.
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.
Dell PowerEdge R720 Server - 2x8c CPU,256Gb RAM, 128Gb SSD/3x900Gb SAS, Proxmox
$340.00
Dell PowerEdge R620 Server 2x E5-2660 v1 2.2GHz 16 Cores 256GB RAM 2x 300GB HDD
$79.19
Dell PowerEdge R720XD Xeon E5-2680 V2 2.8GHz 20 Cores 256GB RAM 12x4TB
$510.00
Dell PowerEdge R730XD 28 Core Server 2X Xeon E5-2680 V4 H730 128GB RAM No HDD
$389.99
DELL POWEREDGE T430 SERVER W/ DUAL XEON E5-2609 CPU & 16GB MEMORY
$329.00
Dell PowerEdge R620 4-Bay Server 2x Xeon E5-2690 8 Core 2.9GHz 32GB No HDD H710P
$95.63
CTO Dell PowerEdge R630 Server, 2x Xeon E5-2620V4, 64GB- 512GB RAM, 480GB SSDs
$246.67
Dell PowerEdge R620 Server 2x E5-2650 V2 = 16 Cores H710P 128GB RAM 2x 600GB SAS
$274.99
DELL PowerEdge R630 8SFF Server 2x E5-2690v4 2.6GHz =28 Cores 256GB H730 4xRJ45
$600.00
CTO Dell PowerEdge R630 Server, 2x Xeon E5-2680V4, 64GB- 512GB RAM, New SSDs
$354.67