I left Ubuntu just because I don't trust them (issues 2 and 3), but I don't understand why people make a big deal about the default DE. I switched to Mint because I know everything "just works" with my laptop on it, and just changed the DE to i3. I previously used i3 on Ubuntu with no problem, I can't imagine it'd be too hard to use xfce or whatever else you wanted on Ubuntu.
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I left Ubuntu just because I don't trust them (issues 2 and 3), but I don't understand why people make a big deal about the default DE. I switched to Mint because I know everything "just works" with my laptop on it, and just changed the DE to i3. I previously used i3 on Ubuntu with no problem, I can't imagine it'd be too hard to use xfce or whatever else you wanted on Ubuntu.