<html><head></head><body>Hi all,<br>
<br>
I was totally blown away by the number of replies to my original thread on this topic. I guess I really touched a nerve here. I want to thank everyone for all the information and hints they've shared. I can't really reply to all the replies directed at me, but will be looking over them again to see if any need a specific reply. I'm going to be archiving them all so I can refer to them if needed. Once Ubuntu 11.04 goes out of support, which I believe is Oct 2012, I will be forced to make some kind of change or have a more and more outdated system. I'll probably do what JD suggests below, ie install 12.04 and then the Gnome2 environment. I don't know exactly how yet, but I'll look it up later and perhaps test it in a VM. If that fails, I'll probably install Mint, or some of the more exotic options mentioned here. I believe Ubuntu 12.04 has support for 5 years. Wikipedia has a nice article on the subject which shows the various versions.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<br>
Ron<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.<br>
Please excuse my potential brevity.<br>
<br>
(To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former<br>
messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong<br>
address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)<br>
<br>
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to<br>
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy<br>
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)<br>
<br>
Ron Frazier<br>
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.<br>
linuxdude AT <a href="http://techstarship.com">techstarship.com</a><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">JD <jdp@algoloma.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; font-family: sans-serif">On 05/15/2012 01:24 PM, Erik Mathis wrote:<br />> I installed 12.04 and after 45 min, I formatted and installed Mint.<br />> Give it a try.<br />> <br /><br />I installed 12.04 stock, after 10 minutes, I installed the Gnome2 DE and LXDE (2<br />separate envs controlled at the login screen). There's an easy "fallback" meta<br />package for this. No need to format and install something else. 12.04 is still<br />too new to trust ... perhaps in July or August, for now, I'm on 10.04 still for<br />my daily driver. Soon I'll install 12.04 onto bare hardware for server VM<br />migration needs ... test VMs to start followed by unimportant production VMs and<br />by the time I'm ready for the email server to be migrated off 8.04, the<br />stability of 12.04 will be completely known.<br /><br />I prefer NOT having 3D accelerated graphics as mandatory. I'm here to work, no<br />look at raindrops or wobbly windows. ;)<br /><br />Debian ... I installed "stable" with a desktop a few months ago. Things were<br />named funny and it was more trouble to figure out where to migration my<br />thunderbird, firefox and other profiles than I had patience to learn at the<br />time. Wiped. I'm sure there would have been a fairly easy way to get where I<br />wanted, but I simply didn't have time to fight it. In a few years, I don't want<br />to be 4 yrs behind on the "stable" release. Ubuntu gets me out of this issue<br />since 8.04.<br /><br />Ubuntu feels homey to me after 6 yrs. I've run RH, Slackware, SUSE, Debian,<br />Mandrake, and a few other for over 6 months - most for a few years. I won't be<br />installing Ubuntu desktops anymore. It will be the LTS server release most of<br />the time and for my desktop, I'll add whatever WM or DE I prefer that year.<br />Simple and stable. Gentoo lasted about a month. For all that effort, I<br />expected it to actually be faster than stock Redhat. It wasn't. I played with<br />Arch for a week - it felt like a nicer Slackware. I still have friends running<br />slackware who I introduced to Linux in 1996. They are completely addicted.<br /><br />Mint was fine - didn't seem different enough to warrant a change from Ubuntu.<br />Gone after a week.<br /><br />When I was younger, I constantly tweaked my systems and was compiling programs,<br />kernels and modules that were not available except as TGZ bundles. These days, I<br />don't need to do that. The LTS version have stable programs for 2 years. when/if<br />I need something supported in a newer release, 14.04 LTS will be available. I<br />don't bother with the intermediate, non-LTS, releases. Not worth more than 30<br />minutes of my time.<br /><br />Yep, Ubuntu Server LTS is easy enough and has plenty of support - patches,<br />programs, new releases. 'sudo apt-get install lxde' solves many Ubuntu desktop<br />issues. GUIs do not matter. You can put almost any GUI you want on almost any<br />Linux distro.<br /><hr /><br />Ale mailing list<br />Ale@ale.org<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br />See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br /></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>