A couple of weeks back I was talking with my Dad about what to do with his nearly-antiquated laptop (meaning from 2002.) Having had recent experience with lightweight linux distros and window managers, I decided to shop around a bit and see what else was out there. As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Linux Mint, but I’m willing to look around. For sheer speed, I’m a fan of Fluxbox, especially since I can get so much help around here.. For end-user applications, I’d been impressed with LXDE’s potential, but underwhelmed from a configuration and management side.
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Monthly Archives: February 2010
Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox CE review: Lightweight, fast, surprisingly cohesive
As I mentioned on February 12th, the long-awaited Fluxbox Community Edition of Linux Mint has been released, and I’ve had the opportunity to install it on my laptop to give it a whirl.
I promised @Kendall — the man who picked up the Linux Mint Fluxbox CE torch and ran with it to keep this project alive — a review, so here goes!
Linux Mint 8 Fluxbox Community Edition is out!
I’ve been following the development of this for some time, being a longtime Fluxbox enthusiast, and a relatively recent Linux Mint convert. This combines two of my favorite things in the Linux world, Fluxbox and Mint!
According to the official announcement:
“This release has been built with the emphasis on a lightweight and yet fully functional desktop centered on the Fluxbox window manager. Even though we strive to provide out-of-the-box readiness for all your hardware and common computing tasks, Linux Mint Fluxbox CE is easily configurable to run on lower-spec hardware with the tools needed for doing so readily available.”
Here’s a little version of their screenshot of how it looks out of the box (click for the full size image):
Considering the wonderful performance I’ve noted with the regular Linux Mint 7 and 8 releases on my aging hardware at home, I’m guessing a release optimized for performance with Fluxbox as its default window manager will be screaming fast.
I gave the release candidate a whirl the other day on my old Toshiba laptop in VirtualBox, and I was surprised at how fast and snappy it was even virtualized.
I can’t wait to get this installed natively on that laptop to see how it performs!
Anyway, I had to give preliminary kudos to Kendall for what is looking like some really great results from all of his hard work lately! Thanks to him for picking up that ball and running with it!
The ongoing role of my old Toshiba laptop
Bet you guys thought I forgot about this blog, huh?
Well, as I mentioned in my last post (ugh, all the way back in November already?), I’m gainfully employed again, and busier than a one-legged man in an…. well, you get the idea.
I get home from work and the LAST thing on my mind is writing any kind of intelligible technology articles.
That said, I DO need to start contributing some content to my own Linux blog again, so here goes.
The Linux Critic 