.
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.
Intel XEON E5-2699 V3 CPU PROCESSOR 18 CORE 2.30GHZ 45MB L3 CACHE 145W SR1XD
$45.00
Dell Poweredge R640 Server | 2x Xeon Gold 6132 | 512GB | H730P | 8x HDD Trays
$2549.00
Websense V10000 G2 V-Series 2 x Intel X5550 @267Ghz Quad Core 24GB MEM NO HDD
$199.99
Supermicro 4U 4x Nvidia GPU AI Server 1.8Ghz 16-Core 64GB 2x10G SFP+ 2x2200W
$1040.00
Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 2.4GHz 35MB 14-Core 120W LGA2011-3 SR2N7
$17.99
Intel Xeon Gold 6140 SR3AX 2.3GHz 18-Core Processor CPU
$44.99
Intel Xeon Gold 6138 2.0GHz 27.5MB 20-Core 125W LGA3647 SR3B5
$46.00
SR1XP Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 12 Core 30MB 2.5GHz LGA 2011-3 A Grade Processor
$5.09
HP Workstation Z640 2x Xeon E5-2623V4 32GB Ram Dual 256GB SSD K420 Linux GA
$234.98
Dell Precision T5600/t5610 Xeon E5-2670 2.6Ghz 16GB DDR3 RAM NO HDD Nvidia
$90.00