XFCE is much more stable, these days, than it's ever been in the past. I just installed MINT yesterday, on a laptop for Mike! Very clean, very fast.
I used "apt update && apt upgrade" to update the system. Never used the update manager, and it worked fine! I, generally speaking, dislike desktop environments -- but since Gnome went 3.x many years back and abandoned the "traditional" desktop, I've always been a huge fan of XFCE. --- Thanks, Alexander Sent from my Google Pixel 9 Pro On Tue, Aug 19, 2025, 15:03 Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss < plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > > On Tue, 19 Aug 2025 13:44:21 -0700 > rusty carruth via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > > > One big difference is that the 'guiding principle' of Mint is that it > > 'just works'. This means that you can't use Synaptic to update > > packages, since that has been known to break things. You use the > > update manager. Some people find this beyond annoying, even to the > > point of considering it a violation of <something>. I use Mint, and I > > *think* you can still use apt to update your system, but I tend to use > > the update manager since the theory is that using it reduces the > > chances that an update will break something. > > Rusty, updates that break things aren't fun, and I should know, because > I use Void Linux, whose updates sometimes break things (but not to the > extent of Gentoo/Funtoo or Arch). > > I could go on for ten pages revealing all the reasons I love Void, but > sometimes I wish I could do updates from a little less defensive > posture. > > By the way Keith, if you're attracted to Xfce, also try out LXDE and > LXQt. I think they're more efficient and have less unexpected behaviors > than Xfce. I gave up on Xfce in the late 00's because of intermittent > wierdnesses on all Linux distros (but it worked perfectly on OpenBSD, > go figure). It's possible that Xfce is better now. > > SteveT > > Steve Litt > Spring 2023 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful > Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >
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