Linux Mint LXDE on Netbook Follow-Up

    Have been using Linux Mint LXDE on a Acer aspire one netbook with a half a gig of RAM, and it has been pleasant. Most of the time am running chromium and firefox with around 10 tabs open amongst them, and the little netbook keeps pushing with out any major slowdowns. It's quite responsive actually.

    Lately though have been doing java development on the netbook. Have installed eclipse and the android SDK, eclipse is versatile enough to be usable on the small screen of the netbook with out having a negative effect on the workflow. Of course using the android emulator could be an issue, one which I choose to avoid by just testing on a real android device.

    What really makes using the netbook for my development purposes possible, is libGDX. libGDX is a cross-platform library that allows you to simultaneously build for the desktop and for Android devices. With libGDX I can be doing little tests while at the desk and then do more in depth tests on the couch or in bed with an android device.

 Here is a video of a libGDX demo game


and here is the creator of libGDX showing a demo of the UI library


To get started developing with libGDX watch the video below to see how.



    Thanks for reading, and look forward to more details about libGDX as I get more into it and a detailed post about another java game engine called JMonkey.

Linux Mint on Netbook

    Was searching for the best Linux OS for a netbook (acer aspire one). Only have 512MB of RAM, so needed something lightweight yet still functional as a desktop. Tried Ubuntu 11, it worked fine, and was nice on the netbook, but was a little sluggish. I know there is specific OSes for netbooks like Jolicloud, and meego, but am going for a more traditional desktop, Linux Mint has been a good distro for me in the past, and is gaining in popularity do to people not liking the Unity user interface, and being based off of Ubuntu.

    Have installed and been using Linux Mint LXDE, and it is running smoothly, with all accessories working with no hassle. The "LXDE" is a desktop GUI, that will remind users of using the old Gnome, and is aimed for systems with low resources(ie...netbooks). While there is some differences it is straight forward and any linux user should feel comfortable using it.

The System requirements for Linux Mint LXDE:

• x86 processor - runs on Intel Atom (netbooks)
• 256 MB RAM
• 3 GB of disk space
• Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
• CD/DVD drive or USB port

    Currently just use the system to work on web development and keep up with the news. Use the Chromium and Firefox web browsers for pretty much everything, and have about twenty tabs open among the two and still have some free RAM, amazing!

    The Linux Mint team are currently working on version 12 of Linux Mint. Allot of users don't like Ubuntu's Unity UI, and others don't like Gnome 3. While there is still the option of KDE, which is great GUI and compilation of software, it is not for everyone. So for Linux Mint 12 they are taking Gnome 3 and making it more like Gnome 2, am excited to see how it turns out.