doubledodge
United Kingdom
A convert to Linux when I had to abandon Windows XP - no doubt like many others when Microsoft finally stopped support! Learning fast and loving the freedom of Linux, why didnt I switch years ago?
I found MATE 17 Qiana worked nicely on my oldish Acer EeePC notebook. I have a fix to the problem of the network remaining asleep after coming out of Hibernate if anyone is intersted?
I still have MATE installed but only log into a MATE session very occasionally now (for instance if I want to use a second display (my TV) for showing photos to friends and family. Day to day I prefer the speed and keyboard oriented i3 window manager and have this running with some terminal sessions open to launch dropbox and hibernate or suspend my work. The lower CPU load of i3wm seems to have fixed the problem with the network not waking up after coming out of hibernation so that is another reason to run i3wm for every day use.
Tutorials
| Title | Score |
|---|
Software reviews
| Software | Score |
|---|---|
| links2 "Very lightweight and fast but no javascript in this build. Nicely keyboard centric browsing experience but with some quirky key allocations" |
4 |
| surf "You need to launch it from the command line with your desired web site address or if you use dmenue than ctrl g gets you a menue bar. Javascript enabled by default. See man surf" |
4 |
| hv3 "Oh dear - its a fight to stop a page load between the multiple error messages it throws up when connecting to a real web site. It seems to work OK viewing my local web site files however. Problem seems to be associated with moving the mouse to the menu bar." |
2 |
| i3 "Needs a tutorial - the metapackage DOES NOT install suckless-tools or i3status, you must install this separately and edit the config file to use i3-dmenu-desktop (not dmenu-run). Also its best to use the windows key instead of Alt for $mod so Alt is free to access menus in launched window style applications, e.g. FIrefox. Otherwise this is a potentially useful alternative to the usual Mint window managers and promises to be particularly attractive to the mouse averse like me." |
3 |
| xzoom "Having failed to get my netbook display to zoom with xrandr without switching from mate to compiz this seems the only remaining option, it needs a launcher defined for convenience but you can always launch it from the command line with > xzoom &" |
4 |
| audacity "Occasionally crashes and sometimes the playback gets very distorted however it is the best of the bunch and exports to ogg and mp3 (with the Lame add-in)" |
4 |
| apvlv "Needs a way of paging up or down a screen at a time not a whole pdf page. It opens a new instance every time you open another pdf - I want them in tabs but the only way to do that is to browse the files from within apvlv and I prerfer to use SpaceFM" |
3 |
| traverso "Could not get it to "arm" so could not record - plus it only records to wav format, Audacity exports direct to .ogg" |
2 |
| spyder "I can't imagine doing serious Python development without it. Perfect for debugging and examining tricky programming problems. However unlike the windows install there are a lot of additional modules you must add yourself. Spyder tells you what these are when you click on the optional dependencies list on its help tab. I also recommend installing Tix for programs to use the TIx/Tk interface." |
5 |
| clipit "This works just as it should, fine on Mint 17 Quiana Mate edition. An indispensible tool that should be part of the default Mint installation." |
5 |
| midori "The only redeeming feature is that it uses up less memory than Firefox, so when I am running a lot of stuff I sometimes (very reluctantly) switch to it. BUT IT IS SO SLOOOOOOW! It takes around 5 times as long as Firefox to load any new web page and I have yet to work out why, it may be some configuration option that needs fixing so please let me know if I have missed something?" |
1 |
| spacefm "I installed this on Mint 17 Quiana XFCE after getting really frustrated by the totally dreadful Thunar file manager. I am now planning to install it on my Mate machines as it also outshines the very capable Caja in flexibility, customisability and features. Totally awesome." |
5 |
| caja-dropbox "A simple way to install dropbox when you update to a new release - works seamlessly and finds my existing ~/home/Dropbox folder without me doing anything" |
5 |
| easytag "Nees to persist a little with the interface and how to commit the tags - indispensible for getting a sensible play order for a pils of podcasts in my Sansa Clip mp3 player - they must be set as genre = Podcast and given the same album name and then just use the track number to get the desired play order" |
4 |
| cryptkeeper "Very easy front end to encfs and fusermount. Works seamlessly on my encrypted dropbox folder with my W7 work PC running "ENCFS Gui" so I get access to the same encrypted files both on Linux and under windows" |
5 |
| calibre "Great on windows and Linux" |
5 |