Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

Every now and again I have to mix up a pure Xfce desktop, just to remember how nice it is. Straight Xfce is still a great idea for Ubuntu, particularly on older machines. This was done with the 4.4.2 debs left here, with only parts of xorg and a few minor applications added.

It’s probably not that impressive, but it’s rather speedy and quite attractive for a 450Mhz laptop. Keeping to GTK2 applications makes it efficient, too. It looks good, runs quick and takes only a minute or so to start up. The Rodent icon set actually looks cute, but it took a yearlong hiatus to make it attractive. 😯

And since xfwm4’s compositor is rather forgiving, this rotten little machine can actually do drop shadows and transparent window decorations with only teeny bit of lag!