LMDE and Xfce

[titus]

Hello,
I've been running LMDE 64bit from almost the word go and the first thing I did was install Xfce as a desktop (I can't get on with Gnome and I like the right click drop-down menus). I've never had much problem with it and it's very stable. Does anyone know what benefits I'll gain if I switch from my homebrew to the official Mint Xfce? I read that we will have things like VLC but we've got apt-get and synaptic for that. Should I download the latest or will I be just wasting bandwidth?
Mint is a great distro and as I've said before on this forum, I've stopped distro hopping because of Mint Debian, perhaps I should try the Xfce, just to keep my hand in.
I'd be grateful for any expert input.

[Beardedragon]

Hello,
I've been running LMDE 64bit from almost the word go and the first thing I did was install Xfce as a desktop (I can't get on with Gnome and I like the right click drop-down menus). I've never had much problem with it and it's very stable. Does anyone know what benefits I'll gain if I switch from my homebrew to the official Mint Xfce? I read that we will have things like VLC but we've got apt-get and synaptic for that. Should I download the latest or will I be just wasting bandwidth?
Mint is a great distro and as I've said before on this forum, I've stopped distro hopping because of Mint Debian, perhaps I should try the Xfce, just to keep my hand in.
I'd be grateful for any expert input.

Well, the possibilities are there for a lighter, faster, desktop due to the fact that you don't have as much bloat left over from Gnome. It will take up less space on your HD. I switched, having the same arrangement, because of gnome. You must understand there is a difference in having the choice of desktops and having something made with one desktop in mind. You can get Mint Menu to work and it all works out of the box.

[nunol]

If you have a CPU with 3 years or less and 2GB of RAM or more don't expect Mint XFCE to be much faster, on your hardware both are fast.

[titus]

Thanks, both of you,
My main PC has an Athlon 64x2 4400+ processor run at 2.5G and 4G of DDR2 ram.
My back-up has a Sempron 64 3000+ run at 1.8G and just 512M of DDR. Perhaps I'll try it out on the back up.

[nunol]

With only 512MB of RAM I favor XFCE but GNOME should install and run ok. Make sure you have a SWAP file or partition.