V.

Debian finally has gnome3 in its unstable repository. Given that there has been a lot of adverse commentary on gnome3, I am not sure if I am going to like it. At the same time, I have been very curious and wanted to try it.

This is what I did.

1. Shifted to xfce about a week ago. That was fairly smooth. I liked xfce.
2. Installed gnome3 from unstable repositories yesterday. With apt-pinning, I mix and match packages from testing and unstable. It just took:
apt-get update && apt-get -t unstable install gnome-session

I could not, however, login to gnome and had to use gnome-fallback.

With my intel graphics card, I still need to login to gnome-fallback. Open a terminal, and do “export GNOME_SHELL_DISABLE_TFP=1″. Then, alt-f2 and do “gnome-shell –replace”.

With this, I have gnome-shell.

Needed to fix extensions, install gnome-tweak-tool and several things like that. But I do, finally, have gnome3 on my computer.

Like it? Don’t know yet.

Problems that remain:

1. Mouse is sluggish. Freezes for a few moments and I have to bang the touchpad to wake it up.

2. Can’t turn off sounds of events. Does not respect ‘mute’ in settings.

V.

Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is my current favourite linux distribution. It is built on Debian, which has the reputation of being the most stable, secure and well-tested linux distribution, and is extremely user-friendly.

LMDE and most current distributions of linux beat Windows hands down in terms of user-friendliness. LMDE is a breeze to install, you almost never need to reinstall the operating system on your computer, and you never need to worry about viruses.

LMDE comes free of charge and is fully compatible with Debian. A default installation packs most of the applications that a typical user is likely to need. If your computer is connected to the internet, thousands of other applications could be installed via its package manager.

You can find LMDE here. Look for the Debian Edition. A simple tutorial for LMDE installation is here.

If you are up for some adventure, try Debian. You will find it here.