I have just installed Xubuntu 23.04 (minimal edition) and removed the snaps. I forgot how fast and nice Xfce actually is. I really like using it, coming from a window manager and Arch. The only downside that I found is the Ubuntu repos; yes, they have most stuff but they’re just old (even on 23.04). I hope I won’t feel the need to distro-hop anymore. I just wanted to share my positive experience with yall because I don’t think Xubuntu gets any attention. :D
I’ve found that adding flatpak and flathub solves the old packages on Ubuntu based distributions for me, at least for the most part. It obviously doesn’t really work for cli stuff but then the only cli app I regularly use is yt-dlp and I install that via pip
I agree and also use flatpak for many apps because they work on many distros. Flatpak works even on distros like NixOS that does not adhere to the fhs and alpine that doesn’t use the GNU coreutils.
Distrobox or Nix are great for cli stuff, since they allow package installation independent of the system package manager.
These tools makes using any distro mostly the same.
i hopped from arch/wm to xub too. tbh everything i learned from setting up awesome, qtile, open box etc helped me get really into the functionality of xfwm and make it really work for me. it’s a little sluggish, but only compared to a completely bare bones wm. the distro hopping phase was a valuable learning experience, but i think this is a perfectly fine place to settle down.
i’ve been curious about the minimal edition. now that i’ve found replacements and workarounds in the ubuntu repos, i’ve been wanted to do a fresh install with that. i’ve got ~3100 packages just from trying stuff out and forgetting to uninstall it haha.
The minimal edition is nice but u need to install everything urself not even mousepad (text editor) or a browser is preinstalled 💀
ahh thanks, i was wondering just how “minimal” minimal was. i was expecting something like endeavour - a configured OS but around 1500 packages. so i really appreciate that warning haha. ok better start making my list.
Removed by mod
You can find PPAs with faster updates sometimes.
do you have any specific packages that you miss the more recent versions of? because newer just for the sake of chasing recency drove me away from stability too many times and now i enjoy my mint repos. if i really need something in a newer version i can just go to the github page and install it manually.
