Re:Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
by pan69 on Friday April 18, 2014 @06:18AM
(#7608653)
I just took XUbuntu for a spin. It's just as great as the 13.10 release. If you're a GNOME refugee and looking for an excellent desktop then I can't recommend XUbuntu enough.
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I recently moved to xfce on Ubuntu as well. I felt like it's much more "by hackers for hackers" than the Ubuntu or Gnome UI stuff. For instance, I can have my 10 virtual workspaces, and focus follows mouse and all the other things I've gotten used to having over the past 15+ years.
I've used it across 2 different desktops during the nightlies, and the xfce text keeps bugging when editing a panel, but only there.
That is the only weird issue I've had, apart from that 14.04 is a very solid release.
And XUbuntu is using almost half of the memory Ubuntu is using.
Xubuntu is the simpliest,light-weight choice that still has a lot of functionality available if you want to turn it on.
I am grateful for this choice.
I'm having weird issues with Gnome-Do, sometimes it just won't show up. It will run, but it won't show up, and killing it and relaunching it doesn't do anything. I think the hotkey just bugs out sometimes, and I have to relog for it to work. Weird.
Alternatives: kupfer (in the repositories) or synapse (ppa:synapse-core/testing ppa has a trusty build). I moved from gnome-do to synapse a while ago just because it feels faster.
Re:Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
by broodbucket on Friday April 18, 2014 @08:14AM
(#7608873)
Sadly, synapse is orphaned, Kupfer hasn't had a commit in over a year and GNOME-Do is going nowhere since GNOME Shell does the same thing by itself. One thing that's kept me from more minimal environments than those with their own launcher is that's there's just no really good standalone launcher.
Synapse may not have an active upstream any more, but, well, the Ubuntu package is still well-maintained (in the synapse-core/testing ppa), and it does everything I need it to.
An aversion to orphaned software is clearly good for things at a security boundary (web browsers, sshd, etc), but is it really an issue for a launcher? In 3-5 years it may not be good enough, but shrug, if that's the case I'll have another look around then. It's not like launchers have lock-in.