After a couple of years using a MacBook and developing on Mac OS X and Ubuntu, I decided to try something a little more lightweight. I bought a new ThinkPad a few weeks ago and I'm getting rid of my MacBook. I've been doing some research on different Linux distributions but I kept coming back to Ubuntu simply because I know it fairly well. A few distros I looked into were Gentoo, Slackware, Sabayon, and Mint. All of those Linux distros come highly regarded.

After getting more in-depth looks at these systems, I started running into different desktop environments. As you may or may not know, Ubuntu, like most Linux distros, use Gnome as their desktop environment. KDE is the other big one that many people use. It started becoming apparent to me that maybe the desktop environment could be slimmed down while still using Ubuntu. Some of the smaller desktop environments are fluxbox, icewm, and xfce.

Xfce looked very promising to me. I also love that it's written in C (as opposed to C++). I began looking for ways to install Xfce on Ubuntu and other distros and discovered Xubuntu. I decided to give it a try and I honestly don't think I could be happier. My system boots in around 20 seconds. As soon as I log in, the entire system is ready to go. Having a light desktop environment allows me to focus on getting things done. It also lets me use my RAM for more important things, like running virtual machines