And why I'm going with Choqok, even in Unity.

I upgraded to the new Gwibber.  For the most part, it's great.  BUT, there are some really niggling issues I have with it.  List time!

• I can't access my lists.  Or, I don't see an easy way to do this.
• Slow.  So so so slow.  Once it starts up, it's not bad, but it sometimes will hang my entire laptop.  I thought the updates were supposed to remove these issues.  Although they've been fewer recently.
• Two clicks to reply to a notice.  Not a huge deal, but now I have to click on the twitter/statusnet icon and then click reply.

Now, only to be fair, onto what I like about it:

• The new look.  Wow, looks great!
• Ubuntu integration.  This couldn't be better.
• Speed improvements (note that this is under the issues as well... It's in both because it's better than it was, but not where it really shoiuld be.).

Now,even with all of the KDE libs, Choqok seems to run faster and easier on both my netbook and my laptop.  It has decent integration with my Unity desktop, goog.l shortening, pictures inline, and the ability to have my lists open so I can see what's going on.  Oh, and now KDE apps seem to integrate better with Gnome because of QT, so that's nice.

I really miss the easy-to-see lists feature that the old Gwibber had.  I wish they'd bring back the interface they had becuase it was awesome, and almost perfect.  Not necessarily the prettiest, but it worked really well.

I'm not saying "bring back the old interface" because that's pretty much impossible right now, but maybe the devs could bring back some of its functionality.  I'm not sure what they wanted to accomplish with making the lists feature more hidden, but it's made me kind of frustrated.

Now, I'll go back to Gwibber.  For sure.  I'll see if there are updates, and definitely give it another go when iti does update.  I'd love to have it working again the way I need.

For now, I'll be using Choqok.

Actually, it's kind of neat.  I'm figuring out how things "work". It's different.

I think I like it.

The computer that it's installed on will be staying here at my mom's house til I move to my apartment, so I won't have a lot of time to play with it.

What I like:

• The overlays and the shiny.  It's quite pretty.
• The default wallpaper.  Very cool.
• Full screen apps.  Lots of space for work and reading (though this is a netbook, so I have less space than I do on my regular computer).
• Notifications; they're down at the bottom, so they stay out of the way.

What I don't like:

• So much is hidden.  I'm trying to figure out where my desktops are and everything.  I'll get it; it's just different.
• Settings; I haven't figured out all the settings.
• Speed.  It seems a little slow, but I only have 1 gig of RAM, so I don't have a lot to complain about.

I haven't had time to play with it a lot, since I installed it last night around 10 pm.  I'll give it another shot next weekend and try to use it all weekend next weekend.

Do note that Gnome3 is being run on my Starling netbook, 1 gig of ram, Atom processor.  I'm running it on top of Xubuntu 11.10.  I still have to see the new things in Xubuntu 11.10.  I don't think a lot has changed, but I'm sure there is something.

Anyway, I'll have a longer write-up when I play with Gnome3 more, and when I play with Ubuntu 11.10 more.  I quite like it so far; it's speedy and pretty.  I'll write a review sometime this week.

This is what my netbook looks like right now.  I'm running Xubuntu, along with Chromium, Wakoopa, Dropbox, and Gwibber.  I decided to go with Xubuntu because I wasn't having a lot of luck with Ubuntu and it's Unity interface on here.

How about a screenshot?

Screenshot.  I've got my An American in Paris wallpaper. If you haven't been following my Tumblr, I like Gene Kelly.  I really like Gene Kelly.

Anyway...

I don't really have any problems with this distro.  XFCE plays really well with GTK applications, and KDE applications.  That's one of the things I love about it.

The biggest annoyance I've found is that some programs don't pay attention to the browser I've set as my "preferred" browser (which is Chromium).  CloudSN will open gmail links in Firefox or straight up Chrome sometimes, and I can't find a way to force it to be my main browser.

I'm also using Pidgin (though not signed in right now).  I've gotten used to Empathy, and I actually prefer it, but Pidgin works pretty well.  I just have to make sure I enable the tray icon.

Onto the tray!  I've gotten used to the indicator applets, and I'm thinking about installing a panel widget that'll emulate the indicator applets.  They're just so clean and easy to work with.  I see why Canonical decided to go wtih them.

I've got four workspaces, and I can easily split what I'm doing between them.  I usually have a browser up on desktop number one, Gwibber up on number two, chat (xchat and/or Pidgin) up on number three, and whatever else up on number four.  I don't have Compiz installed, so I don't have the neat composting going on like I do on my laptop, but ctl-alt-arrow works just fine for switching workspaces.  So does clicking on the needed workspace in my panel.

Overall, this is a great release.  I really like XFCE 4.8 (enabled via a PPA); it's matured quite a bit from when I tried it awhile ago.

I would heartily recommend this distro for a netbook, or even a laptop or desktop.  It's lighter than Ubuntu and Kubuntu, though not as light as something like Lubuntu or Crunchbang.,  Xubuntu has a great selection of applications (including Gimp!) that will give a user (almost) everything they need to sit down and use their computer right away after it's installed.  And since it's based on Ubuntu, users have access to the massive Ubuntu repository, and access to the powerful PPA system.

I'll be testing out the Beta of Ubuntu soon enough, and it might make an appearance on my netbook.  I prefer Xubuntu, because I get the full width of my screen dedicated to what I'm doing, not being taken over by a launcher-bar.  That's handy, but I hate horizontal scrolling with a passion.  I hear it'll be hidden in Natty; I surely hope.