sounder Digest, Vol 31, Issue 26

[Chris Puttick]

Light weight, fully featured (has desktop widgets just like Vista) and
under-appreciated...

Try WindowMaker!

http://www.windowmaker.info/

Slight learning curve for Win or Mac like GUI users, but rapid once
you get going.

Cheers

Chris

On 21/02/07, sounder-request at lists.ubuntu.com
<sounder-request at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Send sounder mailing list submissions to
>         sounder at lists.ubuntu.com
>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:48:40 -0500
> From: "Eric Dunbar" <eric.dunbar at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: GNU/Linux Advocacy
> To: "Myriam Schweingruber" <myriam at pharma-traduction.ch>
> Cc: sounder at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID:
>         <77520bee0702201748k5275e7cnb87b741eab110c0f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 20/02/07, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at pharma-traduction.ch> wrote:
> > Le Mardi, 20. F?vrier 2007, Eric Dunbar a ?crit:
> > > On 20/02/07, Amichai Rotman <amichai at iglu.org.il> wrote:
> > > > Hello all,
> > > >
> > > > Just wanted to share something with ya'all:
> > > >
> > > > It seems since Micro$oft came out with they're new Vista with the
> > > > outrageous minimum requirements, I am getting more and more inquires /
> > > > questions and requests for information on making the switch to the better
> > > > option: GNU/Linux.
> > > >
> > > > Of course I gladly answer and give out the CDs kindly provided by
> > > > Canonical.
> > > >
> > > > So, finally, is there a reason to *thank* Mr. Bill Gates?....
> > > >
> > > > :-)
> > >
> > > Perhaps so, but I find that Ubuntu GNOME is no much less of a memory
> > > hog (on the low-end machines) than Windows XP, and, compared to the
> > > earlier stable versions of Windows (NT 4 SP 6, 2K) it actually
> > > requires more resources to run well. Of course, if you're willing to
> > > go with a crippled GUI you can manage with fewer computing resources,
> > > but, then you're also sacrificing desktop functionality.
> >
> > On the Ubuntu side, you can use Xubuntu with the Xfce windowmanager, this runs
> > on very little RAM and is designe specially for older hardware.  A very nice
> > way to run Linux on old computers.
> >
> > BTW, I installed Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Xubuntu on my laptop which allows me to
> > show various desktops to people interested before installing on their
> > computer. With enough RAM and HD space I bluntly install these three desktop
> > managers and leave it to the users what they prefer. Something I always
> > wanted to do is get some feedback from these people, I'm planing it right now
> > so expect a post about it on this list soon :-)
>
> Please do post your user feedback on the different desktops. I've been
> thoroughly disappointed by anything but GNOME/KDE but I'd like to know
> what others (who are NOT Ubuntu users already... biased group ;-)
> think (of course, I do come from the Mac world so I'm used to a much
> higher GUI standard than a Windows/UNIX user ;-).
>
> As for Xfce -- I'd call that a crippled desktop GUI, not suitable for
> most users. Even Windows 95 (and, I'm no fan of the Windows franchise)
> is a much more refined and usable desktop than Xfce (unless it's
> improved _dramatically_ since 2005... which was when I last
> experimented with the non-GNOME/KDE desktops/GUIs).. In many ways,
> Microsoft did actually do quite a good job with the technical aspects
> of the Windows 95 GUI (fast, especially on slow hardware) and they
> lost a lot of their refinement when they went with the Windows XP GUI
> (which, even on faster hardware leaves a lot to be desired -- much
> like GNOME on slower hardware).
>