I insist on having a desktop environment in my main OS. I just have to have the convenience of clickable icons on the screen. I guess using Mac (in the 1990s), Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP have conditioned me to expect this. Puppy Linux, antiX Linux, and SliTaz prove that having a desktop environment doesn't have to mean bloatware. Even Damn Small Linux offered a desktop environment. I think that Ubuntu has jumped the shark. I've tried Ubuntu 11.04 in VirtualBox. It took a LONG time to install, and it felt slow and clunky. Xubuntu 11.04 wasn't that much better, and there was serious lag when I clicked on a file manager icon on the desktop. Ubuntu LTS is faster to operate and takes up much less time to load. The new Ubuntu is reminding me too much of what I didn't like about Windows. I'm not sure why Canonical couldn't just come up with a separate tablet OS (even if it had to borrow parts of Ubuntu in order to do so). The controversy over Ubuntu, Unity, GNOME 3, and KDE 4 highlights the importance of the diversity of solutions in the Linux community. This controversy is THE answer to the complaints that there are too many distros. If Ubuntu were the only distro, Linux would be in big trouble. Fortunately, Ubuntu has competitors like Linux Mint (which recently made the first official release of the Debian Edition), Fedora, OpenSUSE, Sabayon, and others. This is an unprecedented opportunity for all other distros to attract Ubuntu users looking for an alternative. It appears that Linux Mint is gaining the most users. If LMDE can give users everything they liked about Ubuntu-based Mint, then we will enter the Linux Mint Era of Linux. I installed LMDE with XFCE as my main distro today, and it's winning me over. I'm seriously considering switching from antiX to LMDE as the basis for Swift Linux. If I go this route, I'll be putting LMDE on a similar diet as the one that antiX Linux uses to shrink MEPIS. The controversy over GNOME 3 and KDE 4 is an unprecedented opportunity for lightweight distros and lightweight DEs/WMs. Puppy Linux, antiX Linux, and SliTaz all use ROX Pinboard DEs. Puppy Linux uses JWM for its WM, antiX Linux uses IceWM, and SliTaz uses OpenBox. On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:04:31 -0500 J Cruit <j at packetgod.com> wrote: > I still am not a big fan although it does work well on my touchscreen > as a good interface to launch apps. So I'm warming up to it on that > device but on all my other systems I've tried it for a few weeks then > dumped it for gnome. > > At this point I think I'm done with desktops, I'm going back to what I > remember as the good old days and just using Fluxbox, it always looked > so good and it was quick, easy and I had everything at my fingertips. > > --j > -- Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>