Ubuntu brings new life!

[Tyro]

Daughter brought three year old laptop home from Uni. Said it was no good and had bought herself a new one. Checked it out and found it full of viruses , malware and god knows what else. Running so slow it too about 15 mins to start up. On my PC I downloaded Ubuntu 12.04, burnt a CD, rebooted her laptop and loaded Ubuntu as the only operating system. Laptop now as good as new. Feel quite pleased with myself.


Len

[Traditionalist]

Indeed, it's an excellent system. You might like to try this;

Open a terminal, and enter( or just copy and paste);

Code Select Expand

sudo apt-get install xfce4

this will install a very fast alternative desktop. Much better than Unity, and a lot faster especially on notebooks.

Here's a screenshot;  http://www.ubuntututorials.com/install-xfce-ubuntu-12-04/

You can choose which desktop to use on login, just click on the cogwheel before you login. Once you choose one it will be default, but you can change back anytime in the same way.

[Tyro]

Mike,
There was a time when playing about with command lines and such like was second nature. I did a one year post graduate course in IT at Stirling, about 1998. However for my sins I actually went into teaching History, my original degree and although still very computer literate compared to most stay well clear of terminals, programming and command lines these days. Accessing the Internet with Firefox and the occasional bit of word processing does me.
Thanks for the tips though.

Len

[Traditionalist]

It was my job for a long time before I retired.  Whatever, I think you will find that simple adjustment is extremely worthwhile, entirely up to you of course. That simple command set has huge advantages on Ubuntu, the increased speed alone is worth doing it. In my opinion it is the best desktop presently available on Ubuntu. I think Unity is quite awful although a few people seem to like it. Only takes a couple of minutes to try it, and is just as easy to remove if you don't happen to like it.