The problem that you might face when you install ubuntu is it's default window manager GNOME is quite heavy on resources and tends to be buggy (for my pc configuration at least) so to cope up with resource crunch you can shift to a light window manager like fluxbox, XFCE etc as they tend to provide better performance than GNOME or KDE but are a little un-user friendly.

To change the window manager follow these steps:-

1) Install MENU:- The precondition for changing to any new window manager is to install the program MENU that manages the application menus so that you can launch the applications without the need of Gnome or KDE launchers.

To install MENU
  • Open terminal i.e Application->Accesories->Terminal or press ALT+F2 and choose run in terminal

  • Then type the following command in the terminal :-

    sudo apt-get install menu
    you will be asked for your password, enter it and the package menu will be installed.
2) Install the window manager :- The next step is to install the window manager itself. I would be explaining about how to install the FLUXBOX window manager.

The fluxbox window manager provides tab options, styles menu from which you can change the theme and wallpapers, configuration menu for configuring window display (including transparency,icons etc), wsm (text browser) and by default comes with 4 workspaces that you can toggle between, more workspace windows can be added. The thing that i like about it is that it's very fast.

To install fluxbox execute the following command:-

sudo apt-get install fluxbox

3) Changing the window manager :- Now all you have to do is logout from ubuntu and then from the options on the login screen choose select session, choose Fluxbox and choose the window manager for current session only so that you can try it out before choosing to make it default.

The following is the snapshot of fluxbox:-