Slowly, slowly, things start to get better. This time I built up a stripped Ubuntu command-line installation, then added xorg, IceWM and a few GTK2 applications, to keep me in business.

Startup time is around 1:10, which isn’t much worse than a pure command-line system (I tweaked the base installation to get it to move a little faster, and compiled an autologin executable. Don’t hold that against me. For my Xubuntu and Ubuntu experiments I set the session manager to autologin too).

Startup is fast, but shutting down is a different story. I have to spawn a terminal and issue the shutdown command, then type a password.

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