useing Xfce

[Douglas Pollard]

Been in search of a lighter desktop to cut down on the load on my video 
editing.  I installed Xfce in 11.10 and really like it.  I am unable to 
install any software from Synaptic package manager or Ubuntu Software 
center though.  I reopened 11.10 Ubuntu and installed so the problem is 
with Xfce I guess something needs to be enabled I am thinking.        
Can someone help?          Doug