Adventures To XFCE

I have tested so much on myn computer that it has began to show symptoms of slowing down. So, I decided to get an GNU/Linux with an light weight desktop environment to suite my old PC. Now my PC is an 2005 LG MyPC with 2.66 GHz single core Celeron processor, 512Mb of  DDR RAM and 40Gb HDD I also have a partially working LG DVD RW therefore I have to boot using a pendrive thats, pretty old but running OK. I have also MS XP SP3 installed on it .

The choice of light weight desktop environments I have narrowed down to Lubuntu, Bodhi Linux, Sabayon 9 XFCE, Fedora 17 XFCE and Xubuntu 12.04 . Except Xubuntu and Fedora I have to download the OS es. My previous installation was Xubuntu 12.04 which liked very much but if I reinstalled it will give me straight 200MB download therfore I skiped it next is Fedora 17  Beefy Miracle but the XFCE edition I would like to say “The beef is half cooked”. From my previous installtion of Lubuntu-desktop on top of Xubuntu has made me feel that it is fast and
light, proprietary audio and video codecs are installed by default but it somewhat feels like old Ms 98 days so left it also. Bodhi Linux is good choice with E17 DE but but......... My Last choice is Sabayon 9 XFCE it is based on Gentoo its modular and simple(It is what I have read in Internet). It will be nice expedition to Sabayon because its different to what I have used before plus all the good internet reviews .Therefore I decided to download 1.48 GB iso.

One thing I must tell you what I fear is downloading OS from Internet because my Internet connection TATA GSM 2G gives me average 12KBps and that takes really long for an OS to be downloaded. So, I thought to upgrade to 3G . Now when it comes to choice of 3G we do not have to many choice especially when we are in tight budget. Thus I picked up Reliance 3G for Rs 450 which give me 2Gb X 3Months data dowloading and uploading . I started downloading uusing direct http download using Firefox’s download manager it was downloading at a rate of near abou 200KBps near about 60 MB Firefox notified Download completed. Ugh! it Failed Now I grabbed a torrent file and opened it using Transmission and if by magic it Shifted the Gears and picked up where firefox left with an average speed of 350KBps.

The Download completed now I prepared a bootable USB thumb drive using Unetbootin. The USB drive is an old 4Gb Moaserbaer drive. Next I rebooted and setiup the BIOS to boot from pendrive first and then I selected the ‘Default’ from unetbootin menu and it took me to a nice and sober desktop with a sabayon logo. It has full Libre-office suite,Midori web browser, but no email client( are you kidding 1.48 GB and no mail client ). then I clicked on the Disk logo called install it on a hard drive. The installer which some of you might be familiar is Fedora’s Anaconda installer but at the end installer hanged up and I have to reset and finally
Grub rescue>
I again booted the pendrive and choose ‘installer’ from the Unetbootin menu and this time the same Anaconda conquering the whole screen started  up and successfully completing the installation. Now when I rebooted  setting the bios there was GRUB with sabayon background booted up in login screen there  entered username and password and Whoos.  STOP!!
NOTHING HAPPENED no error or whatsoever the same login screen. I again entered username and password this time also nothing happened , I tried several times without success then I entered  user:root
password:*********
and set desktop from default to XFCE
and this time I entered into vanilla XFCE session and then again I booted the pendrive and this time I booted live CD and then clicked many times installer without any success I rebooted and choose text based installer and it started a semi-graphical installer almost same as Anaconda installer and I successfully logged in as sourav but without any ‘GRAPHICAL DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT’ only BASH. Frustrated I went to my MS XP and created USB bootable drive with a new pendrive  and This time everything went smooth and sccessfully logged into xfce the default themeing is nice and smooth.

Exploring the Sabayon it looked like Gnome2 or MATE  although it was XFCE 4.10 the latest and greatest. The mp3 and Videos played smooth like never before on any Linux I have tested.
Then the problems started I clicked the mail icon a small window popped up and asked me to choose the default mail client but sadly no mail client was there. Midori is a light browser somewhat trying to look like chromium and crashed a lot . Therefore I went to ‘RIGO’ application browser and downloaded Chromium straight from Italy. Rigo gave some funny notifications 'All the applications are updated, cool.’ when i accidental tried to stop it said 'HEY, HEY, HEY, Rigo is installing. The first run was OK but 2nd time it refused to launch. then I tried something terminalish I typed
emerge firefox
error no file found for “firefox”

Then I referred the Docs it was documentation of its eternal papa the Gentoo on which Sabayon is based and it was enormously long and techie and seemed like enormous mountain  neither I have the courage nor time to read it all . Therefore I grabbed the new USB drive and loaded it with Xubuntu 12.04 and  fired it up after installation i updated and with my new 3G connection in only 20 min  I got ready to run I also installed  XFCE 4.10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade






And After a few minutes of tweaking I got my favourite looking Desktop.

Lessons I learnt

Whenever upgrading or trying  a new distro always backup data and keeping a reliable booting media.
Sometime bad pendrives or CDs can break things into frustration.
Sabayon 9 XFCE is a  good distro but not at all for average users.

Note:

I concluded that my pendrive is faulty by retesting with fedora and ubuntu. Once in ubuntu a funny error popped out “Installer Crashed: The Hard disk is old or keep it in a cooler place.”
Sabayon 9 XFCE is good but Rigo is not upto mark thats not a problem an average user is not going to use it and Experienced user don’t need it

Disclaimer

I dont guarantee corectness of the data because I am also an average user.

Copyright

This doucument is in public domain is free to modify or redistribute for any purpose.