Finally! I thought I'd post this up more to let you know that I have R12 installed and running than anything else. I had to run "honey do" errands and go to a doctor's appointment before I was able to get the install done. This is purely a first impression of R12. I haven't removed, installed, updated, or tweaked a single thing. It is simply installed and I took a quick trip around the included software. The hardware specs for this laptop are listed below so you have an idea of what I'm running R12 on. Most of my laptops are similar in hardware specs.

The first thing I noticed was that the desktop and window treatment are simple and clean. I was happy to see this as opposed to some of the gawdy desktops some other distros use as default and specifically not the horrid green that Mint provides. I really don't like green as a choice for desktop and window appearance. Even though my personal preference is all blue and I prefer lighter accents than the dark with R12, at least the whole experience is clean and simple. Once I've set this up to my personal liking I'll post some screens.

As for included software, there are a few pieces I'll be installing for sure and a couple of things I'll change. Now, that's not to say that the included software is somehow wrong. I'm just use to different choices. For instance, I'll remove gThumb and replace it with Mirage. I'll be adding Pinta and Gimp as well which is the reason I prefer Mirage over gThumb. Having Pinta and Gimp for heavier editing means I can use a smaller and cleaner image viewer. I'm sure a lot, if not most, other users of R12 will be quite happy with gThumb. Pinta is a piece of software that might be considered for inclusion with the default installation. I call it the poor man's Gimp. Much simpler than Gimp, but still offering some sophisticated editing capabilities.

Oh, yeah. With no applications opened I'm using 411 MB of 6850 NB available, or 6%. With Mint on this laptop it used between 12% and 15% of available. I have never figured out why there is a fluctuation in memory used for just the desktop while running Mint. I thought it might be the Update Manager running in the background, but I have since ruled that out. But that's irrelevant now, LOL!

Bottom line? So far I really like what I'm seeing with R12. I'll try and keep you posted as I begin to install, update, and tweak things to suit me.


Lenovo G51-35
AMD A8-7410 quad core CPU
8 GB RAM
1 TB HDD
Radeon R5 graphics
Kabini HDMI/DP audio
Realtek RTL8723BE wireless adapter
Realtek RTL8111 gigabit Ethernet
PLDS DVD-RW optical drive
Blackweb wireless bluetrace mouse

I guess this is the best place for this question. If not, feel free to move it wherever it needs to be.

First, let me explain a little about how I use my web browser. It's not uncommon for me to have 20, 30, 40, or even more tabs open while I'm on the 'Net. I research a lot of stuff and leave each web page open while I compare info and cross reference stuff. I also have lots of tabs open when I start viewing videos on YouTube. When I do either of those things, after a while, Firefox will slow down and I have to either close the browser and reopen it or sometimes I just clear the memory using "about:memory" then I'll clear the History, Cookies, and Site Data and go back to browsing. This has been the "norm" since I started using Mint XFCE a few years ago.

Just now I was on the old laptop that has R10 installed on it and I noticed I had over 30 tabs open, but there was no noticeable slowdown. So, to experiment, I went out of my way to open 50 tabs, then started in watching YouTube videos while the original 50 tabs were still open. Still no noticeable slowdown. To be sure I wasn't imagining this, I opened my wife's Facebook account and started browsing through her timeline, being sure to view as many videos as I could. STILL, no slowdown.

So, here is my question for one of you that has more knowledge about the internal workings of a Linux operating system and Firefox web browser. What is the difference between how Mint XFCE &Firefox works and how WattOS R10 & Firefox works? Why does Firefox become clogged up and start running slowly on Mint XFCE, but runs perfectly on R10? Does WattOS just handle resources better than Mint XFCE?

Any suggestions or explanations will be greatly appreciated.

I have WattOS R10 up and running on this spare laptop. I did all the updating I could, then had to do some manual updating to get the latest version of Firefox installed and running. So far, so good. I also installed LibreOffice and then removed Lollypop and replaced it with Rhythmbox simply because that's what I'm used to. Other apps I added include Mirage in place of gThumb and GIMP. R10 runs much faster than Mint 20.2 XFCE.

I'm most impressed with the minimal resources required for the desktop to be running. Right now, task manager is showing only 3% of the available memory is being used to load the desktop on this laptop. I have 8Gb of RAM in this laptop with approx 7GB available. Mint 20.2 XFCE is pretty consistent in using 12% to 15% to load the desktop on this laptop and also on my other three laptops. All of them have 8GB of RAM. That's a pretty healthy difference in resources used just to have the desktop up and running.

I am SO looking forward to getting my hands on R12. Hopefully I'll see very similar resource usage with R12. After playing with a LOT of different distros in the past few years I'm prepared to settle in with WattOS as my daily driver. I don't think I'll load R10 on any other laptop at this time. I think I'll wait for R12 and then install it on everything I have.

The reason I started looking around for a lightweight distro is the same as in the past. I fool around and find a distro using limited resources, get it installed and use it for a while, then notice things have slowed down. I can't understand why so many of the developers think every distro should include every bell and whistle available. Then there are the developers that believe you need fading windows, swirling cubes, elaborate sound schemes, etc, etc, in their distro. I, for one, don't need all the fancy bells and whistles. I need the OS to remain in the background while I use various apps to perform actual work.

Looking forward to R12 and if I can be of ANY assistance, please don't hesitate to call on me.

I've just registered on the forum as a new WattOS user. I haven't installed R10 yet so I'm still using Mint 18 at this point. I've spent the last 2 weeks searching the 'Net for the best lightweight distro that will still allow me to install the packages/apps I'll be wanting to use. At this point I've narrowed it down to WattOS and Linux Lite. I'm leaning heavily towards WattOS due to the extreme lightweight install that it presents as well as the fact that LXDE is the default desktop. Lite defaults to XFCE and while there isn't a lot wrong with XFCE it is a bit heavier than LXDE. While there is nothing specifically wrong with Mint, I have experienced slow downs on 2 laptops and my desktop. By slowdowns, I mean that over a period of months everything about my Mint installs has gotten slower and slower, to include boot up time, time required to open apps, and especially in Firefox. Thus my desire to find a solid, lightweight distro that hopefully won't be troubled with such problems.

Part of the reason I haven't yet installed is that I wanted to research and be sure I'll be able to eventually have WattOS R10 setup with everything I need/want. One of the areas that stands out at this point is with Flash. Flash is a sticky point for all Linux users right now, I know. I'd like to read what some of you more experienced WattOS users have decided to do about Flash on your computers. Are you using Flash, or an alternative, or just ignoring Flash altogether? Any and all replies will be greatly appreciated.

I have two other questions that I'll ask after I've read over what the best way to handle the Flash situation is. Thanks in advance.