xfce is a popular lightweight window manager that several of my friends and acquaintances use. You might want a change from KDE or GNOME yourself one day, so you should at least know a little sumpin' sumpin' about xfce. To get the lay of the land, check out the 118 - yes, 118! - screenshots of xfce that OSDir provides on its web site. ...

Peter Besenbruch on the Libranet list tried out the Xfce windowmanager, and then wrote up a good overview of his impressions. I'm a KDE guy myself, & it looks like Peter is too, but it never hurts to try another environment out, as it gives you a better sense of the good & bad things of your chosen GUI, and it's also just good to know about all things Linux. Here's what Peter had to say about Xfce: ...

Some of these are a bit long in the tooth at this point (the article is from January), but this is still a neat overview of 18 (count 'em, 18) different Live CD distros of Linux, including the following: Basilisk (based on Fedora), BeatrIX (based on Debian/Knoppix/Ubuntu), Berry Linux (based on Fedora), Damn Small Linux (based on Debian), FreeSBIE (based on Free BSD), Gnoppix (Knoppix/Debian plus Gnome, now merged with Ubuntu), Kanotix (modified Knoppix/Debian), Knoppix (the first big live CD, based on Debian), Luit (Debian/Xfce, rox filing system), Mandrake Move (based on Mandrake), Mepis (Debian), Morphix (modular Debian), PCLinuxOS Preview (a Mandrake fork), Sam (Mandrake/Xfce), SLAX (Slackware), Suse 9.1 and 9.2 (rpm-based), Ubuntu Live (Debian), & Xfld (Debian/Damn Small Linux and Xfce). Whew! Now,don't expect anything in-depth. Instead, this of this article like a tapas bar: you get a sampler of each distro, & not much more. He does do a good job categorizing distros by ...

Robert volunteers for a St. Louis organization called ByteWorks, which takes old PCs & refurbs them, then teaches kids how to use 'em. At that point, the kids get to keep the PCs. Pretty cool program. Robert is helping them move from old versions of Windows to Linux, which is great. Unfortunately, these machines are so old that "modern" Linux desktops like GNOME and KDE are too much. Here's what I suggested: <begin my email to Robert> If this was for "normal" users we were trying to wean away from Windows, I would push KDE, but that's impossible with this ancient, underpowered hardware. Ice [a window manager] is way too different & weird. Actually, so is KFCE, since it's based on GNOME's ideas about desktops (which are quite bizarre). Have you looked at this? http://www.simplekde.org It's a stripped-down KDE. Or this? http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8239 Another stripped-down KDE. Interestingly, Auditor - one of the absolute best Live CDs for security - switched from ICEwm to a ...