I took a brief jump back to Ubuntu yesterday, mostly to test the Equinox debs and see how UbuntuLite held up.

Both were mild disappointments, to be honest. Equinox worked well, but there doesn’t seem to be much documentation on how to get it going or how to trigger menus, etc. So really I was left with the default X backdrop and a mouse cursor that looked a lot like the Windows cursor. Hmm.

UbuntuLite wasn’t really disappointing, just a small revelation. I liked that it installed and it worked, but the more I prodded it, the more I realized it was just someone’s IceWM installation compressed and written to ISO. I even got someone’s old documents as a bonus. It just wasn’t like I’d remembered it.

And I’ve learned enough in the past year and half to realize that there are a lot better ways of doing things with Ubuntu … if you use Ubuntu at all.

So anyway, I’m rebuilding my funny little 300Mhz laptop, the only variation this time being straight ext2 file systems across the drive. No more journalling: I want to see if it improves access times at all. Thus far, no measurable improvement.