If I were dealing with a work computer, I would agree wholeheartedly. Use the machine and GUI required or specified for the job/project at hand.

As regards a home hobbyist machine, I must disagree. Experimenting is how we learn things; breaking things is how we learn to fix them or find work-arounds.

I have encountered the type of issues you describe. On my Mageia 4 machine with the Enlightenment desktop, I cannot start the Mageia control center from the Enlightenment menu; it aborts (I could probably tinker with the menu entry and fix it by specifying whatever the kde alternative to gksudo happens to be, but that's another thread). I can, however, drop to the command line, su, start "drakconf," and have full functionality in the Mageia Control Center. I could also run the various components from the command line.

Also, in these days of huge hard drives, installing a few extra kbs of libraries is not a worry.

Just my two cents.

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I run several different distros, with various desktop environments. For my "primary" system, it's Debian Stable, with Xfce. I've added Dolphin (and Konqueror) to that. Not sure if that's a good solution for you, but I thought I'd mention it. I've also added other apps that do not come with Xfce -- for example, my preferred text editor, Geany. Xfce is a good DE for me, but I don't care much for some of its default apps (especially Thunar), so for my Xfce installations I tend to add a handful of non-Xfce apps.

I like using KDE, but with my KDE installations, I always end up adding either Openbox or Fluxbox and using one of those a lot of the time. This is nice for me because, once set up, I've got a snappy, basic, simple desktop, but with all of the KDE apps available underneath. I do log into KDE sessions sometimes, when I'm in the mood. Right now, I have Debian Wheezy KDE with Openbox, Kubuntu 12.04 with Openbox, and openSUSE 13.2 KDE with Fluxbox.

Another one that comes to mind: CrunchBang. Ships with Openbox already set up for you. It's basically Debian underneath; the latest release is based on Debian Wheezy -- not sure when the next (Jessie-based) release will be out. Anyway, might be something to consider -- Crunchbang has been a good, all-purpose distro for me.

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Thanks David.
I did kind of know that. I guess I was feeling a bit despondent yesterday. Two days of messing around and still the monitor not displaying rightly... everything seemed too hard...

Re ownerships, I cheated and installed Konqueror.

I feel better now.
FWIW: I finally fixed the display resolution by putting the monitor's actual refresh rates into xorg.conf.
But I sort of thought we did not need to that kind of thing these days. I guess it just depends on the specific equipment.

Thanks.
I have done as you describe in the past too. E.g. used Kubuntu but used Ice for a desktop most of the time - and added some favourite apps.

Anyway, for now I suppose I'll stick with the Ubuntu I have installed, then add my preferences over time.

In a few weeks I'll see how the musical things work out: may need to switch to a realtime kernel. Again, it has been years since I last set up that sort of thing too.

But, like a lot of people here, you are confusing a home user with a computer hobbyist. The vast majority of people with a computer are not hobbyists and are simply not interested in learning how the thing works. The example I always give is my boiler: do I understand its innards? Do I want to? No and no.

If SUSE forgets to include Catfish in Xfce, the solutions are
1) download the source code for Xfce, find Catfish, and compile it
2) learn how to use locate in the command line
I don't think people who want a computer for browsing, emails, music, and their photo collection should be forced to do either.

If you are still looking, try AntiX, Crunchbang, or TinyCore Linux.

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Thanks fatmac.

I suppose I will try to get along with my Ubuntu LTS for now.

Here's a thing: I tried to add a new user and it failed.

I used
sudo useradd [user name]
and
sudo passwd [for that user]

But I cannot log in as that user. The system just brings back the 'greeting' screen every time.

I did add another user too - which worked as expected.

Anybody know what might be going on?

Most likely a typo when you set up the password, so when you type in what the password should be, it doesn't match. BTDT

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Thanks 42.

I'll look into that.

This link may help, it's an interesting read anyway. http://lemerovingian.simplesite.com/414212408