Xubuntu running

So I got pretty tired of KDE4 pretty quickly, and didn’t really care for the performance hit due to *teh new shiny*. I originally went back to Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3.5x for a while, but then my insatiable urge to have the latest & greatest distro overtook me, & I went looking for options.

I settled on running a nice lightweight Xubuntu 8.10, and then diligently installed my favorite KDE apps:
AmaroK
K3B
KAudioCreator
and a few others. After some tweaking, I’ve found a nice system. Moderately lightweight XFCE, with my needed components. I’m hoping to keep this moderately aging system running ilke a champ for a while longer, and hopefully become adjusted to XFCE enough to put it on a Mini 9 later on.

I knew going in that Xubuntu (like Gnome) has a simpler menu system and not as many buttons & checks to mark as I’m accustomed to coming from KDE. The 1st obstacle I ran across was the inadequate system menu interface, which doesn’t *really* let you edit the menu much at all. In my 1st day in Xubuntu, I found the following, which helped immensely, as my previous menu settings from my previous OS installs left duplicate entries littered all over the menu, especially in “Other”, including all of my Wine- apps not in the Wine submenu:

http://xubuntu.wordpress.com
http://xfce.wikia.com

I’ll post more thoughts as I continue down this road, but I’m moderately impressed so far.

Kubuntu 8.10 KDE4 now running

Against my own preferences, I couldn’t stand not having the latest & greatest version of Ubuntu on my system. So I installed Kubuntu 8.10 on top of 8.04.1, KDE3 version. I originally was going to do a clean install as usual, but every time I tried th Live Installer, the partitioner would freeze at 50%, and nothing would happen. So, I took the plunge & did an in-place upgrade, risking my system & being forced onto KDE4.

Not bad. I haven’t run into any showstoppers, and my in-place upgrade went well. Since KDE4 doesn’t use any of my color scheme preferences from KDE3, I’ll be spending some time getting the GUI set up for my tastes.

I must admit, I’m impressed with the new effects built into KWin. I’ve got wobbly windows without Compiz I’ll post more impressions in the coming weeks as I use the system more.