I installed the Start8 utility to get back a Start button, and just don’t use Metro. The OS itself is working quite well.

And the new Task Mgr and Resource Monitor are outstanding.

Gave Hyper-V a try, as it has some very cool features, but I could not get the Virtual Switch to work.
In fact when I setup the Virtual Switch, the networking for the machine quit working.
Maybe try it again later, but using Virtual Box at this time.
BTW, both Hyper-V and VirtualBox cannot be used at the same time.
In fact if Hyper-V is even enabled , VirtualBox will not work.

xhost +local:

This allows only locally hosted accounts to use X

With Fedora however I have found it necessary to either do this:
export DISPLAY=:0,0
or use the ‘-display :0.0. argument.

BTW, I agree with you on Mate – the later versions of Gnome are why I don’t like distributions that default to it.

Try Debian 6 (squeeze) sometime. It just works.
Debian 7 (wheezy) not so much – at least in my experience.

I’ve been using a Debian 6 VM for several weeks now and like it.
Works with Oracle too.

Yes. I’m sure it is an improvement, but it’s a pain in the ass when you were using iptables in the previous version, then upgrade…

Cheers

Tim…