Some thoughts on Mint 10 LXDE for USB

I thought I'd compare Mint 10 LXDE for USB with my Knoppix 6.4.4
'install' on a 2 Gb SanDisk and my Dell 1545 laptop.

Both of these have snappy LXDE/PCManFM desktops. I've become a
little critical of Knoppix 6.4.4's fragile X, so I am looking to
see just where that problem resides.

I used a Windows Pendrive installer to create a USB directly from
a downloaded Mint 10 LXDE CD iso. No intermediate CD required.
This works fine, providing persistent store as well. Gives an almost
identical initial footprint; however, OpenOffice isn't included.
Adding OOo and a few other tweaks, I find there's about 300 Mb
less space to begin with. Probably best to use at least 4 Gb
if you have it.

As most distributions are, Mint 10 is initially hostile to Broadcom
wireless. I get around this by temporarily using an external wifi
adapter that has the right political correctness, firing up synaptic
and installing three bcmwl programs. Rebooting on the internal wifi
then works just fine.

Mint 10 is also initially hostile to using a nano/mouse rather than
the built-in touchpad. No way to simply disable the touchpad.
Adding a one-liner /etc/X11/Xsession.d/15x11-synaptics solves this
same as in Knoppix 6.4.4.

My initial housekeeping includes uninstalling Ubiquity, and
disabling mint-fortune. Have begun my usual warfare with ntp in
order to retain my own idea of desktop local time; usually works
well until first automatic time correction.

So far, no hiccups in X, but it's not been in use long. Stay tuned.

ps. No Compiz, none at all.