I have a few notes that were forwarded to me from … well, from around the world, I guess. Since they all bear repeating on a wider front, I’ll go ahead and paraphrase them here.
- Raymond sent a note mentioning the XFCE release of Linux Mint, which I can confirm is based on Debian testing now.
I’m still in the process of downloading it but I’m excited to see how it looks — and compares — to other full-figured XFCE-based distros.
My own disappointment with Xubuntu aside, things done right in XFCE can be quite effective … as I have learned first-hand.
- Ben Winston jotted a note just today to underscore his satisfaction surfraw, when used in conjunction with the Duck Duck Go search engine, and to be honest I have to second that emotion.
It’s exceptionally fast when juxtaposed with elinks, which can render a text-only page at 150Mhz at a rate that rivals my core duo with Firefox.
Add to that the convenience of using surfraw, and it’s literally information at your fingertips. Looks like I’ll be changing my home page. …
- One more, and this one comes with a plea for help. Allex has gotten hold of another Datamini laptop; you might remember Remy’s astounding refurb job from a year or so ago, and Allex’s sounds similar.
As it is though, Allex needs a little help pinning down information about The New Toy:
There is a green box with “Datamini” and 2 small black words “AT Laptop”. There is also a white sticker at the back which states the model no “LA-20” and serial no “C10604”.
It is pretty heavy, bout 6kg and has dimensions of bout 36cm x 30cm x 6cm. It comes with two drives for floppy disks on the right hand side. 4 ports at the back, “Power”, “Serial”, “Parallel”, “Display” along with a carrier handle and 1 more port on the left side, marked “KBD”.
If you have any experience with those models or if you have a suggestion on how to glean information from those machines, Allex could use the help.
And there you have it. If anyone can offer a little help to Allex, I’m sure it would be appreciated. In the mean time, I’m going to take XFCE Mint Debian for a spin. … 
Motho ke motho ka botho 
Thanks for the update about using Duck Duck Go within SurfRaw. I have been trying to find way to use D.D.G. instead of Scroogle these days, so the information is timely. On inspecting SurfRaw today, I noticed the author is the famous Julian Assange. Interesting when the political elements of free software intersect with the practical usage.
I’ve just got new iMac G4 for 40$. Such a beauty!
Concerning that laptop, the “AT” (and weight, size and lack of modern ports) suggests it’s a 286, so Linux is a non-starter – FreeDOS and OpenGEM might be doable, however.
I have a Dell Dimension 4100 Desktop, PIII, 866 Mhz, 512 RAM that I have owned since new (1999).
I cannot get the Mint Debian XFCE to install on that computer. All appears to go well, and then the installer just “hangs”…..(in the middle of installing the libre office…)
I’ve wiped the drive, and retried 4x. All 4x, the exact same thing happens.
I’ve checked md5 sums, and they are correct. I’ve burned another dvd, and no difference.
I had to go to Crunchbang Statler, which installed perfectly.
Additionally, on another computer, DELL Inspiron Laptop, I cannot get the LOW RAM settings of Mint Debian XFCE that the Mint Team claims. They are almost identical to the RAM usage of LMDE.
I don’t understand why this could be, so I’ve returned to LMDE.
The internet just told me that Parted Magic 6.0 has been released yesterday. Why that’s on-topic on this very blog?
Well, let me be lazy and paste a large chunk of their news entry below. I really, really think that what they did deserves mentioning, patting their backs and should be encouraged definitely. So here it comes:
“If you have experienced booting issues with Parted Magic, this is the version you have been waiting for. The way the kernel is handled has been completely redone. This is the reason for the new major version number. The kernel modules, udev, and firmware have been moved to the initramfs. The nice graphical boot menu that we have been using for years has been removed in favor of a very basic one. Many laptops and notebooks could not start the complex menu. A large number of major and minor bugs have been fixed as well.”
taken from http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=news