raymac46 Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 When I first started with Linux back in 2006, my very first installation was Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I really learned most of what I now know using Ubuntu - especially how to set up wireless cards with WPA. However as time went by I switched away to the RPM universe, and for many years used Mandriva and Mageia. Still do as a matter of fact. With this Dell Mini 12 netbook though and with the desire to finally get the Poulsbo video card working under its native resolution, I was looking for a distro that featured a 3.2 Kernel. My choices were Fedora 17 or some flavor of Ubuntu 12.04. Ubuntu seemed to be a bit closer to release so that's what I chose. I did have some issues getting the FOSS psb-gfx driver working, but once I did it does a nice job and the display is quite beautiful on the Mini-12 screen at 1280X800 resolution. I decided to install Xubuntu as I really like Xfce and I didn't want to deal with Plasma, Unity or the Gnome Shell. The resulting install is pretty Gnome-like - at least the old Gnome 2.3x variety. The wallpapers are very attractive and the performance with this brain dead Atom processor is quite snappy. Total memory footprint is a little over 300 MB. There is a bottom panel that acts like a dock and is hidden away unless you mouse down to the bottom of the screen. I didn't bother installing a lot of processor/memory intensive software like Libre Office as I only intend to take this machine on holiday for email and light web surfing. The distro comes with Abiword and Gnumeric. All and all I'm pretty happy with Xubuntu 12.04 and if you are a long time Ubuntu fan but don't like Unity, this may be a viable option for you - especially on netbooks or older machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 ... Total memory footprint is a little over 300 MB. ... All and all I'm pretty happy with Xubuntu 12.04 and if you are a long time Ubuntu fan but don't like Unity, this may be a viable option for you - especially on netbooks or older machines. 300MB!!! Wow, that's the same as my KDE4 system uses. Xfce is great, but I don't know how *buntuz manage to use so much memory. Even my EeePC with Bodhi seems to use more than I would expect. Congratulations on making your netbook go well, anyhow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 23, 2012 Author Share Posted March 23, 2012 (edited) 300MB!!! Wow, that's the same as my KDE4 system uses. Xfce is great, but I don't know how *buntuz manage to use so much memory. Even my EeePC with Bodhi seems to use more than I would expect. Congratulations on making your netbook go well, anyhow. Forgot I was running Firefox at the time. 200 MB with no browser running. The Mini 12 has 1 GB of RAM so I'm in good shape here. I also have an Acer Aspire One with only 512MB RAM. I use Bodhi there but it has civilized Intel 950 graphics. Edited March 23, 2012 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Forgot I was running Firefox at the time. 200 MB with no browser running. Sounds more like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 8, 2012 Author Share Posted April 8, 2012 Well after a couple of weeks of running Xubuntu 12.04 on this Dell Mini 12 I have to say it's terrific. I enjoy the excellent 2D 1280X800 display served up by the FOSS gma500_gfx driver and Xfce just works - no Unity, no Gnome Shell, no Plasma, just good old-fashioned Linux GUI. Boots fast, shuts down even faster - I'm using it all the time now as a lightweight second PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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