Elementary OS Challenge is over

My one week Elementary OS Challenge is over. If you recall,  I wanted to see if iI could do whatever I needed to do on an $80 laptop from Craigslist and a free Linux based operating system.

In short,  not a problem.

That's not to say that I didn't miss the extra speed of my regular laptop,  but if I had to do it, I could live with it day in and day out no problem.

Here's a brief list of what I did in this week:

Gmail
Google Calendar
Looked at some PDFs for lacrosse
Facebook
Watched online video podcasts
Listened to Pandora
Watched Hulu
Recorded and started to edit an audio podcast that I never ended up using.
Google+ postings
Twitter postings
Updated my blog (with this)
Edited my Evernotes
Played solitaire
Installed and referenced my password database - KeePass
Posted my minivan on Craigslist (hint hint)

And that's really about it.

I think I'm going to try another week or so and see what I think... of both the laptop and the OS,  although the keyboard has a decent amount of flex that makes it miss some of my  letters.  I may take it apart and see if I can put in some bracing in it.

Thanks for all your interest and comments.  If you have any questions,  feel free to contact me!

Regards,

Lyman

My Elementary OS / Craigslist laptop challenge

As you know, I finally got a working installation of Elementary OS, the new Linux operating system distribution, after a few false starts installing it.

After reading the back to school advertisements, chock full of fancy quad core laptops running Windows 8, I decided to see how cheaply I could get online.

So here's my challenge to myself:

Can I use my $80 Craigslist laptop and the no cost operating system Elementary OS for a week?

Now I can't use it for my work, because currently our VPN doesn't support Linux, but they supply me with a computer anyway. But when you think about it, pretty much everything that one does online, besides gaming, runs in a browser... Gmail - browser; Facebook - browser; YouTube videos - you got it... browser. Even if you want to write a document and print it, you can use Google Documents and Google Drive and do it all online.

Here is what an $80 craigslist laptop is... first a confession, I am a bit of a craigslist junkie - I scan the computer section nightly to see if any interesting (and cheap) equipment has been posted. I particularly like computers with weird features or sizes. I have an early Dell all-in-one that is still chugging along after 5 years or more of Lymie's homework and "other stuff." I am looking at a Dell Duo - a netbook with a rotating touch screen, and I am looking for a used Raspberry Pi to run as a digital photo frame on steroids. My name is Lyman - I have a computer problem.

Laptop specs - this was purchased from someone closing a business. This was a training laptop with a gimpy WiFi card. I decided to give it a shot (she was asking an absurdly reasonable $80 for this laptop), thinking at the worst I would add a WiFi dongle to it to get it online. It turned out it was a firewall issue - it took me 10 minutes to sort that out. The CPU is a dual core 1.6 GHz with 1.9 GB RAM and a 150 GB hard drive. Screen size is a common 15.6 inches at 1366 x 768. It connects via Ethernet or 802.11 G. Noting fancy but it works.

Elementary OS has all the stuff you need to get online - a browser, wifi software, a few basic applications and an app-store to get more. After installing Google Chrome and logging in (I do all my online stuff with Google) within 3 minutes I had all my bookmarks, my preferences and my extensions at my fingertips - auto-magically!

I put my regular laptop in  the corner of my office, booted the Dell Vostro and started creating this blog entry.

Check back in a week and see how I  did!

Thanks.

Elementary OS - a working installation!

This is a bit of a response to my previous post about problems with Elementary OS -  the new and highly anticipated Linux distribution.

I was determined to get it installed on a machine and see what all the fuss was about. So I grabbed an old laptop that I have lying around for just that purpose (installing and testing Linux installations - yes, I'm weird like that) and gave it another shot. Although there are some tweaking applications that one can add to the basic Elementary OS install, I suspected that the tweaking application was the issue, so I demurred from adding it - I'd just live with the standard install for a while.

That appeared to do the trick, and I was rewarded with a successful and so far stable installation of  Elementary OS.

First impressions... its FAST! I am using a relatively slow 1.6 GHz dual core business laptop, and it whizzes right along.

Its also very pretty. I hear that Linux users have said it is a MAC clone, and MAC users have said its too Linux-y, so I guess the designers made the right decision.

It's a distribution with its own idea of how a windowing operating system  should work. Either you buy into them and go with the flow, or you try to fight them and are probably miserable and should probably just go and install Linux MINT15 and be happy.

Me? I haven't decided yet. I'll live with it for a while and get back with a quick review.

Thanks!

Elementary OS - a new operating system

Interesting... I got all excited about the Elementary OS Linux Distribution release, but tried to install it on 2 different Machine (a Dell and an HP) and neither one worked properly, for different reasons.

I finally decided to try Linux Mint (it had been a while since I installed it on a computer) and I was pleasantly surprised. I started using it with the MATE desktop, but moved over to the Cinnamon desktop because it had more flexibility. It also uses a bit more horsepower, I think, but I like the extra desktop applets. Here's a quick video comparing Mate vs. Cinnamon - yes, I know the reviewer has a weird voice... but at least he made a video.

Has anyone else installed Elementary OS and had success? It's very pretty, and I hear it is fast, but I just couldn't get a solid install.