COMMENTS:
I have the version 4 installed only in VirtualBox right now. I may be shifting the hardware components from the PIII to an AMD-based motherboard. Nothing here is meant as a criticism. Just comments.
The XFCE4 panel is a nice touch. Don't know if it offers any advantages over an lxpanel or not. Some app launchers I'd remove from the panel are Language Support and Keyboard Layout. The reason is that they will probably be used only once. I also moved the panel. As you can see from the screenshot below, There's some overlap between the XFCE4 panel and the tint2 panel. The install icon is also overlapped by the tint2 panel. It may not look the same on your monitor.
I've probably said this before, but I'll say it again. I don't know why the "Panel tint2" (tint2conf) in the Preferences section of the menu is installed. No changes made using the program will ever be saved until the program's author
finally chooses to include that option. (Why would s/he write a configuration app that can't save any changes?)
The Application launchers bookmark in PCManFM is kind of a novel touch, but I'm not sure how it can be useful.
EDIT: Okay, I see from your post above why you made that bookmark.
Resized windows don't stay resized after a logout or reboot. Here, I have resized the PCManFM window. As long as I stay logged in, it stays the same.
After logging out and in again, the window has reverted.
Also highlighted in the screenshot above is the glaring problem with the network manager icon. It's where the mouse pointer is in the tint2 panel. I've run into this before. You have to use a certain icon set, or just learn to live with the black icon showing in the (almost) black tint2 panel. Have you ever looked at the network manager icons? /usr/bin/nm-connection-editor is what's running. The icon for the desktop file is "preferences-system-network". Do a search for "preferences-system-network" and you come up with a mixed bag of png and svg images from the Faenza, Humanity, HighContrast and LowContrast icon sets. Add more icon sets and you have even more of a mess. I've never been able to find any consistent method of displaying the network-manager icons from one icon set to another, even after modifying the desktop file. It's an exercise in futility. The program is fine. But, the choice of icons for the desktop file ...
I like having a little more control of the boot options. The Ubuntu default of hiding the GRUB boot screen is pretty tacky and useless, in my opinion. You gain an extra 5 seconds in boot time? Really? So, I used the excellent Grub Customiser you've included to change that. The default is a timeout of 0 seconds (no timeout) and don't show the boot menu. I changed that to show the menu, with a timeout of 5 seconds.
I think the default choice of magenta on light gray for the text colors is pretty tacky, too, and hard to see.
So, I changed that to white with a light-cyan highlight. I've changed my monitor's display size to 1152x864, so I changed the GRUB resolution size to match. I set the background image to the same as the desktop wallpaper.
After saving the changes and writing them to the MBR, the result is:
Okay, here, I'm just nitpicking a bit. There's no email reader installed or setup, but there's an email reader app icon in the XFCE4 panel.
The GPG key for the Ubuntu extras repo is not installed. That's easily fixed by doing a reload in Synaptic, doing a search for keyring and installing the public key.
I suspect the
d-i apt-setup/extras boolean trueline in the ubuntu.seed file in the /preseed directory of the iso image is why the extras repo is enabled.
The localechooser-data package is showing as auto-removable in Synaptic.
I suspect the
# No language support packages.
d-i pkgsel/install-language-support boolean falsesection in the cli.seed file in the /preseed directory of the iso image is why the package is being shown as auto-removable.
I see that the IBus package is installed again. I suspect it's included in the default set of Ubuntu packages. I gotta ask, do you expect to have Asian language users? All IBus is good for is for use of Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc. character sets.
I agree with all your choices of default apps. Except, I'm sorry, but I just don't like Midori. It's a quick web browser, but it has limited flexibility compared to Firefox or Chrome. For that matter, so does Qupzilla. I see you've included the Galternatives package, as well as the Gnome Control Center, with all of Taco.22's changes. Kudos.
All in all, except for the fact that it's Ubuntu-based, it's great. I give it a 95 out of 100. I'll give it a run on bare metal, too. If I can get the damn thing to actually start on that hardware, I'll do a full installation.
