[nmglug] The OS progress,

[Scott Gamble]

On 05/01/2012 06:33 AM, Ted Pomeroy wrote:
> NMGlug'ers, I am glad to see the conversation continuing. I hope that
> any of us that find a workable solution will share with new users. I,
> too, prefer Gnome 2.x and wonder if any of us is up to finding the
> archive for this. I wonder if it is possible to bring it into an
> upgraded system.
> Let's keep talking as we settle on new or updated OS's.
> By the way, I have had some issues with some kind of exploit in
> Firefox over the last month. Both at home and at a public computer.
> Homepage and some other settings were changed. Easy enough to fix with
> 'about:config' but interesting that it has happened repeatedly.
> Thanks, Ted P.
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> nmglug at lists.nmglug.org
> http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
Greetings NMGlug'ers,
Ted, I am glad to hear that the Debian install with Xfce is progressing 
well.
Just a quick intro for Linux users who have not been to the last two 
meetings at the Baking Co.

I have been working on getting a working install of Linux on my 
"monster-Laptop" which I use for
Design Engineering work with Autodesk Inventor (which only runs on Windows).

I had been using "the monster" - in dual - boot Ubuntu 10.04 LTS  but 
when trying to upgrade to latest Ubuntu my Realtek ALC 1200 audio 
chipset was not recognized in the new ALSA tree in the new Kernal.

I spent many weeks trying to fix this a few years ago but in the end I 
had to give up and reinstall Ubuntu 10.04 which worked really well.

A few months ago I upgraded my wifes laptop to the latest Ubuntu and 
like many others did not like the Unity desktop and was not sure about 
Gnome 3.
I still wanted to have a current working Linux on my main laptop so I 
started looking into some alternative
Distros. I thought I would give KDE a shot and ended up finding Chakra 
Linux a fork of the Arch Linux Distro that uses KDE exclusively.

I installed Chakra and of course had no sound at all. So a month ago I 
went to my first NM Linux user group meeting. I enjoyed meeting everyone 
and received lots of support trying to fix my sound problem.
Same Nobel and Jason Schaefer(very skillful Linux users)  worked very 
hard through the night trying to fix this problem ...they managed to get 
a small squeak from my box around 1:00 am by installing some legacy 
kernal . On his way out the door Jason jokingly said "you should get a 
real distro" Thinking that my obscure Chakra Distro may have been 
compounding my sound problems.

So the next day I installed Debian proper with the latest KDE. I finally 
managed to get the sound working by compiling a driver from Realtek also 
managed to install the ATI drivers which I need for temperature reasons 
- this "monster" has dual graphics running in crossfire for my 3D Design 
work.

I found that I did not care for the gloss of KDE but I felt good with 
learning about Debian.
So I started looking around for alternatives again. I wanted to keep  
the connection with Debian but I missed the smaller community that I 
found in Chakra Linux.....

Well I think I have finally found my Linux home at Crunchbang Linux:)
I highly recommend Crunchbang!

below is a quote from the CrunchBand Web site

CrunchBang Linux uses the Openbox window manager. Openbox is lightweight 
and speedy, and as a result, CrunchBang Linux is fast. Also, while 
CrunchBang Linux is not primarily designed for old systems, it has been 
reported to operate very well where system resources are limited. Once 
installed, CrunchBang Linux should boot-up and operate faster than a 
regular Debian GNOME/KDE installation.

I am using the 64 bit backport version which is like the debian testing 
version that used the latest kernal
I am very happy with this Distro. it has a simple "old-school" dark them 
that lets you focus on the applications you are using.

I think this would be best for Intermediate Linux users or people who 
want to learn more of how things are working "under the hood" so to speak.

I will be at the next meeting .... is it this week  or next?  for any 
one who wants to take CrunshBang for a ride. Hopefully I will be a 
little more fluent with OpenBox  by then.

Sorry for such a long email but hopefully this will have been of interest...
Bye for now
Scott