You're lucky with the gf mate. Mine just keeps asking me, "What are these secret clever things you keep doing with the computer?"
The reason I want to move away from Windows is to learn more about how Linux works and use it to do more fun things. I've used Ubuntu a few times and I liked it. But I find because it's deliberately aimed at non-geeks, it has too much fluff.
And that's why I like xfce. It's a really minimal, simple desktop - less distraction for me. You should try it.
And "minimal" here doesn't mean something necessarily aimed at power users like fluxbox, ratpoison or awesome.
I've always thought of xfce as a sort of gnome-lite-- it looks just as pretty and has all the gui toolbars and widgets that you would expect, but uses a tiny fraction of the resources. It's a great desktop environment for laptops and older computers.
You're lucky with the gf mate. Mine just keeps asking me, "What are these secret clever things you keep doing with the computer?"
The reason I want to move away from Windows is to learn more about how Linux works and use it to do more fun things. I've used Ubuntu a few times and I liked it. But I find because it's deliberately aimed at non-geeks, it has too much fluff.
And that's why I like xfce. It's a really minimal, simple desktop - less distraction for me. You should try it.