stick, namely Lubuntu and LxPup. The test platform was my Gateway LT40 notebook (essentially an Asus model).
Lubuntu was OK, as sound, wifi, etc., worked out of the box as you'd expect from a distro based on Ubuntu. But it seemed kind of blah for some reason. Certainly it would useable.
As a contrast, LxPup refused to find my wifi, even after trying several Broadcom drivers offered in a list (which admittedly is more than Debian 8 gave me). Perhaps if I'd attached a wired ethernet connection it would have helped me more (which Debian did), but I didn't try as I lost my patience. Frankly, it floors me that they wouldn't at least offer an applicable open source driver like that LL and others use, even if they wouldn't bother to detect the hardware and install something that works.
Just for fun, I decided to try AntiX-15 again, as I'd gained some experience since I last tried it. Wifi worked right away, but I could not get sound to work, so that was a repeat bust. Funny, but the hybrid MX-15 had no trouble with sound (or wifi).
In summary, the non-LL distributions that I've tried on my notebook that worked immediately were Linux Mint (MATE and XFCE), MX-15, and Lubuntu. I got Debian 8 working with a bit of extra work (initially using a wired ethernet connection to download a wifi driver). After trying these I still prefer Linux Lite.
I now have that notebook and a ("pawnshop rescue") Dell Latitude E6410 running LL. I also have a ("hand me down") Dell Latitude D820 running Linux Mint MATE which I would probably switch to LL if it weren't so much darn work to re-install the all applications I use on it. (Oh, if I'd only known to also put /opt in a separate partition.) I did spend considerable time making its desktop look just like the Dell running LL and found caja a bit less convenient to configure than XFCE. So maybe...
Cheers,
Andy N1KSN
Just about ready to stop mucking around with distros and desktops and get back to the work I have the computers for in the first place.
Lubuntu was OK, as sound, wifi, etc., worked out of the box as you'd expect from a distro based on Ubuntu. But it seemed kind of blah for some reason. Certainly it would useable.
As a contrast, LxPup refused to find my wifi, even after trying several Broadcom drivers offered in a list (which admittedly is more than Debian 8 gave me). Perhaps if I'd attached a wired ethernet connection it would have helped me more (which Debian did), but I didn't try as I lost my patience. Frankly, it floors me that they wouldn't at least offer an applicable open source driver like that LL and others use, even if they wouldn't bother to detect the hardware and install something that works.
Just for fun, I decided to try AntiX-15 again, as I'd gained some experience since I last tried it. Wifi worked right away, but I could not get sound to work, so that was a repeat bust. Funny, but the hybrid MX-15 had no trouble with sound (or wifi).
In summary, the non-LL distributions that I've tried on my notebook that worked immediately were Linux Mint (MATE and XFCE), MX-15, and Lubuntu. I got Debian 8 working with a bit of extra work (initially using a wired ethernet connection to download a wifi driver). After trying these I still prefer Linux Lite.
I now have that notebook and a ("pawnshop rescue") Dell Latitude E6410 running LL. I also have a ("hand me down") Dell Latitude D820 running Linux Mint MATE which I would probably switch to LL if it weren't so much darn work to re-install the all applications I use on it. (Oh, if I'd only known to also put /opt in a separate partition.) I did spend considerable time making its desktop look just like the Dell running LL and found caja a bit less convenient to configure than XFCE. So maybe...
Cheers,
Andy N1KSN
Just about ready to stop mucking around with distros and desktops and get back to the work I have the computers for in the first place.