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I’m testing out Ubuntu 9.04, and last night on a whim I decided to install XFCE and KDE to try them out, see how they’ve progressed compared to vanilla Ubuntu’s Gnome (I have Xubuntu on my father’s creaking old PC and the last time I seriously used KDE was in Knoppix a few years ago). Here, then, are my impressions from that brief session of messing about; if something catches my eye, I’ll probably write a more detailed account at a later date.
After all the hype I’d read on UbuntuForums KDE4 is atrocious and made me feel like it wanted me to see everything on my computer, all at once. Konquerer is ugy as hell. If Kubuntu looks like this out-of-the-box, I can’t imagine it leaves a good impression to new users when it even overwhelms someone who has been using Linux quite a while now.
On the other hand, XFCE was beautiful, incredibly snappy and very smooth, actions becoming instantaneous when compositing was off. I mean, anyone choosing Xubuntu most likely is doing so for speed, so I’m not sure how popular the compositing is; but with it turned on, it was very pretty, very modern. I would even go so far as to say it was almost a more purposeful kind of compositing, giving definition and usability to the desktop – which is interesting because when I use Compiz in Ubuntu, I always feel like it is needless, resource-hogging eye candy.
I installed Midori to fully enjoy speed (Firefox is nice in XFCE, but it does often have that familiar half-a-second lag that makes it stand out in XFCE) and I was very much impressed. There seemed to be a few javascript bugs, but it’s an early build. Overall, XFCE on a modern, powerful PC is not something I had experienced before, and as result my opinion of it hass gone from a tool to give life to older PCs to possibly the best way to get the most from your existing one.
I’m back in the familiar surroundings of Ubuntu’s Gnome for the moment, but I will definitely consider switching to XFCE full time by 9.04.1
To try out XFCE and KDE on your Ubuntu laptop without any CD-installs and keeping all your preferences across all 3 (which is fantastic), you can click their names to install xubuntu-desktop and/or kubuntu-desktop, install them from Synaptic, or even quicker, throw these commands into a terminal (don’t be afraid, it’s copy and paste!).
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Tags: computers, jaunty jackalope, kubuntu, linux, software, technology, terminal, ubuntu, xubuntu
In my point of view, a desktop (XFCE) that is unable to provide a software to edit the menu of application is certainly not a moder desktop, especially in 2009, especially taking into account the age of XFCE. Thus XFCE could be (menu is just one of the example) good… But not yet… But not sure it will ever be…
Regards
pretty much my thoughts. i’m on a netbook, more specifc the 901 eeepc. i run gnome ubuntu 9.04 and it’s ok. now i want to install xubuntu 8.10 and then load the newly released xfce 4.6 to check how it runs.