Another plug for Teapot's Intrepid Ibex install if you want an easy way to try the Ubuntu XFCE out on an SD card. I think it is quite beautiful.
http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=4053.0 On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Erik Garrison <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 02:23:24PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote: > > Hi, > > > > > Now, the question I have is why we would chose GNOME over XFCE. I > > > think there are significant differences in system resource > > > consumption. > > > > We had a long thread about whether to use GNOME or XFCE on devel@ last > > month. I suggested XFCE, and was persuaded that the disk image size > > of DebXO+GNOME is not significantly different than DebXO+XFCE, > > Yes, the NAND usage is comparable. You end up using very similar > libraries. In my tests even fluxbox-based builds required at minimum > 2/3 of the NAND space of the GNOME builds. > > In my experience the benefit is visible only at runtime. > > > ... and that both run fine without swap, suggesting that we might be > > able to pull off GNOME on Fedora. If we find it unbearable, I'm fine > > with using XFCE instead, but my impression was that GNOME is > > preferred. > > I doubt we will find it unbearable. And I somewhat doubt that even if > we do we will elect to switch after we invest development effort into > it. So we should be very careful going into this to choose the most > suitable option, before we are locked into one system or the other. > > I think it is telling that XFCE is designed expressly for limited > systems such as ours, whereas GNOME has a more general applicability and > is less optimized for our target. The effort shows. > > In terms of features, I have not experienced any significant difference > in my use of the two systems on the XO, except perhaps that the > appearance of GNOME is less configurable by the user in its default > setup. Some may say this is a good thing as it decreases the potential > problems that can arise, but to me it seems a positive feature to make > the environment more enjoyable by young people. > > ... But frankly I don't care much about window manager features so long > as a lack of them doesn't get in people's way. I want applications. If > running one system means a quarter more available memory available to > user-chosen applications, then we have made a big win. > > OK. Enough rambling... My opinions await qualification by tests. > > > (For the record, I'm not against investigating adding some swap for 9.1 > > now that we have NAND partitioning available. We'd have to be more sure > > of our estimate that it won't significantly shorten the lifespan of the > > flash chip, though. What do people think?) > > IMO: The NAND is not sacred. It is there to be used. If the chip fails > the repair is as simple as installing an SD card; and as time goes on > they rapidly decrease in price. That all said, it is not my > understanding that the chip will fail catastrophically. It will just > wear out, and its storage capacity will decrease. Like the breaks on a > bike its use necessitates that it be burnt up very slowly. > > (don't forget compcache ...) > > > > Even though XFCE is not a Fedora-supported desktop environment, it > > > is readily supported in other distributions. We could easily > > > borrow the polish that XUbuntu has applied to its distribution and > > > get a system equally usable as GNOME. > > > > Scott previously made a build stream ("faster") that contains both Sugar > > and XFCE and a way to switch between them, so this integration work has > > already been done. > > I wasn't specifically talking about integration, but polish. Ubuntu's > XFCE seems to be in a better state than Fedora's or Debian's as they > have integrated some upstream patches (most notably desktop icon > customization stuff). They also use the GNOME menu system, which is > very clear and well-organized. I don't know exactly the state of the > differences but they are significant enough to be notable from the > user's perspective. > > Erik > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > -- "Don't think for a minute that power concedes. We have to work like our future depends on it." -- Barack Obama
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