Xubuntu brought back the happy Linux user in me

I’m an Ubuntu user for some years now and I always enjoyed the “easy-mode” Debian flavor it’s got. But after delaying my workstation upgrade as much as I could, I knew the day would come that I’d be forced to move to Gnome 3 or Unity. The day came, and it really sucked!
I’m not going to argue why these new ways of seeing the desktop grew so much disdain in me, but I can assure you I felt quite attracted by the dark side (aka MacOS X) for my daily use and development. But then I heard about Xubuntu..

Xubuntu is Ubuntu-based and features XFCE, a old friend of mine “who” I used to have fun with back in the days when my hardware sucked – which now is totally not the case, since I’m relying on a I7 3.4GHz + 16GB DDR3 + OCZ Vertex 3 SSD disk.

And so it was, I downloaded the 64-bit alternate ISO, burned it and after 20 minutes my system was up and running. Boy, did I miss this.. you came a long way XFCE, and you still rock!
Besides lacking some of the integration I was used to in my now-gone-Gnome-days, the simplicity of this window-manager is making me really happy. In case you’re feeling the same way about Gnome 3 and/or Unity, do yourself a favor and give it a try!

Here’s some hints you may find useful. I’ll be updating this list!

• Two DVI monitors side by side with xrandr

# Dual Monitors configuration on Xubuntu

# Monitor Order
xrandr –output DVI-I-1 –left-of DVI-I-2

#Tip: to configure it, exec ‘xrandr’ on bash to view the options by monitor

# Resolutions
xrandr –output DVI-I-1 –mode 1680×1050 –rate 60.0
xrandr –output DVI-I-2 –mode 1680×1050 –rate 60.0

# Primary Monitor
xrandr –output DVI-I-1 –primary

• Don’t quit Pidgin when you press the close button

Don’t disable libnotify integration plug-in (if it’s not enabled by default, then enable it). You can however turn-off all options of this plug-in.

• Dropbox support for Thunar file-manager

execute sudo apt-get install libthunarx-2-dev
and then follow the instructions available here.

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