If you have the least inclination toward a lightweight system that will install without a massive text-editing session and a lot of weird tweaking, Fluxbuntu might fit the bill. Their latest “developmental release” installs as easily as the Ubuntu live CD (if you can install from that … it still strikes me as occasionally quirky), and has the usual assortment of Fluxbox eye candy.

The nice thing is that it drops you into a pure Fluxbox environment without a lot of leftover baggage from straight Ubuntu (read: Gnome dependencies). If you’re at all adept at working with Fluxbox, it’s likely to be a great starting point for a full-scale Fluxbox system. (One note: there’s a password to start the live CD.)

As for myself, I’m not much of a Fluxbox fan, but it’s easy to see how one could become a Fluxbox fan. It’s pretty to look at, very easy to customize, moves extremely fast and does things differently enough to make most tasks novel.

And yet, at the risk of prejudicing a Fluxbox newb, there are some things that hold me back. Just as examples, I always find the panel counterintuitive, and I can’t click on the “slit” — or workspace manager — to jump to another window. Things like that irk me into that unhappy spot that makes me dig out my Killdisk CD.

Perhaps I just haven’t spent enough time with it … but every time I do, it reminds me why.