Help out a newbie Xubuntu user?

[innerslytherin]

Hi everyone! I've read through the entries about Linux and netbooks, and thanks to everyone who has shared their knowledge.

I have a post at my personal journal about my Acer netbook and having just installed Xubuntu. I'm hoping I can get tips from people in this community as to how I can, well, prettify my system a little.

I'm also interested in your recommendations for word processing apps. Xubuntu came with Abiword, which I have used a handful of times. Are there other programs that are better? (Background: I've been a Windows and Microsoft Word ever since I left DOS and PFS First Choice as a high schooler, and I am, generally speaking, a fan of Microsoft Word, in that it's never given me problems.) I don't want to bog my system down with more program than it can handle, given that I have 1 GB of memory and a 1.66 GHz processor, but I definitely want to know my options.

And while we're at it, what about blog clients? I'm using DW, LJ, and WordPress, so something that can handle all of those would be great, but any of the three would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance! So far I'm loving my Linux experience, and I'm already planning to fix my mom's laptop by installing Ubuntu on it for her. :)

Comments

[momijizukamori]

OpenOffice (now possibly known as LibreOffice?) is sort of the big name one - it's very MS Office-like, and will read and write at least the old MS file types (can't recall if I've tried it on .docx or any of those yet). I don't have any suggestions for blog software, but maybe a quick search in the Software Center? That's usually my go-to when I need a tool for something and don't know one off-hand.

For themes - http://gnome-look.org/ has GTK themes (which builds some of the basics of Xfce, the windowing system - you'll want ones that come in both GTK2 and GTK3 for max pretty, as apps are still mixed between the two systems), and http://xfce-look.org/ has some tweaked specifically for Xfce and it's window manager. You can also look in Synaptic for 'theme' - I've personally found I really like the Shiki series of themes and icons (not yet ported to GTK3, which means some apps look ugly, but the GTK2 ones are pretty). Gnome-Look also has icon sets which are compatible with Xfce, iirc.

And welcome to Linux! I just switched to Xubuntu from regular Ubuntu (didn't want Unity when I upgraded) last week, and it's been fun.

And welcome

[kerravonsen]

If you search for "themes" with your package manager of choice (Synaptic is a good one) then there are quite a few that you can install. And, yes, Gnome-look and Xfce-look are good places to go. One thing I've noticed with themes, though, is that they mostly fall into three categories: bland grey, shiny black, and garish.

Every now and then I try my hand at themes, but I never seem to get around to packaging them up for other people (with two exceptions; my Celtic theme which I submitted to Fvwm, and my CedarBrass GTK theme which I put up on one of those *-look sites but I can't remember which one now).

[jewelfox]

For blogging apps, try Logjam, Drivel, or BloGTK! There's also a KDE app I can't remember the name of (probably something like Kblogger).

[sprat]

I'm not using Linux at the moment, but when I did (about six months ago), I used google docs as my primary word processor and Koalawriter as a distraction-free writing app.