Welcome, John! :) (no, not the list admin, just a friendly guy)  If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. "I can" is a way of life. More and Bigger is not always Better. The road to success is always uphill. Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself. From: John Corey <jcorey62@gmail.com> To: NMGLUG.org mailing list <nmglug@lists.nmglug.org> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 2:34 PM Subject: Re: [nmglug] considering ubuntu alternative: suggestions? Hi,my name is John. I repair computers for a living and I’ve been a subscriber tothe bulletin board for some time and enjoy reading and learning from the posts.This is my first post. If you’re looking for an easy to use everyday solution I’vefound that Mint 17.1 with the ‘Mate’ desktop to be the easiest. I t allows youto create, move, rename desktop icons in much the same manner as you would on aWindows or MAC machine as well as perform other ‘PC Like’ tasks. I do have a Ubuntu14.04 LTS machine in my shop that I use as a ‘tool’ to mount troublesome harddrives from PCs or MACs in order to retrieve data and troubleshoot hard drive SMARTstatus. Yes Mint is built on Ubuntu but it's been my experience that most of the straight Ubuntu versions are more ‘industrial’ in look and feel while the Mint with ‘Mate’ desktop ismore ‘PC like’. I typically rebuild old Pentium 4 PCs with Mint 17.1 forcustomers who want a friendly computer for the grandkids that keeps themoccupied and way from their parents’ computer. Hope this is of same value. On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 9:33 AM, a <a@kaluta.us> wrote: Hi all,you all: Anyway,I believe the time has come to seek an ubuntu alternative,have a live disk of mint,electronically teleport your thoughts. a _______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org _______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org

a., A list of "user" oriented reviews can be found at http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/ which is a blog pretty well organized by Distro families. For the record, I still favor Xubuntu for both its simplicity, consistent stability and my familiarity with the file system, package management and favored applications. Trisquel which is derived from Ubuntu is also good, but for the user without deeper knowledege abour matching good hardware an Ubuntu family member gives a great experience, The down side, which is considerable is the use of some proprietary bits and Ubunut/Canonical Corp. cooperating with certain proprietary software vendors. Not to mention the tracking buile into recent functions of the Ubuntu Unity interface. Thank you, Ted P.