Xubuntu Pals

Xubuntu Pals : For Any and All Xfce-related Tidbits...

itsanudae

Hello from itsanudae, your helpful site administrator!

Hi, I'm itsanudae (Leo), and I just wanted to say "HI" to all my fellow (X)Ubuntu tribemates... I live on the island of Xubuntu in the village of Gutsy in the ocean of amd64 SMP... hehehe!

Get some Popcorn, and give this post a peek.

I'm a computer hobbyist, and while I spent much time confeeguerating the heck out of Win2K and whatnot for years, XP-64Pro, and Vista left me feeling pissed off. So I "switched", but not to a Mac. They messed up OPENSTEP. Yes, I'm a switcher, but I believe in the software freedoms and libre software in general.

Even while on "the dark side" I used GNU and Libre software. Found it to be of higher quality, more focused, and more interesting, with more character as well.

The only good app on Windows doesn't even come from Microsoft, but Natara of Palm OS fame: Bonsai Outliner (NoteCase is similar on Linux). The second best is from Apple, and that's iTunes. Third is actually from M$... Media Player 11 if you HACK THE S*** out of it with directshow plugins galore to play all formats, and add the filesystem tool to let you read from ext2/3 filesystems on NTFS.

Anyway, I am really loving the switch. The only real contender for me is Foresight 2.0, and it's GNOME only for now (an Xfce edition is in the works).

What I love about xubuntu is that it is Xfce. I just fell head over heels for Thunar 8.0, and thanks to the xubuntu team's PPA's I was able to do a distribution upgrade to Xfce 4.4.2. WHOOPEE!!!

The ONLY thing Thunar is lacking is a Miller Colums browser like NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Mac OS X/KDE Dolphin. Phooey!

Oh, and the bookmarks pane works like the File Viewer Shelf, but not as good. Oh well. I'll be filing feature requests at xfce.org. Not xubuntu's fault.

What I hate about xubuntu is the excessive GNOMEishness. I prefer that the apps on my Xfce distro comply with Xfce's guidelines which is C(++)/Python/GTK. I don't mind a little Ruby (OK I LIKE RUBY, especially Rubyripper, an EAC aka Exact Audio Copy clone) and PERL...

I would prefer xubuntu to go in the direction of mating a hybrid wolf and dolphin (i.e. Wolvix and Zenwalk) distros. They're a little bit more purely Xfce. But stay away from the direction SAM is going in... because its SO GNOMEISH it's like it isn't even Xfce.

What I would like to see the xubuntu team do with their (our?) distro is replace the GNOME apps with C/GTK, Python/GTK, and Ruby/GTK apps for the most part, and to create better metapackages that are more quickly up to date with the Xfce team and the Xfce Goodies team.

Seperate Metapackages for the Goodies would be a good idea.

Tutorials on integrating GNOME applets via Xfapplet (a panel applet launcher plugin that allows GNOME applets wrapped in an Xfce applet for the Xfce-Panel, or WindowMaker DockApps via Xfwm-Dock Goodie.

Speaking of WindowMaker, I couldn't get it to work on Ubuntu Gutsy or xubuntu Gutsy. What's the deal???
Plus all the WindowMaker sites are all broken or dead on the web. We need some tutorials!

I would love to see a REAL NeXTSTEP style Dock make it into GNOME or Xfce. It would be best if it was modeled after CubeDock from Japan, where if you click on a dock with subitems, a new drawer (subdock) would fly out toward the middle of the screen and give you tons of launcher real estate (and big, clickable, pretty 48x48pixel icons, or as they said about NeXTSTEP "mini pieces of pixel art"). Enough ranting. It would be cool to have a metapackage for Etoile which is based on GNUstep. Someone gave me links to the MOTU guidelines and Debian Packaging stuff last time I mentioned this, but I am too GNU to know where to start with all that.

If you would care to share your guru like knowledge with me, i have included my email in the tagline.

Hopefully some of you with the same interests will feel invited and decide to ROCK OUT talkin about the things you dig about your flavor of *buntu, *NIX, and GNU/Linux with me.

OPEN INVITATION FOR FEEDBACK: I would like to help the ubuntu developers work on making my (and every other) HDTV user happy by helping with xorg.conf configuration for Hardy or Hardy's offspring. It took me a week to get xubuntu set up right so I could use native resolution with ATI's proprietary drivers. There really should be an easier way, and I want to help make that happen.

I'm attaching my current xorg.conf just to make things easier. In my crashed last install I had it set up with Xgl, but this time AIGLX (which isn't as nice... lotso video tearing and texture corruption). I think I still have the Xgl xorg.conf in a backup. I'll try to find it. Anyway thanks for taking the time to read on.

Reach me at:

itsanudae at gmail dot com

-----------------------------------
My Setup:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0 GHz Dualcore)
MB: Shuttle SN27P2 (BareBones)
RAM: 8GB RAM (4x2GB Mushkin)
GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro PCI Express
HDD: SATA WD Raptor 150GB 10Krpm / Hitachi Deskstar 1TB
Sound Card: Onboard nForce 4 Ultra MCP
Monitor: Syntax Olevia LT27HV 27" HDTV 1280x720dpi

Video: ATI Proprietary Drivers 8-3 AIGLX (though I think Xfce lik...

Tags: amd64, blogs, distributions, introductions, linux, themes, ubuntu, xfce, xubuntu

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