<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFCC" text="#000000"> Guess I'll join the flock and crow about Xubuntu: It's great! I switched from Ubuntu to Xubuntu when the unity interface was introduced, along with some other even more undesirable "features." I was an early adapter of Ubuntu: attended an install fest at a local community college. The person leading the group was a true geek with frayed cuffs on his long sleeved, plaid shirt, drool stains on his front, etc. Generally unkempt. But, he knew his stuff and was connected to higher powers. When we got sound out of our PCs, laptops, etc., he whooped for joy. Installs were prompted by old Debian-flavored interactions at the CLI. Ubuntu won over several other distros that I tried, i.e., Mandrake (remember that one?), SuSE, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux (DSL). At one time I was triple booting three distros to try them out. I started with Basic time sharing with a teletype interface in grad school in a prior era. Graduated to applications running on a dual-processor PDP-10; the CPUs were the size of large refrigerators. Mag tapes, line printers, high-speed terminals running at 2400 baud. Then along came PCs and Window$, 3.0 and beyond. I got hooked on the GUIs and did little that required CLI activities. Took up Linux to get out of the Window$ trap - licensing fees; interminable re-installs/reboots; blue screens of death, etc. Linux is now my hobby and is a lot of fun. I proselytize, introduced a group to Ubuntu in a very small town in El Salvador, and am preparing a talk for our LUG on managing photo collections and using The GIMP for photo editing. It goes without saying, but I will: I most appreciate the time and effort of developers to make such wonderful software available - and free. Now, I better put in an appearance before my wife, who just doesn't understand why I do this beyond my saying it's my hobby. /Roger Bethesda, Maryland, USA </body> </html>