McStuff

I have an old laptop that has a messed up screen, so I use it with an old crt. It has a 1.6ghz pent m, 512mb of ram, radeon x300 mobile, and either a 60gb or 80gb drive (I have both, so I could install on either). I don't want to have to do a lot of command line, and I'd like something with a slick looking gui (addons maybe?). I've heard ubuntu is the best choice for this, and I've used it a couple times, but the gui is plain and it didn't really impress me that much. I've also hear that 9.10 isn't so great and that I should look for 9.04. So what distro should I use?

gonX

Try Kubuntu or Xubuntu - either with 9.10. If plain Ubuntu wasn't in your tastes, you might like one of those flavours.

Whoever told you that 9.04 is superior to 9.10 should - as rude as it may sound - be slapped. 9.10 is superior in every aspect.

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Dilyn

Mint?

It's awesome.

Although Mint and Ubuntu are extremely similar.


Lemme go see if I can find my old test that I used to take for this stuff

EDIT
You can take a magical distro test here.

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McStuff

How are Kubuntu or Xubuntu different?

And not to name names, but here's the post for reference: http://www.overclock.net/7589387-post7.html

Dilyn

Kubuntu uses the KDE environment, Xubuntu uses XFCE. Ubuntu uses Gnome. That's how they're different.

Xubuntu is the lightest of them all, Kubuntu seems to be the choice for aesthetic purposes. Ubuntu is most commonly chosen because Gnome is just cool

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gonX

Because of the rather vast differences between 9.04 and 9.10, many people will get confused by how 9.10 works, (especially if they've only tried easy distros like Ubuntu - unfortunately) and will most likely prefer 9.04. If you're new to Linux, getting 9.10 is definitely not a bad idea.

But as Dilyn mentioned, they use different desktop environments. I prefer XFCE to both Gnome and KDE, not only because it's lighter, but also because it feels far less bloated.
You may want to try out Xubuntu first (which is using XFCE as it's DE). I do not know many people who prefer KDE (Kubuntu, in this case).

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McStuff

Can I make Xubuntu look good? I hate to sound shallow like that, but it just seems plain. I'm dl'ing xubuntu right now, so I'd like to here your guys' addons that you use to make xubuntu look better.

gonX

Compositing is all I use. It gives me shadows which is all I really need. Other stuff like flashy windows with tons of transparency just seems contradictory to the way I prefer Linux.

Compositing in XFCE does however support transparency - it's based on GTK just like GNOME. If you thought GNOME wasn't flashy enough, you should probably steer clear of XFCE, as it only has less options compared to GNOME when it comes to looks.

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Dilyn

Can't you use Compiz in all Ubuntu distros?

Compiz Fusion makes anything look good

XFCE to me looks quite bland though... But it's very blue. Just like Kubuntu... Although less of an Oxygen thing going on.

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arkheii

I've tried Mint with a 1.6GHz Sempron + 9600GT, it's not a very responsive environment.

There are some nice xfce4 stuff here: http://goodies.xfce.org/start

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