[ubuntu-za] Migrating to Linux

[Adrianna Pińska]

On 3 May 2015 at 06:12, Jan Greeff <jan at verslank.net> wrote:
> Many thanks Adrianna and William. I am almost sure he will go the LS route
> like I'm doing.
>
> I was thinking of downloading the 14.04 Mate ISO but from what you say it
> seems unnecessary as I have the normal 14.04 LTS, however, there seems to be
> a few potential bugs if I install the Mate environment in the normal
> version?
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/08/install-mate-desktop-ubuntu-14-04-lts

I don't know about bugs. Installation difficulties?  Maybe.  Bear in
mind that these instructions are for installing from a PPA, which
always indicates that what you're installing may be a little bit
bleeding edge, and are nine months old.

Here are some newer instructions for 14.04:
http://itsfoss.com/install-mate-desktop-ubuntu-14-04/

And here are general instructions for Ubuntu on the MATE desktop
homepage (scroll down):
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download

As you can see, the packages have been added to the official
repositories for 14.10 onwards, but you still need the PPA for 14.04.
The main installation problem seems to be that installing MATE adds a
couple of things that stick around until you explicitly remove them
and that make Unity look weird if you go back to it. Which obviously
is only a problem if you go back to Unity, not in MATE itself.

> So looks like the safer way to go is to download and use the 14.04 LTS Mate
> ISO?

"Safer" in that you will not have to do anything at all to install
MATE because it will already be installed.  But you won't get the
Unity environment unless you install that. I have no idea which route
is cleaner if you want the option of both.

How invested are you in MATE specifically?  It's still a bit new; XFCE
(Xubuntu) or LXDE (Lubuntu) have been around for much longer, so they
should be a lot more stable.

For example, I think the established desktop environments in the main
repositories are more clever about playing nice with each other. E.g.
if there are system apps that should only autostart for one
environment and not others, they are set up that way -- something that
doesn't seem to be the case yet for MATE, and will probably be fixed
in the future.

> Both his laptops can run 2 GB RAM, the one just needs an upgrade from 1 GB.
> I have installed Ubuntu 14.04 in two laptops running on 2 GB RAM and they
> both seem quite happy, so perhaps I should not worry about the Xubuntu or
> Lubuntu options.

I would still recommend one of the lighter environments over Unity for
two reasons:

1) I think the model will be easier for a Windows user to adjust to:
they're closer to the boring but reliable window model used by old
GNOME, KDE, etc.. Unity goes off on a bit of an exciting tangent.  On
the other hand, this may not be a problem for someone who is used to
smartphone OSes, since it kind of resembles that. Also I admit that
I'm somewhat biased.

2) Unity may be technically usable on the laptop but still slow enough
to be annoying.  That can be a huge usability difference. The laptop
I'm typing this on has 2G of RAM, I use Fluxbox (which is considerably
lighter than any of the environments we're discussing) and I *just*
manage to run Firefox at the same time as other things (to be fair
this is mostly Firefox's fault).

In summary: if I were you, taking all these factors into account, I'd
probably try XFCE or LXDE -- either by installing packages on top of
your vanilla Ubuntu install DVD or by getting the 14.04 version of
Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

You may find this article interesting (although it is also quite old):
http://www.howtogeek.com/193129/how-to-install-and-use-another-desktop-environment-on-linux/

Note that there's a difference between installing e.g. just the xfce
package and the entire xubuntu environment (the xubuntu-desktop
package) -- the latter is likely to override stuff like the login
screen and some of the default applications.

If you want a completely stress- and tweak-free experience, get the
Xubuntu or Lubuntu install DVD -- but if you don't want to waste the
bandwidth unnecessarily, try messing around with the packages first
and see what happens. You can install and try as many environments as
you want, and you can always do a clean install afterwards.

Cheers,
-- 
Adrianna Pińska
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