[Gllug] Small PC, resource constraints, improving efficiencies

[David L Neil]

Should I trial LXDE and/or XFCE by attempting to run multiple Desktop 
Environments/Window Managers at the X level, or by dual-booting whole 
distributions with the appropriate choice as the sole GUI?


While I'm traveling around the world I'm using a very old, slow, and 
small Thinkpad, mainly for Thunderbird and Firefox* (netbook mode) but 
periodically using OpenOffice Writer or Calc, reading PDFs, VNC and SSH 
to servers, wired and wireless connections, etc.

It took me quite a bit of time to iron-out the kinks (partly my own 
ignorance/learning process) but it now runs a trimmed-back, basic CentOS 
5.2 - I tried and failed to persuade the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora to 
fire-up as a live system or to load to the hdd. I suspect an issue in 
X/Gnome/APCI/mouse (red nipple, stick) lies at the root of things, but 
also the several Windows-only h/w components. Likely it is the 
conservative (ok, old) nature of CentOS, that facilitates its success...
(please stop laughing at the combination - I 'know' CentOS because I've 
been using it, more appropriately, on numbers of machines, elsewhere)
*have thought to try Opera 10 (and maybe its Dragonfly system for 
web-dev) and compare load factors with FF...?

XFCE seems to be available from the CentOS?rpmforge repositories but 
LXDE is not found by search. I have downloaded Vector Linux's Light Live 
edition (and it runs). More recently I have noted that the recent 
Knoppix 6.2 release offers an LXDE Lightweight option, similarly.

I'd like to trial and compare the two or three choices until I've been 
able to gain confidence in whichever choice (including my existing 
CentOS set-up) runs most efficiently...

Would I be better-off learning how to multi-boot a couple of Linux 
systems and building two systems side-by-side?
(the online tutorials and the books I've read detail multi-booting Linux 
and Windows, but not multiple Linux-es)
- and thus, to use GRUB or advantageous to upgrade to and learn GRUB2?

Alternatively, should I simply load the other DktopEnv/WinMgrs on top of 
the existing CentOS X11 (and hopefully rewire things with the Desktop 
switcher)?
- but I'm concerned that removal after failure might be messy/risk the 
current system-config?

NB because I'm traveling and have limited access to the web, I don't 
have many resources to teach myself/learn how to do all this. My web 
servers (etc) all run without GUIs, so I'm not scared of the command 
line, but I'm no SysAdmin!

Any and all advice, and web refs will be welcomed,
=dn
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