Loving it, thank you

Just popped in to say a huge Thank You to the Ubuntu team. I've just returned having last used it in Hardy days, since when I've been using a mixture of OSX and Arch. First new impressions: honestly I'm shocked by what a polished, sensible and effective distro this is.

For what it's worth, what brought me back was a forthcoming journey for which I needed a light, small computer that could break without causing too much pain. I picked up an old Aspire One D260 which fitted the bill nicely for my budget. As I shall be doing voluntary work in a politically sensitive part of the world I figured it would be a good excuse to try to build a Prism-free rig (so no Google, Microsoft, Apple etc.), and as I would not have time to fix things on the fly I needed something solid. Ubuntu was the obvious choice.

The first thing I noticed was that it was quite slow, so I stuck in some extra memory and replaced the standard distro with Lubuntu. This rocked but I missed some regular Ubuntu features. Switching back to the vanilla version I realsied that while I couldn't match Lubuntu's speed I could get close enough for my needs by:
1. Using the Unity tweak tool to turn off some graphical and search related goodies;
2. removing Swap and installing Zram instead;
3. choosing lightweight alternative applications.
Try it - along with the memory upgrade you may find this breathes new life into an old machine.

It was fast enough whist still giving me a rich desktop environment with, most importantly for me, Unity. I know this technology has proved devisive in the community but once I got used to it it just made so much sense - particularly on this netbook where real estate is a mere 10". I can see the strategic value too, and can't wait to try Unity on my mobile phone, tablet and desktop one day.

So again: thank you thank you Ubuntu Team. This is a polished distro - in my opinion more beautiful, efficient, usable and liberating than Windows or OSX now - and the direction it is heading in is insightful, clever, full of promise. I admit to feeling politically uncomfortable with some of Canonical's decisions but there can be no doubt that the fruits of its labour are sweet indeed.

Which version are you using? I myself am on 13.04, and have said many times it's the best distro, nay OS, out there imho. My spec (below) isn't amazing, but Ubuntu and Unity are speedy and efficient, more so than either my openSUSE KDE install or my W7. It's really come into it's own with this release. I find it hard going using other DE's now.

I absolutely cannot wait for 13.10. :) Really hope it's as good, or even better.

It's always nice to see another happy Ubuntu user; I love using Ubuntu as well. I have disabled the Search Background Blur also using the Unity Tweak Tool; great little program. Here's something else I found and configured today that I like which makes it easier to see the listings in the Search (Dash):

Disable Dash Transparency
add 'export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1' to ~\.xprofile
create the .xprofile file if none exists
log out and back into Unity

I would also recommend enabling the UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) if you have not done so already. I'm pretty sure mine wasn't enabled by default.
$ sudo ufw enable

Happy Computing!

@BigSilly: I love 13.04 and i am now on 13.10...yes...i think you are going to love it too...it's getting really nice...