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Linux distro for word processing and internet researching?

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What are you trying out first? Btw, let us know what you thought of it too.

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What are you trying out first? Btw, let us know what you thought of it too.

At the moment ElementaryOS is downloading. I'll give it a couple hours of use before I start to form an opinion on it.

Always trying to find reason.

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Nice choice :)

I figured I should start from the top with the likely candidates, but it will take a while to go through them.

Always trying to find reason.

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Hello everyone, I'm looking for a non-specific Linux distro for general word processing and looking at data, researching information, etc. to thrown on my older Toshiba laptop. I've been looking at (x)(l)ubuntu, openSUSE, Arch, mint, etc. but I don't have the time to install and explore every single one to see which works for me. I'm impartial but just want something that's easy to use being able to quick-launch the word processor, browser, you get the deal and just do work on it.

 

I do prefer the "Apple-esque" style that openSUSE has (for example) because it simply works faster in my limited use, but does anyone have any ideas? Ideally I would like something very lightweight to improve battery life.

 

Thoughts?

 

Give Archbang a try. It's extremely light and a rolling distro. It will suit your current needs with room to expand without having to reinstall the OS. Try it on a virtual macine/box and see if its you.

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Give Archbang a try. It's extremely light and a rolling distro. It will suit your current needs with room to expand without having to reinstall the OS. Try it on a virtual macine/box and see if its you.

I think I'll leave it like regular Arch for much later when I'm competent enough to use it.

Always trying to find reason.

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Every time someone installs Ubuntu, god kills a puppy.

 

Use Debian and your choice of desktop environment. Or use CentOS and Gnome. Or use whatever you want.. as long as it's not freaking Ubuntu.

 

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The actual distro you're on really doesn't matter at all, especially if you're new enough to be asking this type of question (not that it's a bad thing! I welcome people to linux!). It's really the desktop environment you install/use that you'll see and interact with. I like Gnome. Some people like KDE. Other people like Xfce. It's all personal preference.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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Heyyo,

Hmm, for most Apple-esque? Ubuntu Mate. She runs on the lovely Mate desktop environment which is a fork of good ol' fashion gnome. :)

https://ubuntu-mate.org/

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It's clean, it's stable and it's not heavy on the system resources and it comes preloaded with LibreOffice.

 

Why so anti-ubuntu?

People don't like them because they make radical changes... like going from Gnome to Unity, the recent change to systemd, the upcoming change to mir... essentially they're becoming slowly more and more closed. Meh, overall? Ubuntu is still among the easiest distros to setup and toss at a Linux newbie. I'm more of a Manjaro user myself since I like the latest and greatest software developments but you do sacrifice some stability.

Heyyo,

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Heyyo,

Hmm, for most Apple-esque? Ubuntu Mate. She runs on the lovely Mate desktop environment which is a fork of good ol' fashion gnome. :)

https://ubuntu-mate.org/

Dsnt9Vi.png

It's clean, it's stable and it's not heavy on the system resources and it comes preloaded with LibreOffice.

 

People don't like them because they make radical changes... like going from Gnome to Unity, the recent change to systemd, the upcoming change to mir... essentially they're becoming slowly more and more closed. Meh, overall? Ubuntu is still among the easiest distros to setup and toss at a Linux newbie. I'm more of a Manjaro user myself since I like the latest and greatest software developments but you do sacrifice some stability.

 

Don't hate on Systemd. It's a great change, even if I'm still crying about it. In the long run, it'll make things so much better and easier. But from someone who's been linuxing for the past almost ten years... switching from sysvinit to systemd is just difficult. I still have to stop myself from typing "service stop asdfoin34" and write "systemctl asdf09123 stop" and the rest. But unit files and all the other great features really are awesome.

 

As for why I'm anti-ubuntu--it's because I used to use it. I used it through the change from Gnome to Unity, and with everything else they did during that time--I only see it as a joke of a distro. It's bloated and old and doesn't get the patches it needs for software. The repositories (historically) are unmaintained and contain old versions of software (I'm talking like just 4 years ago, PHP 5.2 being the de-facto apt-get install php ....)

 

If you want a pure experience and not a bunch of Canonical BS, use Debian. It's pure.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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I like Debian with LXDE for older systems. The GUI doesn't get in the way but lets me do what I need to and is ultra fast and light. Web browsers and LibreOffice are fine on it.

 

Lubuntu seems to run much worse for me than Debian with LXDE but I'm unsure why, the memory footprint is over double so that may have something to do with it.

 

Just a note, I used a Debian raw CLI install then did "apt-get install task-lxde-desktop" on Debian 7.8. Hardware was a dual socket P2 350MHz system with 512MB ram when testing both, quite low end. :P

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I'd like to add I've not gotten to the point of using Linux where I'll mess around in the terminal or anything like that. At the moment I'd just like a distro that I can throw on my laptop and works out of the box without fiddling because of time and energy. :)

Always trying to find reason.

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LXDE with Ubuntu or debian definitely is my thoughts but XFCE if you dont like it windows like...

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I'd like to add I've not gotten to the point of using Linux where I'll mess around in the terminal or anything like that. At the moment I'd just like a distro that I can throw on my laptop and works out of the box without fiddling because of time and energy. :)

 

A single line to install a desktop environment won't kill you (yes, it's just 1 command) and you may even feel smarter after it, lol. I actually view it as less fiddling around now but each to their own.

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A single line to install a desktop environment won't kill you (yes, it's just 1 command) and you may even feel smarter after it, lol. I actually view it as less fiddling around now but each to their own.

True, but I don't know the lines. :P

Always trying to find reason.

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# sudo apt-get install desktop-package
if you're in a Debian bed system. (where "desktop-package" is the package name for your environment.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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# sudo apt-get install desktop-package
if you're in a Debian bed system. (where "desktop-package" is the package name for your environment.

Helpful to know, thank you. :)

Always trying to find reason.

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