Advice on switch to Xubuntu

[hawthornso23]

Looks like I'm going to be switching to Xubuntu. Can anyone who has done so recently advise as to the best way to do this without stuffing up my current gnome-fallback desktop.


My current setup was not easy to obtain. I delayed my upgrade to Oneiric as long as possible to try to keep away from the Unity/Gnome3 cluster**** and give time for alternatives to develop. I finally upgraded to 11.10 over the weekend and it took me pretty much the whole weekend to get my system back into a useful state (gnome-fallback with compiz). I'm generally happy with the result. I will be perfectly happy when I succeed in replacing the horrible battery icon and getting the bluetooth-applet to show up in the panel like it is supposed to. But those are small matters - everything else seems fine.

However there is absolutely no way I am prepared to go through that experience again. Clearly gnome3 and unity are headed off to a place I don't want to go. For example they proudly advertise the fact that unity is now "touch screen ready". I cannot imagine ever using a touchscreen to do serious work. I work on laptops and desktops - not tablets. So ... Xubuntu. However as I've just put in a lot of effort to get gnome-fallback into a decent state in 11.10, I'd prefer not to mess that up.

Last time I tried Xubuntu - back in the days of Intrepid and on another machine - I ended up with dozens of applications with duplicate functionality cluttering everything up. The result was a bloated mess. It was clear to me that having both installed side by side wasn't really a good idea, and I went back to a gnome only system. Three years later I still haven't managed to get rid of that blasted mouse in the logout splash screen.

So if there is anyone out there who has recently switched from ubuntu to xubuntu, I'd be interested in your experience and in any tips and recommendations you might have for making this migration a painless one.

[fantab]

Looks like I'm going to be switching to Xubuntu. Can anyone who has done so recently advise as to the best way to do this without stuffing up my current gnome-fallback desktop..............
So if there is anyone out there who has recently switched from ubuntu to xubuntu, I'd be interested in your experience and in any tips and recommendations you might have for making this migration a painless one.

Since you don't like Unity and Gnome-Shell... I suggest you give a try to CINNAMON (http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/cinnamon-12-released-with-desktop.html#more), a gnome-shell fork and very similar to Gtk2 in functionality. It still a work in progress, so expect a few rough edges... but overall its quite stable.

[mvario]

When I move to Xubuntu, I basically used Psychocat's guide to remove unneeded Ubuntu packages, though I made a few alterations...

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purexfce

[hawthornso23]

mvario - thanks for the link to psychocats page. Very useful.

fantab - Cinnamon looks interesting but I'd prefer something more solid.

[Myrddin Emrys]

Last time I tried Xubuntu - back in the days of Intrepid and on another machine - I ended up with dozens of applications with duplicate functionality cluttering everything up. The result was a bloated mess. It was clear to me that having both installed side by side wasn't really a good idea, and I went back to a gnome only system.

Rather than going all the way to Xubuntu, you could simply install the xfce4 meta-package, which gives you a vanilla xfce desktop without the Xubuntu customisations or the extra applications (just the essential DE components).

Alternatively there's MATE, which is just Gnome 2 under another name and is already very solid:

http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/doku.php/download#ubuntu
http://mate-desktop.org/

[dayton32]

Looks like I'm going to be switching to Xubuntu. Can anyone who has done so recently advise as to the best way to do this without stuffing up my current gnome-fallback desktop.


My current setup was not easy to obtain. I delayed my upgrade to Oneiric as long as possible to try to keep away from the Unity/Gnome3 cluster**** and give time for alternatives to develop. I finally upgraded to 11.10 over the weekend and it took me pretty much the whole weekend to get my system back into a useful state (gnome-fallback with compiz). I'm generally happy with the result. I will be perfectly happy when I succeed in replacing the horrible battery icon and getting the bluetooth-applet to show up in the panel like it is supposed to. But those are small matters - everything else seems fine.

However there is absolutely no way I am prepared to go through that experience again. Clearly gnome3 and unity are headed off to a place I don't want to go. For example they proudly advertise the fact that unity is now "touch screen ready". I cannot imagine ever using a touchscreen to do serious work. I work on laptops and desktops - not tablets. So ... Xubuntu. However as I've just put in a lot of effort to get gnome-fallback into a decent state in 11.10, I'd prefer not to mess that up.

Last time I tried Xubuntu - back in the days of Intrepid and on another machine - I ended up with dozens of applications with duplicate functionality cluttering everything up. The result was a bloated mess. It was clear to me that having both installed side by side wasn't really a good idea, and I went back to a gnome only system. Three years later I still haven't managed to get rid of that blasted mouse in the logout splash screen.

So if there is anyone out there who has recently switched from ubuntu to xubuntu, I'd be interested in your experience and in any tips and recommendations you might have for making this migration a painless one.

:D I switched over to Xubuntu permanently in December. At first I was really not satisfied to take what I thought was just a sop thrown out there for the disgruntled former users of new-fangled Ubuntu "Fluff." So I tried Fedora, Linux Mint Debian and Linux Mint Ubuntu, PClinuxOS, and Lubuntu, LXDE, and finally Debian--which is the way Ubuntu used to be and I really liked it, but Debian was such a hassle to have to set up. I finally got it to work but what an effort. I returned to Xubuntu and XFCE. They are still not the Ubuntu I came to love and respect, but Xubuntu is, I guess, the nearest no-hassle variety of Linux I am going to find, at least so far. I can recommend Xubuntu and XFCE. I have had nothing but good service from both.

My problem is that I switched over from Ubuntu install, according to Psychocats. Somehow or other I brought Nautilus with me. I don't know what is going to happen in the next upgrade. I have been thinking about re-installing Xubuntu from the disk, but in the meantime I keep hoping Ubuntu will come to its senses and return to its former self and philosophy. Dayton32

[alenis]

I switched from Ubuntu to Debian Squeeze + xfce and I enjoy stability without missing much. If you don't like Unity you can also try Lubuntu or Debian+lxde, although the Debian stable uses an older verion of pcmanfm which lacks some functionalities. On my old laptop I use Lubuntu and I didn't have any problem yet.