[xubuntu-users] Hi, Newbie Here

[John Culleton]

On Wednesday 28 October 2009 12:15:01 Vincent wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Charlie Kravetz <
>
> cjk at teamcharliesangels.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:38:08 -0400
> >
> > Robin <dixiedancer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > I'm a noob. Relatively, anyway. Started with Ubuntu in 
March of this
> > > year. Tried Crunchbang and it's awesome, but not 
especially
> > > kid-friendly. Played with LXDE for a bit, but it's really buggy 
and I'm
> > > getting tired of the hassle. It's pretty and kid-friendly, but it
> > > frustrates me no end with all the little annoying bugs, so I 
thought I
> > > would check out Xfce, and since Ubuntu is where I started, 
Xubuntu
> > > might be the easiest way to do that. I'll install it as soon as 
Xubuntu
> > > Karmic comes out. But I have some pointed noob questions 
which I'm sure
> > > you have heard before.  The closest things to my questions 
in the
> > > archives are pretty old now, so maybe alot has changed.
> > >
> > > First question: IMPLEMENTATION seems to be an issue I've 
read alot
> > > about. Over and over again in forums and blogs I have read 
stuff like
> >
> > this:
> > > "KDE is great, but Kubuntu sucks," and "Xfce is great, but 
Xubuntu
> > > sucks (is 'bloated,' etc)."
> > >
> > > With KDE I can kinda sorta understand it. On PCLinuxOS, 
KDE was
> > > magnificent, but reeeeeeally slow on my poor old 'puter. 
But Kubuntu
> > > was horrible! It had better hardware detection, but it was 
maddeningly
> > > slow and buggy (even buggier than LXDE has been). I 
haven't tried
> > > Xubuntu yet (waiting for Karmic), but where do all the 
complaints about
> > > "bloat" come from? It's Ubuntu after all, so it's bound to be 
"bloated"
> > > in that Ubuntu tries to be all things to all users. But no one
> > > complains that Ubuntu is bloated! Is it just that the people 
who are
> > > complaining expected something OTHER than Ubuntu with 
Xfce? Or is the
> > > *implementation* of Xfce in Xubuntu comparable to KDE's 
implementation
> > > in Kubuntu?
> >
> > I have not used Kubuntu, so I can not make a fair comparison 
with it.
> > If you install Ubuntu, then install Xubuntu, it will be bloated 
and
> > slow. If, on the other hand, you install Xubuntu and use the
> > applications that install with it, instead of Open Office and 
the
> > applications replaced in Xubuntu, it is not bloated. Those who 
make the
> > bloated claims generally have decided they want 
OpenOffice.org
> > applications instead of GnomeOffice, they want the 
multimedia
> > applications in Kubuntu instead of the one in Xubuntu, etc. 
This will
> > cause bloat and slowdowns.

I  keep Open Office around for two reasons. Sometimes I need to 
convert an index etc. to rtf. And sometimes I need to convert a 
doc file to plain text.  Other than that it only serves as a source for 
a pretty complete CMYK palette which I can choose in Scribus.
98% of the time OO sits idle. So it doesn't slow me down. 

OO apps run on Slack, on various flavors of Debian, on Windoze 
etc. And the pool of developers is probably bigger than the pool of 
developers for Gnome Office. The choice of OO therefore makes 
some sense.

About the top bars (Gnome style) mixed with a bottom bar (KDE 
style.) If I wanted top bars I would be using Gnome.  I would 
prefer that XFCE on xubuntu looked and worked just like XFCE on 
Slackware, XFCE on Vector Linux and so on.


-- 
John Culleton
"Create Book Covers with Scribus"
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4055.html