[OT] A couple of links about Gnome and usability

[Warren Samples]

On 03/24/2012 06:53 PM, Pete wrote:
> the VM approach solves
> the hardware problem.  So now I'm left with the question of which Linux
> distro to go for....
> Pete


Since you can test them so easily, I would suggest firstly not to be too 
anxious about making the "best" decision. You don't have to decide 
Before you start; you can decide as you go. Again, you can download 
either fully set up virtual machine disks or run almost any distro from 
a liveCD, which is also a fabulously easy way to trial a distro. I run 
openSUSE, currently and ran Mint 9 and 10 before that. For what you 
expect to be casual use, I would think that the Desktop Environment (the 
Unity, KDE, Gnome, Enlightment, XFCE, LXDE things that people talk about 
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment) will be the most 
important consideration. You will need to find the one that is the most 
intuitive to you. After that, the software management aspect may be the 
second most important. This was much simpler in Mint than it is in 
openSUSE.

I would recommend you try a Mint version first. I have no experience 
with Gnome 3, but Mint 9 is the long term support version of that distro 
and uses gnome 2. Mint 10 was very pleasant to use but it will lose 
support next month. I had bad experience with KDE under Mint and Kubuntu 
has a very poor reputation, so it's hard to recommend KDE in those 
distros. Do a little research about desktop variants of whatever disto 
you are gravitating to and (taking everything with heaping spoonfuls of 
salt) you should find some helpful info.

Inside VirtualBox, you will probably find your desktop doesn't run with 
effects (Compiz, KWin) so you save some memory. This somewhat equalizes 
the playing field between the "heavy feature-full" (aka bloated) Desktop 
Environments and the "light nimble" (aka primitive) ones. That *should* 
mean you won't be making as many performance/feature sacrifices as you 
look for what best suits your taste.

Good luck!

Warren