I was so fond of Ubuntu before they introduced Unity or Gnome 3. It was so responsive, easy enough for a beginner, yet it was not in the way for an expert user (apart for the lack of regex in the default editor, perhaps).
I tried Xubuntu, Kubuntu and other distros, but I kept going back to the default Ubuntu one.
I used it as my only OS for years, but now sadly it's the opposite and I boot it only when I need it.
I guess I should give up trying to like Ubuntu and start using XFCE instead. Thank you for your list, I will use it to check this desktop environment.
I'm the opposite. I' used XFCE for a decade and stuck by it because it felt familiar... it felt like home. With the release of 12.04, I switched to vanilla Ubuntu because I feel that will be what I see the most in the tech industry and I wanted to get use to it.
It took about 2 days to get used to it, but now I find myself super+(search term) for everything instead of trying to find stuff in an applications list and that spilled over to my Win7 use also.
I still miss a few functionalities, mainly right-click->open terminal here, but I find myself reaching for my mouse MUCH less and I'm not wasting time trying to find something buried in a list or folder somewhere. Search is FAST (on both platforms).
you can just install gnome-do on Xubuntu and you'll have the same search based workflow in the interface you're used to and the Ubuntu base below.
I TRIED to like Ubuntu's Unity, but the fact that I can't either: (a) right click things like panels and choose 'configure' or 'properties' and adjust everything to my liking [the Windows way, that I still prefer] or (b) have a goddamn' config/settings center where I can actually adjust the UI settings I care of [the KDE and Xfce way that works...] ...I mean, I still don't know how to disable window grouping for the damn "taskbar"
Yes, that's fine and all, but Xubuntu no longer (for me) has the lightweight advantage that it once had over Ubuntu and I have seen (again, personally) significant performance gains from Ubuntu OVER Xubuntu. Once you have to start installing GTK and KDE toolkits just to be productive on Xubuntu, it becomes quite heavy.
...now I just need to figure out how to make nautilus-open-terminal open a guake terminal tab instead and I'm in UI nirvana (too bad it's probably gonna take 4+ hrs X( )
I guess I should give up trying to like Ubuntu and start using XFCE instead. Thank you for your list, I will use it to check this desktop environment.