.
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.
HPE BL460c G9 ProLiant Blade | 2x Xeon E5-2620V3 | NO RAM | P244BR | 2xHDD Tray
$179.00
HPE BL460c G10 ProLiant Blade | 2x Silver 4110 | 16GB | P204I | 2x300GB 10KRPM
$1419.00
DELL PEM640 POWEREDGE M640 BLADE SERVER
$539.95
HP ProLiant BL460c G9 (Gen9) 2x E5-2670V3 12 Core 3.1GHz No Ram or No Drives
$59.98
Dell PowerEdge M620 0F9HJC Blade Server 2*E5-2670 2.60GHz 192GB RAM 2*300GB SAS
$103.99
DELL M630 BLADE SERVER x2 XEON E5-2660V3 @ 2.6GH H730 PERC HDD CADDIES 16GB FC
$50.00
Dell PowerEdge M640 Blade Server
$539.95
Cisco UCS B200 M4 Blade Server, 2x2660 V3, 40GbE, No Ram No HDD
$35.95
Dell PowerEdge M620 Blade Server
$39.99
DELL PowerEdge M630 Blade 2x E5-2683v3 2.0GHz =28 Cores 256GB H330 2x10Gb X520
$450.00