OK ... I had a laptop that still had 2007 on it. I was waiting for Phoenix to go final and be released before deciding what direction I was going to go with an upgrade. It's an older ThinkPad T23 (P3 1.13 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HD, CD-RW/DVD combo drive). I have decided to install Phoenix on this laptop, after seeing and running the new XFCE remaster from Sproggy.
I wanted to insure that I could still access my files (without any additional work) in my /home partition. So, before installing Phoenix, I booted into PCLinuxOS 2007 one last time, to note the login name and the UID. I wanted to be sure that the login name and UID matched between PCLinuxOS 2007 and Phoenix, when it was installed.
Imagine my horror when, on first boot, all of Sproggy's cool and beautiful theme was GONE! Instead of looking at the nice theme Sproggy had worked so hard on, it was the usual "unattractive" XFCE standard desktop. All of this is easily fixed, however. I wasn't anticipating that the old KDE settings in my /home directory would interfere with the theme of Phoenix.
First, replacing the wallpaper is easy, through the XFCE 4 Settings Manager, and selecting Desktop. Next, create a second panel at the top of the screen, via the Panel applet in the Settings Manager.
Now, it's just a matter of "Moving" things around. The XFCE 4 Menu button gets moved to the top left of the top panel, with the "xfce4_xicon2.png" button icon. Similarly, the notification area gets moved to the top right part of the top panel, along with the Logoff button. The Launcher section gets moved to the upper left, next to the XFCE 4 Menu button. Add the Orage applet to the upper right panel, between the notification area and the Logoff button.
Under Appearance, select SlicknesS(black-mac) as the style, to get the window frame and title bar "back to black."
We're not done yet. Then, go to XFCE 4 Menu > System > Configuration > Other > gtk-theme-switch2, and select the theme called "SlicknesS(black-mac)" to be applied to the desktop. Hit the Apply button, and the window decorations all come back as they were laid out by Sproggy.
I probably could have saved some time by saving all my pictures and other files by burning them to multiple CDs (which I should do, anyways) and do a virgin installation, but if you find yourself in the same state I was in after installing Phoenix over the top of KDE, don't despair. Getting it back to normal isn't too terribly hard. Plus, you get to learn a bit about how to navigate in Phoenix and where all the "controls" are.
All in all, Phoenix not only looks great, but it runs like greased lightning, and has been an incredibly stable platform.
parnote
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