I'd be grateful if you could put me right on these differences. If i
recall correctly having installed ubuntu, i could add xfce environment
two ways. First, from synaptic install xubuntu from meta packages
which added some of the XFCE apps like Abiword. Second, if one did a
search on XFCE and added all environment packages only. In this case i
had what i wanted which was the Ubuntu apps and a few KDE like Kate
editor.

However, i was using Edgy 6.10 and it could have been different from
Dapper or Feisty.