Linuxes + windows 7

Goal: Multiboot with Windows 7, installed after linuxes.
I do not use Steam and - except maybe two-three games - linux-native gaming is crap. So after some 2,5 years I finally reinstalled OS for gaming.

First of all - it's enourmosly good to have two hdd-s. So You can keep MBR boot-sectors separately. Means - no worry of Windows overwriting your grub-parts.

What I did?
- changed boot order - to-be-windows-disk went to first in bios. That is - until usb-win-installer came to play...
I booted my win7 usb and installed. All finished in less than half an hour - with no lan, audio, or proper video drivers... Windows 7 is kinda oldish, and my box is kinda newish - so, no real surprise here.
Went to another machine (or - better to do it before), downloaded all shit from my motherboard manufacturer and added fresh nvidia driver. copy / unzip / install / reboot.
Downloaded usable browser (Pale Moon for me). Got essential things:
Classic shell, dexpot, linux reader, qttabbar, MS security essentials etc. Hacked various things in register.
At the same time - updated 200+ kb-s.
Do You want every KB? No? Make a choice - first, install all security updates. After that - check them ALL, every update is not needed (useless) and some of them are to avoid:
- 971033 (Windows Genuine Advantage - spy/telemetry for checking legalness of Your Windows, repeatedly);
- 949810 (the same for Your Office)
- 2505438 (not sure if it's still actual - but, the same, it checks Your licence.
- AND a bunch for upgrading to Windows 10: Can't say here anything very precise... but suspects are: 2951664, 2990214, 3021917, 3035583, 3065987, 3068708, 3075851.
I have my win7 totally legit ... but I don't want two things:
Spying for 'legitimacy' (check-process (they say) errs a lot, after what one has to whine+plead with MS support);
OR, 'upgrade to win10' - to OS what, in my opinion, is total 'be a bitch receiving it from behind, while singing your whole life-story'.
Whole process to get Win7 to OK shape took me markedly longer than, say, Slackware clean-install with all custom bells-and-whistles. Shrug.

Second phase - boot Windows from Grub.
- Rebooted from Windows, entered bios, changed boot order back to my grub-master hdd, rebooted to linux. Now, opened up /boot/grub.cfg and added entry to 40_custom section (change the following according to your hdd, of course).
menuentry "windows 7 pro (on /dev/sdc1)" --class windows --class os { 
 insmod part_msdos
 insmod ntfs
 set root='(hd2,msdos1)'
 chainloader +1
 }
If you want to be correct and/or You plan to use 'update-grub' or similar command that recreates grub.cfg, add the same entry to /etc/grub.d/40_custom.
Done.

Grub2 problem

Grub 2 in Debian Wheezy, MBR, multiboot.
Symptoms:
1. Grub started not with my customized look but with default big reso and look.
2. or it skipped conf and went stright to 'grub' prompt.
3. but approximately only in a half of starts.
4. and there was marked delay in Grubs' menu-loading.

What it means is - Grub couldn't find its config file(s), sometimes.
And, in this case, that there is some intermittent issue - appearing and disappearing. I have to say that such kind of behaviour was new to me. In almost three years of various linux installs etc I never met such kind of inconsistent behaviour - things either work or not...

Solution is simple: As we are talking about Debian, then it's 'update-grub' you wan't to run.
And that's it. Loading lag disappeared together with inability to load confs...
So, something got corrupted (and it didn't show in file dates in any way)... Fortunately it also uncorrupted itself in a simple way.

Firefox, Grub2, Bash aliases etc

I have been busy - and it seems to continue like that. So, no much time to play around. Here come bits and pieces of things I had to do or didn't but still did. Let's start with Firefoxes:

## The problem: Firefox consumes up to 100% of CPU, and never falls below 20%. To make it even more exciting - this doesn't happen in every session... but when it does, then nothing helps. I started to have this behaviour couple a weeks ago in two different distros - Debian Wheezy and Slackware 14. Common was that they both had Firefox 17.09esr AND had some similar updates to Xorg.
Problem seems to be solved by installing other Firefox version. I went for 24.0. For further thrill - the one I downloaded from Mozillas' server, absolutely refused to start... but one I got from here, was OK and works without turning CPUs fan to jet engine.
How to manually install Firefox - look here.
Edit | If after install there isn't any plugins anymore - like IcedTea - then the easiest way is: create a folder .mozilla/plugins, cd to there and do
ln -s /usr/lib64/IcedTeaPlugin.so (in Slack, or from usr/lib/ in Debian) |

## I finally had enough of Grub2s' auto-generated menuentries. First, there are too many of them (menu-submenu thing, and some kernels doesn't have to be shown at all) and second, labels that Grub creates are not especially informative - or not at all - my Puppy Slacko had a label 'Unknown Linux'.
So I made files 06_debian, 07_slack, 08_test and 41_win (from /etc/grub.d/40_custom). First has my two debians, second has Salix and Slackware, third is for temporary Linuxes and fourth for you-guess-what. Took entries from each distros /boot/grub/grub.cfg (or from /etc/lilo.conf), cleaned them up (everything after label, hint-crap in if-fi part (do NOT delete search-part there)) and inserted them to their new homes.
Also, fixed finally the console resolution problem (all resos in non-master-grub distros' consoles stay at 640x480 - despite that my master-grubs' conf is fixed AND I fixed it in every bloody other grub).
First, the master-grubs reso-fix (in /etc/default/grub) works ONLY for this same grub, AND - when Grub2 os-probes other distros and creates menuentries - it does NOT include reso part there.
So, it's fixable in two ways:
- either add two lines after label part ends and business-part starts:
load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
- or add kernel parameter: vga=791 (to end of line starting with 'linux...' Mind! This number has to be picked according to resolution your monitor is capable in console.)
Frankly - i didn't experiment with all possible combinations - I used first option for Grub-distros, and the second one for Lilo-distros.
One more thing - if there appears unwanted (penguin) logo at the beginning of boot, then adding kernel parameter logo.nologo fixes it.
See also previous Grub posts: 1 and 2.

## Some desecrating of Slackware:
- Sudo. As there is no group for that, you can't add user to it, and sudo doesn't work. Now, you can add yourself to wheel group
usermod -G wheel username
and then you can enable sudoing through wheel.
Do 'visudo' ... and yeah, it bloody opens in vi. I, for example, know nothing of this adorable 'very powerful' editor. So: I added following to end of my .bashrc
export EDITOR=nano
, saved, opened new terminal, visudo - and now it opens in nano.
Find the following line
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
, uncomment it, save. And sudo should work now.
In Slack there might be slight problem with system-binaries still not working. It's because user lacks path to them - not because sudo is not working. Open up your .bashrc and add PATH to /sbin:/usr/sbin:usr/local/sbin - that should solve the problem.
- Colors. To make Slacks' boot and shutdown texts fancier-looking, it's easiest to shamelessly copy relevant parts from Salix (thanks, Salix-folks).
First, one has to copy color-definitions file /etc/shell-colors, and then comes boring compare-search-replace routine in files: /etc/rc.d/rc.S, rc.K, rc.M, rc.4, rc.sysvinit, rc.6
Not sure it's worth of it... well, yeah, I think it was for me.
- rc.M and refreshes. There are several things Slackware refreshes at every boot. Like font cache, icons cache, libraries list (ldconfig), mime cache. It does those tasks in background (command &), so there is probably not much difference (in boot time etc) if they are there or not. Still, it's a bit pointless to refresh those things every time.
So I decided that it's good time to start messing with bash scripts and to make some tiny simpleminded launchers I can start from openbox menu. (And then out-comment relevant parts in rc.M)
As I also know nothing of bash, it took unholy amount of googling and trying. First thing, I couldn't get scripts running with su (despite various suggested tricks in web). So I did it through sudo (see above, that's why I made it to work). I wanted my scriptlets to open new terminal, do it's thing, and leave terminal open - so I could see what occurred. And one successful example is here:
#!/bin/sh
# Refresh font cache
Terminal --execute bash -c 'echo "fc-cache -fv";sudo fc-cache -fv;bash'
quit

## I shit around with three different package managements. Quite frequently I mix up if there are --, or -, or there isn't any -. So, kinda lazy solution for this is to use similar aliases in all distros.
Orderly way to do this is to create separate .bash_aliases file and define all your stuff there (simple text file, only aliases there, no #! or something needed):
alias up='sudo apt-get update' - is one definition, and that's for Debian, 'slapt-get -u' goes for Salix and 'slackpkg update' for Slackware.
alias upg='sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' is for Sid, 'slapt-get --upgrade' for Salix and 'slackpkg upgrade-all' for Slackware.
And so on. To keep in mind - aliases have to be unique (in one particular distro), can't have different commands with the same name (meaning, it's bad idea to create alias 'nano' for something - as there is already app exec 'nano').
Also, in this case, .bashrc should have the following somewhere:
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

And the future posting will be probably quite infrequent. Depends how 'busy' my busy is...

Grub 1.99 in Debian 7. Part 2

Changing menu item looks in Grub2 menu. Deleting and adding entries.
Now - I am no coder and know next to nothing of scripting. So I really can't rewrite grubs' scripts. After more hours wasted with combing interweb for tutorials how to change files 10_linux and 30_os-prober, I came to conclusion that it's hard to find ready-made drop-in script-bits for easy tweaking. And I didn't feel like spending all my time with testing...
I decided to drop my ambitious plans to alter above-mentioned files and go for easier (and commonly used) way: create a 06_custom file.

What I did:
Took existing /etc/grub.d/40_custom file and saved it as 06_custom (in this way it will be the first entry of menu). Then I copied whole entry from between #10_linux start and end lines in file /boot/grub/grub.cfg to my custom-file, under first 5 existing lines.
- Then I changed menuentrys' name
- deleted class statements
- and replaced filenames in /boot/ with links in /. That's because it's said that then you will allways boot with latest kernel (through those links). We'll see about that when there is kernel update... But - if there is kernel number in menuentry, it has to be changed manually, of course.
And final result, scriptways (after first 5 existing lines):

menuentry 'Debian 7 Wheezy, kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 on /dev/sdb6' { 
load_video set 
gfxpayload=keep 
insmod gzio 
insmod part_msdos 
insmod ext2 
set root='(hd1,msdos6)' 
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root cc715c11-4b56-4d78-bb29-6d78688ce48b 
echo 'Loading Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 ...' 
linux /vmlinuz root=UUID=cc715c11-4b56-4d78-bb29-6d78688ce48b ro quiet nomodeset nouveau.modeset=0 
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' 
initrd /initrd.img 
}

And, update-grub when done, of course. Interesting enough, custom entry is not shown in 'Found' list... but, when
grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg - it's there alright.
Reboot, test your freshly baked menu-item. If boot is successful, do
sudo chmod -x 10_linux, to exclude this file from menu.
That's it. The same way you can deal with 30_os-prober. Entries like kernel instances etc can be deleted or added (might be wise to make os-prober temporarily active for adding - to get correct entry for copy-paste). Downside is that when distros come and go, all entries has to be deleted/added manually. Doesn't make you to spit blood but is still a bit bothersome...

Grub 1.99 in Debian 7. Part 1

Debian Wheezy netinstall and Grub 1.99 tweaking 
Part 1: Facelift

With Debian stable comes Grub 1.99. It is not especially nice-looking and/or handy:
- it has useless wallpaper
- there are a lot of entries without submenus (I have 4-way multiboot, currently)
- menu is a bit too black and white... and other little things.
So I decided to change it. Research took enormous time. Versions and tutorials differ... there are no place to find everything together... tips might work, or not... a lot is simply old...
See here: Ubuntu, more Ubuntu, and this one, and Arch, and my own puny paragraph.
Before tweaking anything, we do backups, of course - like this, for example:
sudo cp /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme /etc/grub.d/05_.debian_theme.bak 
# ... and all others in /grub.d we happen to hack. Then we make baks un-executable: 
sudo chmod -x /etc/grub.d/*.bak
Also, do backup files: /etc/default/grub and /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Here we go, with multiboot system, one Grub in MBR, one in root, one distro without Grub, and Windows XP.

What I did:
(Let's remember - ALL changes has to be written in with update-grub.)
1. /etc/default/grub
- I wanted my Vsido to be the default boot-choice.
grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg shows all listed menuentries. First one is 0, second is 1 and so on - simple, but it's more complicated when dealing with submenus. Fortunately I do not have them... unfortunately I would like to - menu looks a lot more tidy when bunch of different kernels are hidden.
So, third item in list means GRUB_DEFAULT=2 and highlight is on Vsido entry now.

- Default console size is GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480. Text is therefore big and longer lines end behind screen edge. We change it like that:
Reboot, and when in Grub, press 'C' to get command line, set pager=1 (because there are probably 2 pages of text coming, then vbeinfo. Correct/supported resolutions are displayed, pick one, write it down, 'esc', boot to desktop and replace old resolution with new and bigger one. Mine is GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x768.
After that line add a new one: GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
That keeps resolution the same for whole boot process (no jumping back to big letters).
NB! 'Keep' doesn't work when booting another distro with its own Grub. Probably gfxmode should be changed there also.
Edit 06.07.2013: Changing the resolution in local Grub doesn't help -  no change. Also - resolution doesn't change for distros without Grub too. So, it seems that whole thing works only for grub-mastering distro. Edit ends.

- If you do not need your machine searched for additional OS-es (for whatever reason), disable 30_os-prober, by adding this line:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

- If you do not want bunch of Recovery Modes hanging around, then remove comment from line #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true".
But, there is interesting twist: IF there is Grub also installed for some other distro, then you have to disable recovery mode there also. Otherways master-Grub reads them from there, and displays.
Other weird thing I encountered: I unpacked my Xubuntu (from archive) to another partition, fixed fstab, and removed Grub complitely. Now, when I ran master 'update-grub', it found whole pile of 'Ubuntus'. It appeared that not only current .img, but also symlinks and '.img.old' kernels were listed... I simply deleted links and .olds - and problem was solved and only one Ubuntu was left in list.

2. /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme
- Wallpaper. This file has very nicely commented sequence how wallpapers are searched for... not that it helped me very much. I deleted wallpaper-line from /usr/share/desktop-base/grub-background.sh and changed also colors. No cookie. Nothing changed.
Then I checked what's in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. There I found certain png as wallpaper. After some pondering I resolved thing in inelegant and nasty way - I simply renamed joy-grub.png to joy-grub.png.outcomment. Update-grub! No wallpaper was found AND Grub defaulted to 'set_default_theme', which is quite at the beginning of the file (05_debian_theme) AND which can be now edited (with results):

- Colors. See also: Here and here and here.
Default is 'Debian blue', update-grub, reboot and take a look. I found it a bit too bright, so my tweak ended like this:

set_default_theme(){
 # Set the traditional Debian blue theme.
 echo "${1}set menu_color_normal=white/black"
 echo "${1}set menu_color_highlight=yellow/dark-gray"
 echo "${1}set color_normal=white/dark-gray"
}

Menu text is white, background black, higlighted menu-items' text is yellow and under that is gray background. Outside of menu-box is gray with white text (and this last line I added).

That's it. I'm quite satisfied how things look now (errr... no, still can't be bothered with screenshots).
Now, if not terminally lazy, I might produce also a part 2, dealing with hacking of files 10_, 30_ and 40_custom. Means, how to change menuentries themselves.

Fsarhiver, moving OS

And also backing up all shit, of course.
Links of backing up  and to get SystemRescueCD (has fsarchiver and partimage). Especially first link gives nice overview what happens and so on. Also link to fsarchiver itself.
The following is not so much of backing up, but of moving your (backed-up) distro to entirely different partition.
I chose Fsarchiver because it can write to a partition of different size of original... PartImage can not. Other option could be Remastersys, of course. Somehow it seemed more difficult to me... might be - for no reason.
Anyway, it's an AAR of moving installed distro to another partition, AND making it also a master of multibooting Grub2. Yes-yes, finally I am going to remove my Openboxed Xubuntu from this exalted position and elevate freshly-cooked Wheezy Openbox to be the new boot-boss.

What I did:
Dramatis personae: sdb/MBR - bootloader from sdb6 Xubuntu, sdb8 Vsido, sdb9 Wheezy, sdc2 is a backup partition.
Vsido has fsarchiver out of box - if you don't (have Vsido or fsarchiver), install it.
I started in Vsido, opened terminal and:

# mount a partition to put an archive on
sudo mkdir /mnt/back 
sudo mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/back 

# make backup
sudo fsarchiver -j2 savefs /mnt/back/backup-sdb9-deb.fsa /dev/sdb9

# last command creates a file from whole sdb9 and puts it to sdc2. 3G was compressed to one and it took 4 minutes. -j2 means that my old AMD X2 can use both cores for this task.
If curious what's in there:
sudo fsarchiver archinfo /mnt/back/backup-sdb9-deb.fsa
# Shows you some information about the file.
sudo umount /mnt/back

Then I rebooted and logged into Wheezy - thinking that then I wouldn't have problems with different grub versions... As I realized afterwards: there is no difference - when chrooted in, you download proper grub anyway.
And another afterthought: it might have been really wiser to make that bloody live usb and do the thing from there - less problems with uuids.
Opened Gparted and formatted sdb6 to ext4. Xubuntu died - and together with it, booting Grub. No going back now...
Then I restored previously created archive to sdb6 (and id=0 means that there is only one file-system in archive):

sudo mkdir /mnt/back 
sudo mount /dev/sdc2 /mnt/back

sudo fsarchiver -j2 restfs /mnt/back/backup-sdb9-deb.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sdb6

sudo umount /mnt/back 

TWO important things to do now:
1. Fix /etc/fstab of your new 'installation'. Because uuid remained the same for both Wheezys, I couldn't mount the other one. @#%$#@@ and shit! So I opened fstab of old one and replaced uuid with /dev/sdb9. After that I could mount and fix fstab of the new Wheezy: I also replaced this uuid - in this case with /dev/sdb6 (as root partition) and that was that.
2. Harder part. Fsarchiver writes things back, BUT it doesn't put them into exactly the same place. So, you have to reinstall your Grub. Even if the partition is the same you started with.
In my case, it was different and I also needed already installed root-grub to be replaced by new mbr-grub.
Mount-chroot-purge-install-update:

sudo mount /dev/sdb6 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt
apt-get purge grub-common
# 4 packages get removed
apt-get install grub-pc
# 4 comes. AND it asks WHERE to install. Do NOT answer wrong!
update-grub
# Somehow, it missed Vsido. (But I got it after reboot.)
exit
sudo umount /mnt/dev
sudo umount /mnt/proc
sudo umount /mnt/sys
sudo umount /mnt
sudo reboot

If someone wants to play with uuids, then blkid shows uuids of all partitions, and uuidgen can produce new random uuids. Then do:
sudo tune2fs /dev/sdb6 -U number-you-generated. And your sdb6 partition has a new uuid.

My new 'bootmaster' booted without problems, and additional fast 'update-grub' found, yes, everything that was bootable.
I am not sure if installing from remastersys-backup is not a better way. But doing it with fsarchiver was certainly educating... though somewhat scary.

Xfce customization, less obvious

We are dealing with Xubuntu here

- Moving things on panels. Right-click on item, pick 'move'. Obvious, yes – but what wasn't so obvious to me, is how items align and stay in groups. There are invisible separators on panels, and you can add more or delete them, according to need. Easiest way to find default ones is: Right-click a panel, open 'panel/panel preferences/items. All things on panel are listed there, also separators – double-click and change 'transparent' to something else. And now you can see it on panel. 'Expand' means that separator pushes items away on both sides. That is, separator in center of panel makes items go to both ends. Do experiment, it's frustratingly educational.

- Xfce menu lacks 'lock screen' option. If needed, it's easy to create: Open your menu editor and add new item to right place, name it, and add exec command: xflock4. Pick an icon. Save, done.
- Xfce has such a nice thing as mime editor (in Settings). Means, you can make certain apps to handle certain files (can't change system defaults, though). If some file is opened in freaky way – like jpg with Firefox, and you can't find jpg at all in mime editor – then open this jpg with app you want to be default. Entry should now appear to mime list. Double-clicking on entry opens edit. There might be occasional need to fix entries which point to app that you removed (but mime didn't notice that). Or something...
- Xfce can have only one wallpaper over all workspaces. Compiz and KDE, for example, can have different ones. There is app called 'wallpaperoz', it has to be downloaded from web and manually installed. This app enables different wallpapers, and also changes them as frequently as you want. BUT, it's slow and lagging when you change workspaces. So, I tried it and I removed it.
- Docks. I am not sure what for they are good – as Xfce lets you make several freely customizable panels and fill them with launchers, drawers, widgets and whatnot. But anyway – there you have some names for googling: Plank dock (simple), AWN (it's not developed anymore), and most famous currently – Cairo dock (looks very pimpy and mac-ish).
- Themes and icons. Next post will be about this. Here I say only - well, obvious: for a simple tuning, look into 'Appearance', 'Window manager' and 'Window manager tweaks' and play around.

Configuration editors: There are occasions when some settings need to be tweaked manually. For that there are configuration editors. If in need or simply curious, take a look. Proper caution should be exercised, clicking like a blind moron is not advisable!
Xfce has a package 'xfce4-settings' which contains xfce4-settings-editor.
Gnome-specific settings come through gconf-editor, Linux Mint uses dconf-editor. Mate desktop one is called mateconf-editor. And so on. Depending on distro, an editor might be already installed – or not.

Tweaking of Grub2 - Not recommended without extensive pre-research!
For serious tweaking DO READ tutorials before, experimenting with bootloader IS dangerous!
One overview is here... googling 'tweaking grub2' gives a lot more.
Here are three less risky things (provided that no errors are made):
- Some easily changeable (and commented) parameters (wait-time before booting OS, for one) are in file /etc/default/grub
- To remove memtest entry from boot menu (if it is there). There is file /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+
Go there and simply make this file non-executable, in terminal:
sudo chmod -x 20_memtest86+
- If using Ubuntu there are 'Advanced options' entries in boot menu. Those folders contain entries to boot older kernels. If your new updated one works (reboot is mandatory, so you will know if it works) then there is no especial need to keep those older kernels (they take disk space too).
Check which is your last, working one. Type in terminal: uname -r
and you get number of current version. Rev up your Synaptic and find all 'linux-image' and 'linux-header' packages. 'Completely remove' those that are OLDER than your current one (lesser ver number). Be very careful NOT to remove the newest ones. And after all that, type in terminal:  
update-grub
Done.

E17 and Qimo

Enlightenment 0.17, or as it's usually referred – E17 is one of the DEs, and mighty old one too. If I remember correctly, only KDE is even older. Not that it matters – after initial burst of activity, there was 10 years of coma and version stayed on 0.16. Now, the thing has been revived, devs not only made new release but also have took up the task to enlarge whole desktop to new level – new libraries, new apps and so on. There are lot of information on their page for you, curious ones.

Whole thing is written totally differently of other Linux desktops – which makes it also totally uncompatible with anything outside their own package-range. It also looks and behaves very differently of others. And it is blindingly fast.

It is not a popular DE. Seems that only Bodhi Linux has it as default DE. But quite a few distros provide a meta-package. Whole thing looked freaky and interesting to me.

I tried to install Bodhi twice, with exactly the same result: installation hung after discovering my mouse... I have no idea why my mouse was so frightening to Bodhi.

But being stubborn, I then took another road - installed Lubuntu as a test-base and stuck E17 meta-package into it as a separate session.

When running E17 session for a first time, you will be asked various settings-questions. It made me feel in a contradictory way – 'oh it's so caring' and at the same time - 'why the hell I couldn't do all this afterwards, on desktop'.

One of things it asks is general font size – which is presented as bunch of size samples. I left it default – which appeared to be 11pt or so. When arriving to desktop I was greeted by font sizes of approximately 6pt... which is almost bloody unreadable!

Changing font sizes was extremely unwieldy and silly, and despite I changed everything to bigger – everything did not change. And what did was now too big. Doh.

There were obvious bugs and glitches. There wasn't any connection – 'you have to install connman' announced E17 helpfully – which you can't download of course, because you don't have connection...

And whole menu architecture was freaky indeed. And despite of nice icon-set whole desktop looked ugly and outdated.

'Completely remove' after one hour ended my date with E17.

The second thing I tested was Qimo Session – a package of educational Xfce-based kid-games. If I am not mistaken, for age 3-7. Contains various alphabet, word, number, association, math and so on games. Also has Kid-Paint – a simple drawing app, with a lot applicable stamp-pictures, different brushes and talking voice. Quite nice thing this Qimo, if a bit rough around edges.

After successful testing I installed Xubuntu + Qimo to my sons' computer as a double-boot with Winxp. Son definitely prefers Linux, well, because of games, I suppose. Or maybe because Ubuntu is the first choice in Grub ...

Also – as two different sessions are kind of overkill for 3,5 year old, I fused them together. Qimos' apps invaded Xfce menu anyway. So I left only Xfce (passwordless login – see 'Users and groups' ) and took Qimo away from login screen.

HOW-TO remove a session from login menu: Which is very simple thing to do, really (I am talking about Xubuntu, and accordingly, of Lightdm greeter (Light Display Manager)).
Go to /usr/share/xsessions, where .desktop files for every installed session live – delete or rename those you don't want to appear in greeters' menu. Easiest way, probably is: Open terminal, type sudo thunar, enter your password, file manager starts with root privileges, navigate to abovementioned place, rename currently un-needed files.

There is also Quest session in greeters' menu – and this is not represented by .desktop file. To remove that: Go to /etc/lightdm/ folder, open terminal, type sudo leafpad lightdm.conf, and add new line to the end of file
allow-guest=false

Save, and next login will be Questless.

Besides testing those two DEs, I also played around with Lxde itself – which I found a bit too 'light' for me. That is – Lxde really is very light thing, not very much a desktop if compared to gnome or Xfce. It even uses Openbox as a window manager, 'cause it doesn't have its own. Not that Lxde doesn't have its uses – if you have really old rig, then it's spot on and fits well.

THING TO AVOID: When installing Lubuntu I put Grub to MBR and overwrote Grub2 of Xfce. I then booted to my Xubuntu and did update-grub, and everything seemed OK.

When I finished my tests and decided to remove Lubuntu, I went to Xubuntu, formatted Lubuntu partitions, did update-grub again, rebooted – and found non-booting bootloader.

So, updating Grub is not enough in such case, I probably should have to reinstalled whole Grub from Xfce - after Lubuntu install.

I googled, I tried to repair my Grub (no immediate success). Then I decided that reinstalling whole Xubuntu again is lesser pain – and that was what I did.

And I probably used up at least three day quantity of curses. Sigh. And repeating once more – do not overwrite booloader you want to use afterwards. Put new one into root partition and it will cease to exist without problems when daddy Format comes.