Just another quick blurb. I’ve uploaded a screenshot of my laptop as it appears now that I’ve tweaked my Ubuntu installation to the way I like it.
I’m more of a KDE 3.5 kind of guy, so I rearrange GNOME to have the main stuff (panels/toolbars whathaveyou) a bit more like I’m used to, but I still like the way this looks so far.
I’m still learning where things are in Ubuntu (well, GNOME, mostly, since that’s the main thing that’s different for me here), but one thing that has struck me is how impressive the speed is. Remember, before this, I was running Slackware 12.0 on this exact same laptop, and I was using Fluxbox as my window manager — not exactly a visually heavy system.
So for me to say that Ubuntu runs pretty snappy on this laptop is saying a lot, and I’m not much of a fan of the bloat in GNOME, so I think that’s significant.
To be fair, I think what this says is how well the Canonical people have their act together at optimizing GNOME for their project. Nice job, guys. Coming from a Slackware guy, I’m here saying that I’m not only impressed with the setup process, but I’m impressed with the performance so far too.
The Linux Critic 
So why not Kubuntu?
Valid question. The answer is simple. I hate KDE 4, and that’s the default version that Kubuntu (and most distros that have KDE as their default windowing environment) ships with.
Given a choice between KDE 4 and GNOME, even though I dislike GNOME, I’ll pick it every time.
Besides, once I’m done evaluating Ubuntu’s default environment, I’ll most likely use Fluxbox as my window manager, which I find a lot more palatable. 🙂
If you want to try something speedy and snappy that is based on Ubuntu I recommend http://crunchbanglinux.org/. It uses openbox as window manager and has pretty everything you could need (default media playback, cool (dark) theme, conky install,…)
Besides there is a possibility to download Ubuntu 9.04 KDE 3.5 CD. Take a look at http://apt.pearsoncomputing.net/.
I wish you a lot of fun.
I’ve looked at Openbox before, though I haven’t tried it. I’ve used Fluxbox quite a lot, so I’m very comfortable tweaking it out.
I didn’t know anyone was still maintaining KDE 3.5 repositories for Ubuntu. I might have to play around with that. Thanks for the info.