Allen Bethea

I nstalled Lubuntu 10.04 Beta-1 on my Emachines T1100.

Lubuntu is Ubuntu built around LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment). Lubuntu is designed to be fast and responsive on older, slower machines such as the T1100.

The T1100 has the Intel 810 chipset and graphics. Unlike the last two versions of Ubuntu,  Intel video works as expected. Lubuntu is a true lightweight desktop compared to the bloated Xubuntu.

I am not disparaging XFCE, Debian Lenny XFCE is very quick and easy on resources.

T1100 System Specs

• Intel® Celeron® Processor 1GHz (w/128KB)
• Original Operating System :  Windows® XP Home Edition
• Chipset : Intel® 810 chipset, 100MHz FSB
• Memory : 512MB SDRAM
• Hard Drive : 40GB HDD
• Optical Drive : 12x Max. Write CD-RW Drive;
• 3.5″ 1.44MB FDD
• Video : Intel® DirectAGP 3D (810 shared)
• Sound : Intel® 82801 AC ‘97 Audio
• Modem : 56K ITU v.92-ready PCI internal Fax/Modem
• Peripherals : Keyboard, Mouse, Stereo Speakers Ports/Other : 2 USB ports (1 on front bezel), 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS/2, Audio In & Out, 1 Midi/Game on front bezel, Mic-In & Head Phone jack on front

The Lubuntu team chose a software suite which would allow the average person to get work done and have a little fun on the side. Abiword was the defauld word processor. The excellent  Gnumeric was the spreadsheet. Since my machine had 512mb ram, I promptly add OpenOffice. I need that full suite.

The default browser (the only browser) was Google’s Chromium. The Lubuntu version was fast, but it crash after 2 or 3 minutes of use. Repeatedly. I purged Chromium and download the latest version of Google Chrome for Debian/Ubuntu (5.0.342.9 beta) and installed it with Gdebi.

The Sylpheed was the email program. I have used it in the past but I prefer Thunderbird. It is a snap to download Thunderbird from the Mozilla site and extract the contents into your home directory. Works like a charm and it is automatically updated. (Don’t tell anyone but you can do the same for Firefox shshshhhhh)

All in all I like it very much. It is a truly lightweight desktop. I would recommend it for anyone with A PIII computer with at least 256 MB of ram. It will surely run is less but lets get real. With the speed and power of up to date software, you will smile as you remember how excited you were when you bought your computer 10 years ago!

On March 25. I installed the first beta of Ubuntu 10.4, Lucid Lynx on my EeePC 900A net book. This machine has:

• 1 gig of ram
• 8.9 in LCD
• a 4 gig SD hard drive
• a 1.6gHz  atom processor

The installation went flawlessly. The new theme was nice, otherwise the system really was not obviously different from 9.10, Karmic Koala Remix.

There was no improvement in performance. Boot time was reduced considerably though.

As promised, the Gimp was removed. There was some talk of leaving off OpenOffice to save room on the CD/USB image. To my great pleasure, OpenOffice 3.2 was there in all its glory

I look forward to the April 29, 2010 release of Lucid Lynx.

Today, December 8, 2009, Google released the first beta of its Chrome browser for Linux.

As I am a bit hesitant to install untested software on my my system, I installed and test the browser under a live CD session of Linux Mint 8 (Helena).  Linuxmint 8 is a refinement of the just released Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

All dependencies were met and the installation went smoothly. Here is a video of the install and the testing.

I can’t wait a package for Debian Lenny is done!