I find gnome 3 too heavy. It does not come with as many new features as the weight added to it.
If you want heavy, why not KDE, which is so much better. Gnome guys have really done it this time.
My laptop can play the heaviest of today's windows games, but when I am on linux, I want something that looks simple and works straight. (hate the dashboard).

StephenH wrote:

I would attach a screenshot, but it does not look like there is a way to do so.

Dead easy!

install screenshooter:

I don't have any trouble taking a screen shot with GIMP. Your method is okay too. However, that was not what I was saying. I was saying that I don't have a way to attach one to my post here. There is no option to do so, and I can't paste one into the text block as I enter a message. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I would attach a screenshot, but it does not look like there is a way to do so.

Dead easy!

1. install screenshooter:
   sudo apt-get install xfce4-screenshooter

2. assign a shortcut to the printscr button: Menu > Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts

3. Add a new shortcut with the following command and shortcut:

   • xfce4-screenshooter -r

   • Print

the -r flag is for "mouse selection" which is my preference :-)

I'm a refugee too :-)

Looks like the refugee camp needs to expand.

I like the way these forums have helped me with various topics like having a background wallpaper that changes periodically. I would attach a screenshot, but it does not look like there is a way to do so.

Anyway, I have my desktop set up with one panel across the bottom and a second panel set up vertically on the left. The left panel is set to auto-hide. There is where I have launchers for my most-used applications and utilities. I have compositing turned on. The bottom panel is set to partially transparent so that the black text of the clock shows up better (basic color set to white). The left panel is set to fully transparent so that only the icons are visible when I mouse over to the left edge and it pops out. It works quite well this way.

On my netbook, it is a different story. I have an Acer Aspire One 722 which lacks any sort of indicator for the status of capslock. While there is a source for a panel plugin, it is just source and must be compiled. That means one must chase down and download a number of development packages in order to do so. LXDE, on the other hand, has a panel plugin already. I found ways to tweak both XFCE and LXDE to be about what I want. The issue is that LXDE seems a bit more unstable. I get a number of ABRT popups complaining about pcmanfm, the file manager. I really would rather go with XFCE on the netbook as well, but the lack of a capslock indicator makes it difficult. I am going to try compiling it in a virtual machine on my desktop and then copying the compiled files over to my netbook to see if I can get it to work that way. I have the spare HDD space on the desktop to play with. I don't want to load up either my main desktop or my netbook with development packages which are only needed to compile this one little plugin.

One other thing that is a problem. On my desktop, xfce4-xkb-plugin works great for switching keyboard layouts between English, Polytonic Greek, and Biblical Hebrew. However, on my netbook, the keyboard settings are forgotten every time I close the lid to suspend and then later resume. Unfortunately, this is a show-stopper. I could concievably work around the lack of a capslock indicator, but having to reprogram my keyboard layouts and switching combination every time I suspend and resume just won't work. In LXDE, I can set my preferences in .bashrc, and it works through suspends. However, there is no option I have found to get this to work in XFCE.   This has been a long-standing problem from what I can see by looking at the bug reports. It really seems like this is something that should have been fixed a long time ago. However, there seems to be no movement toward finding a solution to this rather significant bug.

Alternately, if I could figure out how to get the keyboard layouts and capslock indicators working, I would be a solid XFCE user on both systems.

So, Hello XFCE.  It's taken me a few days to get to the desktop layout that I want and there are a few little icings on the cake that I am saying "goodbye" to: system monitor live in the top panel, thumbnails of images and videos on the desktop, drag launchers to the top panel - not much else I can think of.

But on the plus side it works fast, nice and simple, flexible and so far - _no_lockups_.

Chances are that now that I am onboard that I won't go back to Gnome even if it gets over it's teething troubles - the last month has reminded me of my earliest excursions into Linux 10 years ago.  I use Linux to be fully functional and reliable - Gnome 3 Shell didn't give me that.

went from unity (hate it) to mint 12 with mate (didn't like the look) to gnome 3 with frippery (buggy flickering), to lxde (settings didn't change) and finnally xfce,

I'm very happy right now, the battery live went up everything runs smoothly and i like the look and feel very much.

xfce ftw!

XFCE looks good so far. It seems to be doing most of what I want it to do. So here I am, making my first post and settling in.