Linux Setup

A bit off-piste here, but with plenty of time, a job search on and in need of a PC I decided to explore the option of installing a version of linux on an old laptop that was unusably slow.

I started with the default version of Ubuntu 18.04. It was easy to download and make a self-installing USB.  On booting from the USB you even have a choice to run the OS without installing it to get a feel for it.  I jumped right in, and installed it as my existing Windows system was unusable.
Installation was straightforward, and I liked the operating system, but unfortunately, I found it a bit laggy and slow.  Not entirely surprising given that my PC was below the recommended minimum spec.

I then explored options for lighter weight distributions and settled on Xubuntu.  This is basically Ubuntu, but comes with a much lighter weight desktop called Xfce.  As shipped, Xfce looks a bit bland and has none of the slick animations that you get with more modern desktops.  However, you get lots of options for setting it up, and I feel that I have got a layout that works well, looks good and doesn't have the heavy overhead of Gnome etc...  You may or may not agree :)  Basically I have two panels, one at the top which gives all my information and open widows, and one at the bottom which just has launcher icons for my commonly used applications.  Both of these panels 'Intelligently autohide'; this means that they autohide when you have widows covering them, but not when they don't.

My Xfce desktop

In looking at different options I couldn't get a clear take on whether Xfce or Mate was the lighter desktop.  Different sites say different things.  MATE looks like it might have a slightly more modern default setup, but I actually prefer the setup that I achieved (2 panels) on Xfce.  Similarly, I also looked a bit at Mint rather than Ubuntu, but didn't get much of a steer on which I'd prefer - most sites suggested that Mint might be a touch easier to get into, but I suspect that was more related to the use of the Cinnamon desktop which is its default.  I might try an install of Mint with the MATE on another old laptop and compare to what I have.

UPDATE: I did install Mint with Xfce.  The default installation comes with some better applications by default (picture viewer and Impress) however, I prefer the Ubuntu setup overall and it is not hard to add these extra applications.

Anyway, my take is that linux has come a long way from when I played with it last. I'm just going to list the things that I did to get my system setup.... mostly for my own record in future.  I'm not going to list all the detail - there is so much help available on the web for each of these steps.

1) Installation:  Simple.  Go to the Xubuntu site and download the installer here:https://xubuntu.org/download/  Here you can download a bootable iso image or get a file that will make a bootable USB key.  Boot your computer from the USB key and you will get an option to run linux from the key or install it onto your computer.  For the install procedure, there are a limited number of options, but you will need to think of a computer name, username and password.

2) Setup of Xfce: I wanted a panel at the bottom of the screen to launch applications... to do this right click on the top panel and go to panel preferences, you should be able to create a new panel and position it at the bottom.  I made this panel a bit deeper than the top 'title bar'.  I have set both panels to have a translucent grey background and they become more opaque as the mouse hovers over them.  I also use the 'intelligently hide' option for both which allows the applications to use the full screen and then the panels appear if you move the mouse over them.  I then added all the applications that I use regularly to the bottom panel.

3) Printers: Totally straightforward - got to the settings - it worked out of the box for my Samsung USB printer.

4) Other applications to install:
The following can all be installed from the software manager - it should be completely straightforward:
Spotify
Skype
KeepassXC (Latest version via Snap or a slightly older version from Ubuntu)
Dropbox
Impress (Powerpoint for Libre Office)
Mailspring (I'm still flicking back and forth between using Gmail through ICE or Mailspring.  Mailspring provides some interesting functionality including being able to see when people read emails etc...)
KeepassXC-Browser (enables you to auto populate passwords from KeepassXC to Firefox.

note: Historically I have used Chrome on my windows machine. You can download Chrome for Ubuntu or install Chromium which is basically the same thing less Flash support. However, I found Chrome and Chromium to be very resource heavy on Ubuntu, and seemed to end up getting heavily bogged down using the swapfile.  Because of this I switched back to Firefox which is a bit slower but I'm happy with it.

5) Less Straightforward:
Viewnior - install this to replace the existing picture viewer.  Much more intuitive and can rotate a pic.
I used ICE to create launchers for Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive.  A .deb installer for ICE can be found here:https://launchpad.net/~peppermintos/+archive/ubuntu/p8-release/+files/ice_5.2.8_all.deb

Still looking for:
A good Google Drive and Onedrive client.  There are a few but none seem quite robust apart from commercial ones which cost £'s. Rclone works well but it is command line driven and doesn't sync automatically when you edit something.