This does not make sense. The amount of installed software does not affect "speed" or responsiveness.
Compare two systems. System #1 has a lot of "heavier" programs installed and background processes running, System #2 has a few light programs and few background processes. Which system will be faster for general use, System #1 would be. If the user on System #1 opened his/her office suite it would be slower to open compared to the user of System #2 who using a lightweight office suite would experience better performance.
Joining in on the nitpick session, When did openoffice become a "heavy" application? When did having heavy applications slow performance? and more to the point, when did the graphical desktop environment have any bearing on speed related to installed applications?
A. OpenOffice has always been considered a heavy office suite (along with Koffice which is even heavier) by Linux users as far as I can tell.
B. Heavy applications don't always necessarily slow performance, but they often do on older hardware (which is what this was all about).
C. I dunno
And why are you comparing XUbuntu (A Linux distro) to GNOME (A Linux windowing environment/desktop). You may as well say that OSX is slower then Luna, makes no sense at all.
Sorry, my mistake. What I meant to say was "Xubuntu changes enough stuff so that it is heavier than a default install XFCE on Ubuntu
Right, and besides, Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice and Firefox. Merely adding GIMP and Thunderbird is not going to slow down the system.
I was talking about Xubuntu not Ubuntu. Xubuntu does more then just adding XFCE and a few programs like GIMP & Thunderbird to a Ubuntu install. Xubuntu uses a heavier network applet then most other XFCE distros as well. It is well known in the Ubuntu community that Xubuntu is quite heavy, almost as heavy as Ubuntu. And that is why most Ubuntu users will recommend Lubuntu for old hardware.
Maybe he thinks Gnome is a distro?
Uhmm, no. I know what Gnome is. Gnome is a desktop environment. Other desktop environments include KDE (which I hate so much), Xfce, LXDE, CDE, ROX &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ImageFuture.png Enlightenment ().