Ditched Windows8 for Ubuntu on my new PC

**noel6** · July 21st, 2014

well my pc is not old. in fact it is just 12 mnths old. quad 4 2.8 g cpu, 8 gig of ram. the reason i preffered xubuntu is simply i did not like the unity bar in ubuntu. and of course it is a tad faster. if i could remove the unity bar i would use it.

**Nathan_McAuley** · July 22nd, 2014

Originally Posted by craig10x

Xubuntu is a little bit lighter, but unless you have a very old computer, that aspect of it would not be a major advantage of having xubuntu over ubuntu...xubuntu usually attracts those that have older computers or just don't like unity desktop...

Ok thanks. Similar idea to Mint Xfce then? This is what I put on my netbook since it only has 1G RAM and a 1.5ghz processor.

N

**Nathan_McAuley** · July 22nd, 2014

Originally Posted by noel6

well my pc is not old. in fact it is just 12 mnths old. quad 4 2.8 g cpu, 8 gig of ram. the reason i preffered xubuntu is simply i did not like the unity bar in ubuntu. and of course it is a tad faster. if i could remove the unity bar i would use it.

Yes this setup takes a bit of getting used to! The only feature I wasn't 100% happy with was not being able to see a conventional menu of installed applications and programs. But I learned how to show all of the programs from the search bar (instead of having to search for individual things by name). Back to being 100% happy again!

N

**craig10x** · July 22nd, 2014

Exactly....xubuntu is similar to mint xfce as it has the xfce desktop with the whisker menu...I prefer Unity myself because it's more "mac-like" with the unity launcher (dock)...I also like the polish and the "look" of the main edition ubuntu w/unity...

**waterlubber** · July 24th, 2014

With Ubuntu: Updates are made during system online time. They rarely need a restart, and when they do, it's faaast. You can browse the web or play games while it's updating.
With Windows: Updates are made when you don't want them to be made. System randomly shuts off and spends an hour trying to install updates. You can make a cup of tea when updating.
With Ubuntu: If computer's hard drive is removed/replaced, it goes through a 1/2 second disk check, that if it find errors, fixes them in a minute (Happened to me!)
With Windows: Don't you dare let that thing disk check. If you do, go to sleep, it'll be done in the morning. It does absolutely nothing useful.
With Ubuntu: Things WORK.
With Windows: WTF IS A PAGE FILE?
With Ubuntu: Installing programs: sudo apt-get install firefox
With Windows: Download .exe. Untick allllll the boxes or get toolbar'd. Wait half an hour for it to say you need to download version 298479347.2482.
With Ubuntu: 99% Productivity, 1% enjoying easter eggs.
With Windows: 1% Productivity, 99% Punching the screen.

**Nathan_McAuley** · July 24th, 2014

Originally Posted by waterlubber

With Ubuntu: Updates are made during system online time. They rarely need a restart, and when they do, it's faaast. You can browse the web or play games while it's updating.
With Windows: Updates are made when you don't want them to be made. System randomly shuts off and spends an hour trying to install updates. You can make a cup of tea when updating.
With Ubuntu: If computer's hard drive is removed/replaced, it goes through a 1/2 second disk check, that if it find errors, fixes them in a minute (Happened to me!)
With Windows: Don't you dare let that thing disk check. If you do, go to sleep, it'll be done in the morning. It does absolutely nothing useful.
With Ubuntu: Things WORK.
With Windows: WTF IS A PAGE FILE?
With Ubuntu: Installing programs: sudo apt-get install firefox
With Windows: Download .exe. Untick allllll the boxes or get toolbar'd. Wait half an hour for it to say you need to download version 298479347.2482.
With Ubuntu: 99% Productivity, 1% enjoying easter eggs.
With Windows: 1% Productivity, 99% Punching the screen.

**PondPuppy** · July 24th, 2014

I love using Ubuntu, and Mint too. But always be aware that stuff happens with any OS -- don't let it tailspin you when it occurs.

Not too long ago my 12.04 distro started telling me my boot partition was running out of space. It was news to me that I had to clear out older kernels or they would accumulate without end. It's easy enough to fix, though.

Problems in Linux are generally quite solvable, and the support is outstanding.

**ChrisG_UK** · July 28th, 2014

There is no way I am ever going Windows 8 so I have been looking for a way forward for quite some time. I have long been tempted to bite the bullet and go Mac but it's very expensive, and I don't like the way Apple are going with their glued in batteries and non-upgradeable machines. I have been watching Ubuntu and its variants for a long time.

I don't like the Ubuntu user interface, and with its heavy hardware requirements, it's not for me. I have one machine that is used for my rental guests, and on that one, Xubuntu has served very well for several years. But every time I upgrade it, it needs quite a lot of customisation to make it easy for Windows users to use, and it does seem to need more and more power. I tried Xubuntu on one of my old laptops and it was too slow to use.

I recently discovered Lubuntu, which I like best of all. It's very fast, and the user interface is close to perfect without any messing around. I'm now starting to use it for web development on my oldest laptop and it works very well indeed - much faster than Windows XP. At the moment I still have to switch to Windows for a couple of things, but I do think Lubuntu is a viable way forward for me. It seems to fulfil the objectives of Xubuntu, only better. It's great that there are all these options, but I think Lubuntu is probably what most Xubuntu users really want, they just haven't found it yet.