Odd start up issue

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 11:56:58 -0400, Tim Holmes wrote:
>It ran ok with 15.10, and seems to be ok with 16.04

"From experience, we all know that it is recommended to have 2048 MiB
RAM to properly run a day to day Ubuntu.

A good start should be with minimum 1024 and recommended 2048 MiB RAM."

- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

>if lubuntu is better, and it will run what I need, im cool with it.

You don't need to install Lubuntu, you could install just the
meta-package.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/lubuntu-desktop

Perhaps you don't want all the default apps of Lubuntu, then just
installing LXDE should do the job for you.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/lxde

I'm just using openbox

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/openbox

the window manager, that by default is used for LXDE.

The most lightweight window manager providing a look and feel
more or less equal to openbox most likely is JWM.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/jwm

Openbox and JWM usually are absolutely stable, but you need to install
something providing the wallpaper, either e.g. feh

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/feh

or assuming you want desktop icons, too, a file manager launching it
with it's desktop manager daemon. I don't know if all file managers
also allow to set the wallpaper.

You also need to install a panel, e.g. lxpanel

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/lxpanel

and/or e.g. fbpanel

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/fbpanel

and edit files to set the theme for GTK2, GTK3 and Qt apps. It's not
hard to do, we could help you with this, but perhaps it's more pleasing
for you to use a desktop environment providing all this, e.g. LXDE.

A lot of users prefer Xfce4 over LXDE.

https://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/requirements/

The meta-package

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/xubuntu-desktop

or if you just want to try out Xfce4 instead of the complete flavour

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/xfce4

What is most comfortable for you depends on your skills and your needs.
However, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to chose any of the
mentioned desktop environments or window managers. Setting up an
environment using a window manager without a desktop environment
comes with a learning curve, OTOH as soon as you want to edit the
defaults of a desktop environment, it requires a learning curve, too.

Regards,
Ralf