wdm? as login manager and other lightweight apps.

[Larry Gagnon]

Hello to all on the xubuntu list. I work with a small charity which 
refurbishes older computers to donate to clients who cannot afford a 
computer. We will be migrating to Linux from Win98SE sometime next year. 
xubuntu is on the top of our list as a distro to load on these older 
computers - partly due to its ease of install, ubuntu server base, 
apt/Debian base and lightweight desktop environment which is newbie 
friendly. Any distro using Gnome or KDE is out of the question on these 
older machines.

I am a firm believer in lightweight applications and a fast system. So 
many Linux distros nowadays are bloated. Personally I run VectorLinux on 
quite a fast machine and it has blown every other distro I have tried 
out of the water as far as speed goes. However, VL is not probably 
appropriate as a beginners distro.

I sincerely hope the xubuntu developers will maintain the philosophy of 
including only lightweight gtk-based applications for its release on CD. 
It makes no sense to include heavyweight applications which the user can 
easily install later if required. xubuntu has a niche that can be filled 
- there is no sense trying to be a distro for everyone and try to 
include  popular  heavyweight applications. One must also remember that 
those in search of a lightweight distro probably have an older computer 
and may also be on a  dialup connection. Keeping the download size as 
small as possible is also important.

BTW did you think of using "wdm" as the X display manager ( 
http://voins.program.ru/wdm/ ). It is based on xdm, but is considerably 
nicer looking and easier to configure.

Larry Gagnon