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--- moving_from_ubuntu_to_xubuntu [04.03.2012 23:01] – Pascal Suter
+++ moving_from_ubuntu_to_xubuntu [07.09.2012 11:53] (current) – Pascal Suter
@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 but luckily there is Xubuntu which is based on xfce which is a nice clean and fast desktop environment that looks almost the same as good old gnome 1. So if you have a computer to work with and not to show off, i think this is the first choice in desktop environment right now.
-changing from one to the other is pretty simple in ubuntu. you simply open synaptic and install the xubuntu-destkop (and maybe also those xubuntu-restricted-* packages). log out, change the desktop environment in your session manager, enter your password and log-in and you are ready to work again.
+at first i simply installed the xubuntu-destkop package and changed the desktop session default to xubuntu in my session manager.. but this just did not work properly.. it sure worked well enought that i switched from ubuntu to xubuntu on all my computers including desktops and laptops, but every now and then there where hickups which where hard to find a fix for. as a consequence i have decided to dump my long working setups and start over again eventually.. and it was worth it.. on my newly installed xubutnu machines i have none of these annoying issues which first made me think xubuntu might not be quite there yet as far as reliability goes.. so if you can invest a little bit of time now and do a fresh xubuntu install rather than installing all xubuntu packages to do the switch manually i strongly recommend that.. you will save at least as much time later on. of course, don't forget to backup your data..
-Annoyingly xubuntu has a few different default applications than ubuntu which for a long time ubuntu user might be hard to adjust to in some cases.
+what followes now are some applications i had to install to get comfortable with xubuntu after using ubuntu for several years.. you should know that one of the main targets of xubuntu is to be light weight and not so memory and processor intense as ubuntu is. in my case however this is not an issue as i have modern computers which where running ubuntu just fine, all i wanted was a usable desktop environment :) so there are a few applications in xubuntu which have better working alternatives that use a little more cpu and memory though..
-I switched to xubuntu on all my computers and notebooks and this is the place where i will keep track of the adjustments i made to work with it again normally and bring back some of the old tools which might be just a little bit better than the xubuntu default.
+===== Office suite =====
+  * abiword/gnumeric --> libreoffice
+for example open office or libre office .. abiword is fine and so is gnumeric if you just do simple spreadsheets.. but already on the first excel-sheet that i opened had some errors in the formatting of cell borders and i was instantly missing the brush tool for copying the style of one cell to another.. that might exist somewhere but it was not where i expected it to be.. so let's just go "back" to libre office :)
 ===== Thunar -> Nautilus =====
-while thunar does the job it is still a bit hard to get used to it as a former nautilus user.. so i prefer to get nautilus with its nice bookmarks back. here's how it's done (copied from [[http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6807336&postcount=4|this post]]):
+well i gave up on that one.. it just messed up my whole desktop.. the filemenager obviously does far too much to simply replace it.. so i decided to live with thunar which is pretty okay, i only miss the bookmark feature which is located in a separate application called gigolo and thus a little less comfortable to operate.
+==== Living with Thunar ====
+in order to overcome the missing bookmark feature i started to use gigolo. i select the mount at startup option on all bookmarks that i enter there and i created a symbolic link in my user home directory <code>cd
+ln -s .gvfs/ Shares</code>
+so now i can see all my bookmarks in a subfolder called Shares in my user home.. that works fine for me
-  - install nautilus (in case it isn't there already) <code>sudo apt-get install nautilus</code>
+===== Image Viewer =====
-  - replace <code>Exec=Thunar %U'' (or similar) with ''Exec=nautilus --no-desktop %U</code> in the folowing files:
+  * ristretto -> gpicview
-      * ''/usr/share/applications/Thunar-folder-handler.desktop''
+the standard image viewer of xubuntu is missing an important feature imho .. you can not double click an image in a directory and then simply hit next to see the next one.. that is annyoing.. so i removed ristretto and installed gpicview which does all that and more..
-      * ''/usr/share/applications/bamf.index''
-==== Automount of USB Disks not working ====
-this only happened on one pc where i moved from ubuntu to xubuntu and kept using gdm: when plugged-in a usb stick it did not mount and when i clicked it to mount it in the gui it showed an error saying i was "Not Authorized".
-Unfortunately i did too many things at once to explicitly tell you what fixed it in the end but here are the two things i did:
-  - installed ''usbmount''
-  - edited ''/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy'' and changed all ''<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>'' to ''<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>''
+===== movie player =====
+  * parole -> totem
+the main problemw with parole is that it does not keep the aspect ratio when resizing the window.. parole worked so well in ubuntu that i decided to use this as my primary media player..
+===== Text editor: leafpad/mousepad -> gedit =====
+choosing the right text editor seems to be a little bit of a regligious thing in linux :) i got used to gedit and therefore am not satisfied with the limited functionality that leafpad (default in xubuntu) provides.. so i [[change_default_text_editor_in_xubuntu|switched to gedit]] instead