Hi Joyce,
Thanks for sharing. I didn’t intend any criticism of you or the project and I apologise if caused any offence.
I’m sure most people will understand if they take a look and the link Helpfully goes to a page translated into English.
I was really only pointing out the (temporary) confusion I had when reading the original post which appeared to be entirely in english. I initially took it as the english meaning of the word.
It all because clear once I followed the link.
Hello Dave,
Before you said so here, I didn’t even know the French word facile existed in English, less it had a bad connotation.
I just wanted to point to a Debian distribution easier to install and use than most. Some of the same persons also worked on a derivative project, to make a very versatile distribution, full of graphical tips and tricks allowing the users to get into the many possible choices of customization.
I will confess I don’t like it at all : from where I am standing it is complicated and needs too much of my time to think of the choices. But I am not a beginner, and I believe beginners can have the use for all these helpers the first time they start the system, after it was installed.
If interested, look for Emmabuntu (it used to be built on top of Ubuntu but not anymore).
I have dived into it for a non for profit Linux association in Montpellier (south France) who are going to send several dozens of computers to Mayotte, in need of computers for the young and the students.
I have also prepared a method to make the installations much faster, alleviating the post-install part too.
If people here are interested about that, I’ll work a little more, and translate the tutorial I wrote to English.
Meanwhile, I’ll invite everyone to download, test, and send feedback related to the 3 last productions I recently uploaded: Bento antiX i486, for old old computers, Bento MX x86_64 for less old computers, both are build on Debian, both are uber light. Bento MX, as MX does, has a way to boot either on sysvinit, (lighter) or to SystemD (heavier but more compatible with some features, such as installing printer drivers requesting it as a dependency). The switch is available in the menus.
Bento antiX has Sysvinit only, and an additional menu on which I have worked : to turn on and off the Zram feature at will. It is a simple GUI with buttons to click to (so you can have a swap in RAM, or choose to shut it down if for any reason you think you need to).
Bento Openbox Remix is still the Ubuntu derivative I have been working on for years.
All use the same recipe, but with little differences brought by the specificity of the basis they are built on. They mostly have no applications or very few installed, but the Synaptic package manager allows you to add as many as you wish and possibly contain in your hard drives (or SSD’s).
https://downloads.linuxvillage.org. You can find former descriptions at https://linuxvillage.org/en, didn’t find the time yet to write new ones. Look for “Bento antiX” in the table of contents.
antiX and MX basis : you can install, add packages and packages, then clean the distro (sudo apt clean && sudo apt purge ~c) check you have only one kernel and no “vmlinux.old”, “initrd.img.old” symlinks under /boot or under / ) and rebuild for yourself, or to distribution to others : using the ISO snapshot / MX snaphot GUI tool.
It is fun and very easy !
I’ve come across an app for some industry training here in Suomi (Finland). The format it simple and easy enough to use. Having a web app with a similar format could also be useful for learning about linux and all the flavours. I find it also makes content available for a variety of people with difficulty reading traditional content. Especially with browsers that have decent TTS functionality.
Here is a link to the site from there you can download: About Us | Trainify.
You can download it for free and try some of the free content.
Hello Janna,
you link is not for all language I fear, translate.google.com was unable to translate it to my language.
One does not need to learn about all flavors, in Linux (there a way too many anyways). What the new users need:
- a flavor that the person(s) helping him/her will be able to help them with
- to learn about the different ways their distribution provide to update the system, and install and uninstall applications
- who to ask for online incase they need help - where are the communities, online and IRL
- optionnally, learn a bit about security (how to keep passwords in a password manager, using only one password to access its database / ex: the KeepassXC password manager, available for several OSes
- optionnally, learn the basics around connecting to Internet with the Wifi / Ethernet network manager
- optionnally learn about the system of rights and permissions on the files and folders in Linux distributions
all basic needs : configure a printer, a scanner with the help of online documentation, how to change the default background, how to change the font size and type in the applications menus using the dedicated UI tools…
That’s a good list. Perhaps an outline for user friendly content.
Lubuntu comes out as most energy efficient of light Linux distros:
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Hello Alex,
MX Linux and antiX Linux are much lighter than any Ubuntu branded distribution, including the one respin I provide : Bento Openbox Remix.
antiX Linux does not provide SystemD, MX Linux does provide is as a second choice of boot. The difference, apart from the additional lightness, is that sometimes a printer driver would require SystemD as a dependency in order to install it (happened to me once with an Epson printer).
PS: the rexxinfo.org also comes with a load of interesting and useful tutorials around refurbishing, diagnostics and so on : https://rexxinfo.org/howard_fosdick_articles/index_fosdick_articles.html
Actually I tested both MX and AntiX Linux on a low grade Atom based Mini HP and was surprised to find out that Lubuntu 18.04 LTS ran better and faster. Appearances are deceptive sometimes…
Hello Alex,
It is “MX Linux” and “antiX Linux”. The case matters. Also you don’t say precisely what are the versions of antiX and MX you ran, what Mini HP, how much RAM, what CPU and Chipset…
These machines sometimes need a specific configuration in Xorg to work better. Here is an example of something I used in a distant past, for an EeePC 1101HA : http://meets.free.fr/Downloads/BentoVillageProject/Configurations/System/xorg.conf-eeepc_1101HA.txt
And here one for a machine with the Radeon driver:
http://meets.free.fr/files/xorg.conf-radeon
Without full context, it is not possible to pull conclusions on your experience. Also, I would not fancy the idea of comparing a recent distribution, which has the ability to get updates, with an old edition of Ubuntu (be it Lubuntu), which was running with smaller kernels, and perhaps didn’t even use SystemD.
antiX Linux does not use SystemD, and it is lighter and snappier than recent Ubuntu editions.
Running an old Ubuntu (any of them) or other distribution that does not get updates anymore should be only on computers which won’t be connected to Internet. Linux distributions is more relisient to malwares than Windows is, but it is not totally impervious to them. (The first trojans had been written for the ancestor : Unix).
Just added Linux mint to a PC that had windows 10 on it. All fine, even printing to a large xerox printer, however neither thunderbird or betterbird will let me send email. Receive ok, but send won’t connect to SMTP server which sadly is office365. It just times out and gets stuck. Any experts out there who know what to do. Mail server settings seem all same as previous windows machine with correct server name port number, etc.
Try Bluemail
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It might work, if you connect to the office365 account first (in your web browser, I mean). Have you tried that?
Else, you could also try using the SMTP from another mail account, if you use more than one. That too, could work.
Perfect. Much better than T-bird or Free-bird for our issue, looks better too. Had to login to office365 admin to approve account but it worked and it sends. Yippee.