.
Things I liked:
Reasonably fast server brings in 937 Mb iso in 10-15 min.
Universal LiveUSB installer easily makes LiveUSB.
ALL my laptop hardware recognized and drivers provided
....except for internal closed-source wifi.
Easily sets up open-source external wifi.
Xfce desktop neat, intuitive & responsive.
Uses Ubuntu whisker menu and includes a LibreMenu menu editor.
Network mgr working well, given wifi drivers.
FF is 25; LO is 4.2; amd64 kernel is 3.13.
Boots to browser on-line in ~60 sec; shut-down < 5 sec.
GUI makes it easy to disable my touchpad which disrupts typing.
Things I didn't like:
Inefficient choices in initial 937 Mb base configuration.
937 Mb iso doesn't include closed-source ttf-mscorefonts, Broadcom drivers & flash;
....also doesn't include open-source LibreOffice, Geany & tzdata.
Configuring 2 Gb of persistence took a really long time.
LibreOffice took a long time to bring in as well.
*Apt-get needed to install tzdata; ntp updates desktop to local time on reboot.
Mousepad editor poorer than leafpad, much poorer than gedit IMO.
Bug 1: whisker menu editor doesn't save (or properly display) liveUSB favorites;
....Mint 16 doesn't have this problem with favorites panel display
Bug 2: does not recognize closed-source drivers brought in
....nor indicate correct status of devices using closed-source drivers.
LibreMenu requires a wholesale upgrade of gtk+ and python3 infrastructure.
Things I don't understand:
Why screensaver set only to blank screen.
Why Ubuntu Software Center rather than Synaptic.
*Maybe because I didn't understand Ubuntu Software Center usage as root.
ASRock B550M Pro SE AM4 DDR4 SATA 6Gb/s 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 Micro ATX Motherboard
$84.99
Asus H81M-C Intel LGA1150 DDR3 Desktop Motherboard MicroATX Socket H3
$23.99
Asus Prime H310M-A R2.0 Intel LGA 1151 DDR4 Desktop Motherboard
$54.99
Gigabyte Z370P D3 ATX Z370 LGA1151 Motherboard (Support Intel 6/7th 8th 9th)
$59.99
ASUS H87I-PLUS, LGA 1150, Intel Motherboard w/ IO Shield
$39.00
MSI H81I LGA1150 MINI-ITX DDR3 Desktop Motherboard With I/O Shield
$32.99
MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX AM4 AMD B450 USB3.2 Micro-ATX Motherboard
$67.99
MSI PRO B650-P WiFi AMD AM5 DDR5 WiFi 6E ProSeries Motherboard
$107.30
Gigabyte M-ATX motherboard with Intel Core i3 8100 CPU and 8GB DDR4 RAM
$84.00
ASRock TRX40 Creator DDR4 Socket sTRX4 Motherboard With I/O Shield Tested
$199.99