Deuterium with other de?

hitman72ita · 2017-10-17 07:27:46

hi, I have tested "bl-Deuterium-i386+NonPAE_20170429.iso" with an old pentium M with 2gb of ram and works great! But is possible to have this iso distro with other "user friendly" de like xfce or mate? thank you

Last edited by hitman72ita (2017-10-17 07:38:48)

iMBeCil · 2017-10-17 08:39:24

It depends on what exactly do you mean by

hitman72ita wrote:

... is possible to have this iso distro with other "user friendly" de like xfce or mate?

If you mean:

hitman72ita wrote:

... is it possible to install xfce- and/or mate-related packages and use it as my DE

then the answer is definitely positively yes. You just have to discover what packages to download/install.

If you mean:

hitman72ita wrote:

... would someone make mi an installable iso with xfce/mate

then the answer is probably 'I don't think so'. Making an installable iso time consuming, especially effectively making entire distro, cf. xfce Debian ...

And, there is of course question of what exactly do you want to keep from BL, and what do you want from xfce/mate. For example, did you consider installing stock Debina-xfce, and simply add stuff you like in BL?

hitman72ita · 2017-10-17 08:50:41

thank you for reply, I am not very expert linux user but I have installed xfce without problems, but, n.1 xfce is the old version 4.10, n.2 the final result is not a very beautiful hybrid to see.

I "need" xfce or mate because a lot of old people that come from windows, without icons on the desktop or the "start button" have problems :-)

iMBeCil · 2017-10-17 09:10:00

^Well, then perhaps it would be the best to search for some lightweight distro based on xfce or mate. It would be way easier than adjusting and fine tuning BL ...

For example, stock Debian-xfce is perfectly nice. If this xfce is too old(?), then you can just update installed version to more recent one (so called 'testing' or 'unstable'). It is not difficult, I can help you later today (or anyone here on the forum) with the 'upgrading'.

You can search distros which suits your needs on distrowatch.com.

There is also a recent post mentioning light linux distros ...

BTW, you can as well try LXDE-based distros, they are also light on resources and look nice(?).

I'm afraid, there is no shortcuts to your goal ... it is up to you to test those distros, and see for yourself which one you find beautiful and useable. (For example, BL has too many icons, so I don't even use it regularly ... the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.)

Bearded_Blunder · 2017-10-17 16:06:01

LXQt is another lightweight DE, the version in Stretch is still a bit rough round the edges, but in testing/Buster I quite like it.
Have a play with some installs to some spare space, see what you like, there's a debian netinstall image for testing, also one with non-free firmware if you need it ( sorry I don't have the url handy).
If you want the non-pae kernel specifically (good idea with low RAM if you're doing a 32 bit install) then choose the "Expert install", it'll let you pick it from a list, the standard installer will use the pae version if your processor supports pae regardless if your machine has the RAM to need it (Pentium 2 upwards). Don't worry about the dire warnings of possible breakage with an expert install, there's just a ton more questions which all default to what the standard installer does.
There's a good selection of desktops offered by the netinstall installer, so you can certainly give xfce, LXDE & MATE a shot that way, if you wanted to give LXQt a try, don't select a DE, boot into the commandline system and as root (or sudo) just

apt install task-lxqt-desktop

since it's not listed in tasksel.
Or pick from any of the gozillion distros at distrowatch, as suggested.

ohnonot · 2017-10-17 17:00:33

if you depend on the non-pae version, that means your hardware is so old, you probably won't be happy with mate or xfce.
on the other hand, the older debian jessie versions might be significantly lighter than the newer gtk3-based versions of these DEs.

as for the looks, well, make it look nicer!

Bearded_Blunder · 2017-10-17 17:22:19

ohnonot wrote:

if you depend on the non-pae version, that means your hardware is so old, you probably won't be happy with mate or xfce.

There was some discussion of pae vs non-pae in the installing helium-dev thread, the OP's machine, from the processor mentioned for certain *supports* pae at the processor level, he just lacks the RAM and probably the motherboard support to ever install enough to need pae, even if it worked as advertised, so why introduce the overhead? It's also new and powerful enough he might never notice the difference, but it *is* noticeable on my truly ancient 233MHz Pentium II desktop.

Any machine that depends on non-pae is so old running a graphical DE of any description is going to be difficult, and web-surfing impossible.

Doesn't stop non-pae being the better choice even on some hardware that does support it.

tknomanzr · 2017-10-17 20:21:53

If all you are needing is icons on the desktop, then

sudo apt purge thunar*

sudo apt install pcmanfm

Then in ~/.config/openbox/autostart enter a stanza like:

pcmanfm -d &

This will start the pcmanfm desktop. Icons on the desktop are desktop entries. They must be properly setup. However, a number of them are already probably setup for you. You can find some in ~/.local/share/applications, for instance. There is also numerous desktop entries in /usr/share/applications. Place these desktop files in ~/Desktop and pcmanfm will draw the icons on the desktop for you. Pick some of them apart and learn how to set them up if you like. In this way, you have a lightweight BL desktop that also sports icons. Do note, however, that icons on the desktop may interfere with any running conky's so plan accordingly. You can usually move running conky's by right-clicking them and dragging them around the desktop.

Refer to this article from the Arch wiki for more information:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCManFM

Last edited by tknomanzr (2017-10-18 02:44:43)

johnraff · 2017-10-18 02:43:36

BTW the non-pae iso image we provide is also different from the others in that it is small enough to fit on a CD-ROM. There are probably more older machines that would need this because their BIOS does not support booting from a USB stick than because their processor doesn't support pae.

Bearded_Blunder · 2017-10-18 23:42:32

I would suggest WAY more. Given just how far back processor PAE support appeared. The point is it's the better choice for low memory old machines anyway, even at the expense of having to install some missing stuff.. on the basis that for 32bit with less than 4GiB of ram non-pae is the better choice outright. It's a shame both the normal Debian installer (netinst images) and bl-welcome assume that if

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep pae

returns a result that the pae kernel is automatically the *better* choice, where actually 32 bit machines that support or will ever have enough RAM to need it are RARE, rendering it a worse one.

johnraff · 2017-10-19 01:32:44

^I'll look at rewording the bl-welcome text at that point to make the choice more neutral, rather than a recommendation.

Added this line:

bl-welcome wrote:

Depending on your hardware, a PAE kernel might, or might not, improve performance.

Last edited by johnraff (2017-10-19 05:41:41)

#1 2017-10-17 07:27:46

Deuterium with other de?

#2 2017-10-17 08:39:24

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#3 2017-10-17 08:50:41

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#4 2017-10-17 09:10:00

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#5 2017-10-17 16:06:01

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#6 2017-10-17 17:00:33

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#7 2017-10-17 17:22:19

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#8 2017-10-17 20:21:53

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#9 2017-10-18 02:43:36

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#10 2017-10-18 23:42:32

Re: Deuterium with other de?

#11 2017-10-19 01:32:44

Re: Deuterium with other de?

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