[Tfug] OK, update on converting Ubuntu Karmic alpha4 to Xubuntu

[Jim March]

I did:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

It loaded over 80megs of stuff, installed it, cool.  I also had an
update coming including a kernel patch (to 2.6.31-6) so a total reboot
was in order.

Switching to XFCE on login was easy, but it doesn't (yet?) ask you if
this is going to be a one-time thing or a permanent change to your
default desktop.  OK, no sweat.

Once in XFCE, everything worked fine EXCEPT the controls for
dual-monitor-use are currently borked.  XFCE has it's own GUI tools
for that and they clearly aren't yet up on the latest
xorg/Mesa/kernel/Intelvideo(?) parts.  So all it could do was take my
laptop screen (1280x800) and external screen (1280x1024) and make them
both 1024x768 mirrored.

Well that's no fun.

Everything else did work though and somebody running just one screen
should be able to use it as-is.  Performance and stability seemed
good, network manager fired up wireless just fine, sound worked, just
the dual-monitor controls were hosed.  I could probably hack up an
xorg.conf to solve it but why bother?  I jumped back to Gnome.

But, for somebody with one screen, Intel video and a low-grade CPU
and/or memory amount, Xubuntu and the XFCE desktop should work OK on
Karmic, starting with an Ubuntu/Gnome install and adding XFCE
manually.

Me, I'm going to keep XFCE present in case Gnome blows up on me in
alpha.  Not likely but possible and a whole spare desktop gives me
redundancy warm'n'fuzzies.

Jim