[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I was just bringing an example, not arguing for or against any particular distro.

I didn't think you were.

So it isn't the package management specifically, just the general environment of Ubuntu that you prefer? I agree Ubuntu is very easy to use and just make work for you.

Good package management was a factor. I've spent more time than I like chasing dependencies to get something working, and I've had to do next to none in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is awesome. I have it installed on my other computer, this one only has Arch because I am learning how to pop the hood and fiddle.

Ubuntu isn't perfect, but I'm not sure that's possible.

I have it up on an ancient notebook, and doing so was a challenge. The box has a 767mhz Transmeta Crusoe processor, slow IDE4 HD, and whopping 256MB RAM, of which the CPU grabs 16MB off the top for code morphing.

I originally installed Xubuntu, supposedly intended for lower end HW, but it was snail slow. Posters on the Ubuntu forums said Canonical has a steadily advancing idea of what "low end" is, and that too much Gnome had crept into Xubuntu. They suggested what I did: install from the Minimal CD to get a working command line installation, then use apt-get to grab the specific stuff I wanted. I use Lxde as the lightweight window manager, and selecting it brought along Xorg and the other parts needed to support a GUI environment, then added apps from there. The result was no speed demon, but did run more or less accessibly.

On the desktop, I looked at and passed on Ubuntu's default Unity interface. It was designed for things like notebooks with small screens, and falls down from my POV on large monitors. I installed XFCE4 instead.

On the notebook again, I got nailed the last time I tried to do a version upgrade. Everything went fine till the last step, when the upgrade tried to install a new kernel. Unfortunately, the kernel it wanted to install requires PAE support, and the ancient box lacks it, so that step failed. when I rebooted, what I had was an environment badly hosed enough that I wiped and redid everything from scratch, stopping just before that version and staying carefully put.

It apparently didn't occur to the packager of the release that a machine might not have PAE support. I suppose it's a fair enough assumption, since the notebook is close to 10 years old, and is strictly an experiment to see what I can wring out of low end kit without spending money.

Dragging things back on topic, Android is a flavor of Linux. (Linux is technically the Linux kernel, and a device that uses it is a Linux system. The Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, and my former wireless router are all Linux systems.) There are a couple of different things I'm looking at as Linux under Android solutions for the tablet. They seem to be attempts to add the other stuff Linux users are used to an Android installation.

I already have one package installed that is a user space Busybox install, adding a lot of the CLI utilities Linux offers in a non-rooted environment. (My tablet is rooted, but the Busybox utils work fine run as root.)
______
Dennis