SevenCubed - 1:28 am on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)

I got it working with my 256MB video card back in and there is definitely a noticeable difference. Didn't have to go looking for the manufacturer drivers either. Just booted it up after reinserting the card and it brought up the GUI. Nice.

Oh and in he OP I made a mistake saying it's 256MB of RAM -- it's actually 512MB. 256MB was for the video card.

I quite like xfce myself

Yeah that's what I'm using too now. After I posted the OP I started exploring and saw that as a second option for logging in so I gave it a whirl. It's consuming far less CPU. XUbuntu was using a near constant of 37% CPU (according to TOP). Xfce here is only taking it at about 5%.

FreeBSD has a sane init and file structure.

I prefer FreeBSD or CentOS

I might give those other OSs a try some day but for now I just want to experiment with this. My reason is because I want to become proficient enough to run my web server without the added layer of Plesk.

Right now I do as much as I can via command line but for some of the tougher stuff (for me) I rely on Plesk. However Plesk is really a pain because it adds another layer of complication and conflicts between the OS and LAMP with all their proprietary settings.

I had too many issues with my last new setup a month ago. But at the same time I learned a lot from it. I'm hoping to get to know how to use Linux exclusively for my next upgrade whenever it eventually comes to that. Even the upstream provider tech support team were giving me wrong answers to problems and I had to figure it out on my own.

I went from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS / Plesk 9.3 to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS / Plesk 11.0. I figured 3 days prior to my old subscription expiring would be plenty of time to get the new one up and running, configured, and manually migrate websites to it. I was wrong. In the end I managed to get it functioning as needed with only half an hour to spare before I shut down the old one but I was at it constantly.