I'm noticing many writers calling the decluttering of their lives "minimalism," instead of "simplicity," or "simple living." Is there a difference?

A quick Google search yielded the following (we can read together; I'm just link-dumping at this point):

• Organized Geek: Minimalism vs. Simplicity
• Modern Simplicity: Minimalism vs. Simplicity
• Watch Us Rework: Simplicity vs Minimalism (more about web design, less about life)
• Design Thinking: Simple or Minimal? (more about industrial design, less about life)
• the_uncomplication_project: Simplicity vs. Minimalism (at least relevant; but I'm left thinking that any definitions are the opinion of the definer)

Is this tempest/teapot time? I'll gather more intelligence on this lexical battle as time permits.

Five minutes later: These entries didn't help much. All I seem to get from this small blogospheric sample is that minimalism is more hard-core than simplicity.

But as I say in the short comment after the final link, it's all semantics. Call what you do what you wish. As for me, I'm still thinking.

I'm doing an update today on my daughter's Ubuntu 10.04 LTS-running Gateway Solo 1450, the 2002-era laptop that I upgraded from 8.04 in a not-seamless but doable operation for someone with a bit of experience in these matters.

I've done a lot of upgrades. I'd say maybe half were successful. That doesn't say much for upgrades. But when it comes to Ubuntu upgrades, I can generally make them work with a bit of Googling.

I've been hard on Ubuntu 10.04 over the life of the release. (I could find links, but I'm just going to keep writing.) While the UI changes in 11.04 (GNOME giving way to Unity) are bigger, I thought the changes from 9.10 to 10.04 were too huge and unproven for an LTS release. My opinion was and is that 10.04 needed to be 9.10 with bug fixes and not a total reworking of the GNOME theme with buttons on the other side of the screen and lots of unproven, slightly broken Ubuntu-coded (or -ordered) enhancements.

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