pewpewpew wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

the nicest thing about Knoppix is that it has Wine pre-installed

So why not Knoppix, then? Is there anything it's lacking for you? It sounds like it's what's you want.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix742-en.html

I guess I was expecting that one way or another, something must have surpassed it by now. Perhaps not.

King_Corduroy wrote:

You are crazy if you are running Debian though. 😜

I know I am. When I install Debian, I install in text mode, and only install the most basic install, no X, no desktop. Then I install just the packages I want from there. It helps keep out all the cruft and crap I don't want. You do really have to beat Debian in the kidneys to get a workable desktop out of it. It has gotten much better over the years though. You pretty much have to run Debian Testing if you want the latest packages. Debian stable is out of date by the time it gets released. I still don't like that they rebrand Firefox as Iceweasel, but oh well.

Overall, once you have it tweaked, Debian is clean, fast, and stable. It is a pain when you need something that cannot be found in the Debian repositories. You can often install Ubuntu packages, but they don't always work due to some version differences.

My current desktop is dual 27" monitors. I use nVidea twinview with the binary drivers get the dual desktop working. One thing I love about MATE and dual monitors is that the task bar, when you have it docked on each monitor, only shows the apps running on that monitor. Drag a window to the other head, and the task bar button moves to that head. Nice!

leileilol wrote:

My personal favorite WM is QVWM because it's just like Windows 95.

Then I definitely need to try QVWM. Thanks for mentioning it, I never heard of it before.
Going back several years ago all I wanted was for somebody to make a GUI that worked and performed like Windows 95/NT4. It didn't seem like much to ask. Win98/2k style features would be a bonus. At the time I couldn't find a single linux GUI that both performed decently on modest hardware, and that I could also understand and want to use.

I'm a little better with other desktops now than I was back then, and the performance on the heavier desktops isn't as big a problem anymore. I'm still interested to see one that just replaces the classic Windows shell though.

There was something called XPde once, but it looks like development died.

Jorpho wrote:

There was something called XPde once, but it looks like development died.

Once heard about a "total conversion" for Linux to make it look like XP - between the rolling hills background and the Start menu the average layman could not tell the difference. I often joked with myself that any horrendously virus-prone client I assisted would have their OS replaced and they'd never be the wiser. Then again, repeat customers... 😁

laxdragon wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

You are crazy if you are running Debian though. 😜

Overall, once you have it tweaked, Debian is clean, fast, and stable. It is a pain when you need something that cannot be found in the Debian repositories. You can often install Ubuntu packages, but they don't always work due to some version differences.

My current desktop is dual 27" monitors. I use nVidea twinview with the binary drivers get the dual desktop working. One thing I love about MATE and dual monitors is that the task bar, when you have it docked on each monitor, only shows the apps running on that monitor. Drag a window to the other head, and the task bar button moves to that head. Nice!

My linux box dual boots debian and ubuntu. The debian desktop works fine for me, but I am not running anything out of the ordinary except eclipse and some simulation stuff [non-repository].

Ubuntu I'm using because I wanted to install nvidia's cuda drivers and debian didn't have any [and given my debian install works, I didn't want to corrupt it]. I hate the ubuntu desktop and the nvidia display driver I'm using is buggy [mad flickering of various kinds] but cuda programming seems to work. Best in text mode.

Think they both picked up my wireless adapters just fine, which is a complete contrast to a few years ago when lack of wireless drivers - and arrogant/unhelpful attitudes on linux forums - led me to ditch linux for a while.

For what it's worth I still use an old UBCD from many years back, mainly for memtest86 etc.

Never quite got the need for a "live cd" other than for recovery/diagnostics.

Linux has supported wifi out of the box for a while now. I'm using an old version of CrunchBang (based on Ubuntu and now no longer developed) Live Distro which I decided to install on the hdd. Being pretty minimalist I added few repositories and am running XFCE as my primary desktop enviroment and it works pretty well for my relatively humble needs. Everything works just fine. At home I don't actually need MS Windows for anything essentual.

I'm a fan of Window Maker, just because. It runs fine on my P200mmx box.