Xubuntu--The Ideal Laptop Productivity OS?

[-gabe-noob-]

I'd been asking around about 2 months ago with questions about the Internet on my xubuntu laptop and what not.

Anyway I thought I'd chime back in and I'd like to hear some comments on my views on Xubuntu/XFCE as the ideal laptop distribution.

So I downloaded Xubuntu to get away from the Sluggish XP provided by my school bogged down with atleast 3 anti virus suites and a bunch of other bloat ware (took 3-ish minutes to get a usable desktop)

So far it has been fantastic. I've been a Ubuntu User since the days of Feisty Fawn, and have really only used kubuntu, Ubuntu and then other non-'buntu based linux distributions, this was my first go-around with XFCE.

It takes me about 35 seconds to get to a usable desktop. Disregarding GRUB and BIOS its more like 15 seconds. In the last couple months of school/ the beginning of my summer course this speed increase greatly increased my productivity. I'm now on line typing up my notes before anyone in the class can even login.

Furthermore, the fact that I can just have my browser/word processor/spreadsheet running, without the ridiculous amount of background crud that I had before makes working within the programs much much faster.

The preset dock pretty much has all I need for my school work at the click of a button, again decreasing the time it takes for me to get a working productive environment.

What I am asking today is weather my fellow denizens of the community cafe feel that light weight, yet full desktops, such as Xubuntu, give ones productivity on the go a distinct edge on more bloaty os-es

[Porcini M.]

I like how xfce has a workspace switcher, that show little mini-pictures of things open on each workspace.

Ubuntu used to have that... Until I upgraded to 11.04. :(.

[-gabe-noob-]

Hahhaa nice shot at the ever unpopular 11.04. To be completely honest, I wouldn't have tried Xubuntu if Unity hadn't required compositing/effects to use. I find it to really be a productivity booster once one finds their way around.

[wolfen69]

What I am asking today is weather my fellow denizens of the community cafe feel that light weight, yet full desktops, such as Xubuntu, give ones productivity on the go a distinct edge on more bloaty os-es

If you have a relatively new laptop, I don't think there's much of an advantage in using xubuntu, or similar. My lappie is a single core 2.3ghz, 3gb ram, intel graphics, and linux mint run great on it. And mint isn't known to be "lightweight".

[kaldor]

The ideal laptop productivity OS is the OS that works best on your laptop's hardware and does not get in your way and allows you to focus on your tasks at hand.

For me, that's Fedora 15 + Shell.

[-gabe-noob-]

Haven't tried Gnome shell, maybe I'll give it a whirl when my course is over.

[HermanAB]

The best distro is the one that works properly on *your* weird machine...

For a laptop, if it can suspend when you close the lid and recover when you open it and re-establish the WiFi connection without prompting, then it is as good as can be. On my Ideapad, I am running Fedora with either LXDE or XFCE and it is purrrfect.

I found that XFCE is a little more polished, but LXDE is better at handling an external screen.

[fancy_ninja]

What I am asking today is weather my fellow denizens of the community cafe feel that light weight, yet full desktops, such as Xubuntu, give ones productivity on the go a distinct edge on more bloaty os-es

Short answer-YES. Xubuntu has been FANTASTIC on my Gazelle..I love it! It's light, ridiculously fast, and filled with options--perfect for me! Check out this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1802371) for more XFCE lovin'! I'm a huge fan!!

[NightwishFan]

I find XFCE to be excellent. My last setup on my laptop with it I removed xfce-panel and replaced it with tint2. Installed all the programs with --no-install-recommends and added the deps I needed for functionality. Had abiword, leafpad, exaile, parole. I used wicd as my network applet, and used rcconf to disable uneeded services. It was awesome. I tried to make it resemble Zenix a little.

Actually might go back to that setup.

[wolfen69]

I find XFCE to be excellent.

All DE's are excellent and work well for me. It's just that I prefer G3 right now. ;)

[smellyman]

I think Gnome 3 and Unity are both quite good on laptops. Don't have to touch the trackpad very often. Very keyboard friendly.

[XubuRoxMySox]

I too am a rabid fan of both Xfce and Xubuntu! It's screamin' fast on my very modest hardware, yet has the features and just the right amount of "bling" (and it's easy to add or take away bling to your own tastes). A model of simplicity and elegance!

Long live Xubu!

A starry-eyed fan,
Robin

[Ozor Mox]

Another +1 for Xubuntu. I switched after my irritations with Unity became too numerous (the final one was when one of my favourite games, Freeciv, is unplayable in Unity because of a nasty UI bug). I wanted to stay within the Ubuntu family of OSes and have been very happy with Xubuntu so far. All my systems are slowly making their way over :)

[babakott]

I run Xubuntu, and love xfce. I have a Gateway P-7811FX laptop (http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2008/GodzillaFX/1015641R/1015641Rsp2.shtml) (while not the best, isn't bad either.)
I experienced a huge jump in speed (thus productivity) when I switched from Ubuntu and Gnome.

I haven't tried KDE, because it just looks like it would be a resource hog, although I could be wrong.

[ilovelinux33467]

I haven't tried KDE, because it just looks like it would be a resource hog, although I could be wrong.

I have KDE 4.6.5 running smoothly on my EEE PC 1000H netbook which isn't the best computer (or netbook for that matter) in the world. I think it was only the older versions of KDE 4 (4.0-4.3) that where the resource hogs.

[3Miro]

For me, XFCE is not only the best DE for laptops, it is the best DE for desktops too. I use XFCE on my Phenom x6, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX260. My main reason is that XFCE has all the features that I need (xfwm4 has a lot more features than for example metacity) and it is ultra responsive. My machine reacts faster than I can perceive, meaning that the amount of stuff that I can do is only limited by how fast I can use the mouse/keyboard.

[babakott]

I have KDE 4.6.5 running smoothly on my EEE PC 1000H netbook which isn't the best computer (or netbook for that matter) in the world. I think it was only the older versions of KDE 4 (4.0-4.3) that where the resource hogs.

I shall give it a try then.

[Erik1984]

All DE's are excellent and work well for me. It's just that I prefer G3 right now. ;)

Good point. They all have their strong and weak points but basically, If your hardware is well supported, Gnome, KDE and XFCE (and probably many others) all can be very productive environments. KDE is known as resource heavy but who really cares with 4 GB of RAM that it uses 700 MB? It's very snappy on this machine. Gnome ran fine as well in Ubuntu 10.10 and I've enjoyed working with Xubuntu on older machines. Gave the Live CD of Xubuntu 11.04 a try and I was impressed however chose Kubuntu for this version. It's a Luxury problem.

[XubuRoxMySox]

Just for fun I googled "Xubuntu fanboys," fanboi, xubuntu fan page, etc... There's no place for Xubu fans! Maybe it'd be fun to create one, but it'd pro'lly get boring after a couple of weeks or months just reading over and over again how Xubuntu totally rocks. But I don't think I would tire of it very soon, lol.

-Robin
Xubu fanboi

[-gabe-noob-]

Yes a Xubuntu Fan page for us fanboizzz would be neat, lol.

[keithpeter]

I shall give it a try then.

The Asus EeePC can run the 'standard' desktops OK, I've had Unity on this 1000 with SSD drive.

Personally prefer XFCE4 with dmenu and liberal use of Alt-F11 on the 1024 by 600 screen.

Currently trying Elementary OS Jupiter with both the top panel and the dock on autohide. Its fine.

[BrokenKingpin]

I am running Xubuntu on almost all my computers now... great distro.

There has been a lot of talk about Xubuntu/Xfce recently, I am glad it is starting to get more recognition.