As many know, Xubuntu is the variant "Ubuntu official" that makes use of Xfce Desktop Environment for your use.
This distribution is maintained by Community and in spite of everything, they march quite on par with Ubuntu in the release calendars. Already we can download Beta 1 version of what will be Xubuntu 12.04, which I have tested using a LiveCD, and I decided to comment on my impressions.
Artwork:
From the version 9.10, Xubuntu started using Gtk themes designed by The Shimmer Project, having available since then the themes Albatross, Bluebird (my favorite among the 3) y greybird. All these topics are being updated to have support in gtk3.
Beta 1 comes with greybird by default and although it is a pretty nice theme (Mixture Elementary with the appearance of OX X) some details are still missing to be corrected. I really don't understand why they don't put the same topic on it ambience, and thus achieve a balance between users who want to test Ubuntu y Xubuntu. Also, place the window buttons on the left.
The terminal is configured to emulate a homogeneous integration between the border of the window, the tools menu and the writing area, and I particularly would have set the color of the text darker.
I really liked the new design for Plymouth when we start or shut down the system, I see it sober and elegant. The font chosen for the System is not Ubuntu Font.But Droid Sans, which leads me to think, gathering the elements previously exposed in the article, that the design team of Xubuntu He is somewhat far from the team of Ubuntu. I don't know if they disagree or if their ideas are completely different, but I think Xubuntu it could have the same (or very similar) appearance that it has Ubuntu.
The bottom panel as Dock seems very successful, although for my taste, the icons are a bit large by default.
Applications
Although Xubuntu has gradually dropped its dependency on packages GnomeWe still see a large number of them installed on the system, which in my view, are completely unnecessary. Let's look at some of the installed apps and my alternatives to them:
- GCalcTool, can be replaced by Galculator.
- Evince can be replaced by epdfview.
- Ristretto has improved a lot but can be replaced by Look.
- GMusicBrowser I have not tested it thoroughly, but it does not seem very light. You could add a simple audio player, perhaps with advanced options like dead beef o Audacious, although there are other alternatives such as A tool.
- passwords I think it is an excellent option. Now I use it in Debian.
- Abiword It presents in its interface something very ugly for my taste, and that is that the black rules do not look good with the theme.
- About Firefox 11 y Thunderbird 11 nothing new to comment. Thunderbird it has some very nice icons. I tried to put them in Debian, but they do not come out, even copying the same folders.
Xubuntu has integrated panel indicators as in Ubuntu and the integration with Thunderbird, Pidgin y GMusicBrowser. The performance, at least from the LiveCD it was pretty good, even with a few apps open at the same time.
Problems found:
I suppose that due to its Beta condition, all the problems that I will comment on below are normal. I should also clarify that I had the option to update 300 Mb about packages, update that maybe fixed some of them, but my connection did not allow me to check it.
Something I did not like is that the network icon did not appear anywhere, and to configure it you have to Menu »Preferences. Desktop icons and items are not automatically updated when added or deleted, so we must manually update them with F5. The menu does not have the option to execute, and the application that takes care of this action, sometimes did not exit when pressing [Alt] + [F2] or it took more than 10 seconds to run.
When changing the keyboard layout, I had to close several applications for the changes to take effect. The context menu includes an entry for Search in the folder where we are, but that option simply does not work. When trying to remove the drivers from NVidia (since I use Intel) these drag Ubuntu Desktop.
Xubuntu it also includes too many language packs, which I don't understand if in the end the LiveCD runs in English. Sure, I suppose that when it is going to be installed, and another language is used, English and Spanish are not the only ones on our planet, but I think there should be an option so that, after installing, the unnecessary languages are eliminated according to our preferences.
Conclusions
Although they still present all these problems, I think Xubuntu It has improved a lot when compared to previous versions and can improve even more. I will try to report all this to the team of Xubuntu to see if I am heard.
By the time the version 12.04 I will try to do an installation of Xfce from scratch using Ubuntu to see if I can leave it how I want. I consider it to be an excellent alternative for that Ubuntu user who wants to get away from Unity, Gnome Shell o KDE.
Seeing it like this, if you remove the dock it is the gnome 2 of a lifetime ..., we would have to see if the difference between one and the other really shows, I remember that gnome 2 in 32 bits consumed me between 300 and 500 megabytes of ram with many open applications, so well, consumption was low.
You say: “Although they still have all these problems, I think Xubuntu has improved a lot compared to previous versions and can improve even more. I will try to report all this to the Xubuntu team to see if I am heard. "
God I don't want to imagine the previous versions ……
I tell you, the * buntu = shit
I mean that in previous versions, Xubuntu contained a lot of Gnome applications for fun and its performance was not that good.
I do not know why, but Xubuntu has always seemed more unstable than the rest of Ubuntu versions, I do not know, I tried both the Kubuntu 12.04 beta and this one and I was surprised how well it went with everything with KDE, I just felt once hung plasma, but updating it solved. On the other hand, in Xubuntu from the live cd it already gave me problems ...
About your post, I think that if Xubuntu put Ubuntu's Ambiance theme, the buttons on the same side and the rest of the artistic design were the same, what would then differentiate it from Ubuntu? Because theoretically, Xubuntu is for PCs with few resources, and if it was the same as Ubuntu in fallback mode, there wouldn't be many differences ...
OFF-Topic:
One thing, could someone tell me because with some monitors I cannot increase the resolution and with others I plug the PC and everything is perfect? It happens to me that with an Emachines I cannot increase the resolution and with another from HP I have no problem with the resolution.
I think your answer would be this:
PS: I composed the definition from some articles that I read, so if you want the 'condensed' version you can read it from here:
http://www.blackbox.es/es-es/page/94/ddc-display-data-channel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel
still not bring wayland?
Is there a distribution that uses it by default? I believe that it is still in full development.
I doubt that anyone uses wayland by default before 2013, it is a matter of stability, functions and driver compatibility.
I installed xubuntu 10.4 and I was not convinced by the performance, it was the reason why I returned to debian. and since there I do not install it, I better opt for other distros
In fact, several of the problems they mention are bugs reported and they appear in the release notes, I share your opinion that it has improved a lot, in fact I am waiting for the final version to come out because in April the support for Mint 10 and my more Probably option will be Xubuntu 12.04 which will also be an LTS so I will not worry for a good time
From what I see the problem with the dependencies remains the same, which is a big obstacle when configuring it to your liking. I wonder if they have improved the issue of distribution updates because it would not be the first time that I had to install from scratch after trying to do a "dist-upgrade."
The terminal would be fine if it weren't for the menu bar that breaks that "continuity" a bit, anyway for those of us who work in low light, nothing better than a very dark background.
The logo seems inspired by the horse head scene from "The Godfather", and is quite misleading as to why this mascot is in Xfce (you can do anything with the mouse).
Anyway, 11.10 is probably the last xubuntu that I install on my computer. Since LMDE Xfce is half dead (the Linux Mint team is getting into a quagmire of care), I'll be considering fedora or debian as options in the next few weeks.
PS: An "off-topic" question, on my computer (Athlon 3200+, 2GB RAM, Xubuntu 11.10 without "tweaks") both Firefox 10.03 and Firefox 11.0 fail more than a fairground shotgun, does the same thing happen to anyone?
It is that to navigate calmly in "delicate" places I have to resort to Opera or Midori.
»Both Firefox 10.03 and Firefox 11.0 fail more than a fairground shotgun, does the same thing happen to anyone?"
Well, that doesn't happen to me.
No way, it remains to go to the language configuration and delete the extra packages, it is also worth executing localpurge.
I like them on the right side o_O
I am considering seriously testing xforce, how does this desktop version of fedora work?: p
Let's see guys, I know that the distro for programmers is Fedora, but can I use LMDE and install the programs I want to learn?…. (PHP, MySql, Postgres ... etc ..)
Fedora the distro for programmers? ... nope I don't think so, it's not that there is a specific distro that is for programmers 😀
For example, dwarf program in Python, you are learning HTML5, jQuery and something else, and you use Mint / Ubuntu, perseus He's programming in Ruby and he's learning Python, and he's using the same Chakra, Sabayon and now Debian. elav and I develop websites (develop I think it is something broad for the little we do LOL !!) and we both use Debian, I actually used ArchLinux for quite some time.
I myself have Apache+MySQL+PHP installed and running on my laptop, with a clone of DesdeLinux and other sites developing, and without complaints 😀
Of course you can install this on your distro, you don't need to install a specific distro to do it hehe.
Fedora is geared more towards that, business stuff, etc. But of course, Anti Fedora like you will accept it badly
HAHAHAHA now I have read everything! Me anti-fedora? ... if you say Mint or another ... but Fedora? … If I have nothing negative or positive to say about this O_O distro… LOL !!
You said yourself you didn't like that distro.
I already saw you KZKG ^ Gaara, I already saw you ¬¬ *
Thanks Gaara, good your explanation…. It is not that I mean that Fedora is for developers, but if I am not mistaken according to its installation it is more oriented to that.
Anyway, I thank you because you got me out of a great doubt.
Is it true that LMDE is neglected? Because I installed this distro two months ago (it was then that I discovered Desde Linux) and I really liked it, although before what I used was Fedora.
It is the one I want to use but if the community is lazy with it, I would not need to board that ship and then sink….
Actually I don't think Fedora is made or designed specifically for developers ... if I'm wrong, have someone correct me haha 😀
LMDE is not the main objective of Mint ... LinuxMint (based on Ubuntu) is, but you can still use LMDE without problems, then if you want to do like elav and you change LMDE for simply Debian and voila 😀
If you have questions or problems in LMDE, any Debian user will be able to help you, like many Ubuntu users, or other distros, it is the great thing about this world ^ - ^
I don't really think Fedora is made or designed specifically for developers
In fact, it is not oriented for developers, it is oriented for everyone even if you do not believe it, I came from windows a few months ago * there is little time for me to complete the year using GNU / Linux * honestly I did not choose to use ubuntu as it is what They do many when they come from windows, I opted to use fedora it was very comfortable and easy to use, then I tried the so-called ubuntu, it did not last using it more than a week it made me problematic that of the PPA's and performance problems, for that is that fedora no longer release it, more than a weeks ago that was when I was testing debian hehe very good by the way but they are only details that do not fit with me hehe.
as I knew GNU / Linux because around 2008, nothing more than I did not throw myself into using it, due to time and computer knowledge problems.
I met fedora thanks to distrowatch, and thanks to a person on youtube a certain OSGUIshow.
Well thanks Gaara, I'm going to install LMDE right now, I'm writing from Live_cd, when I'm done I'll tell you…. although I don't think I have anything new to say ...
You can see that they have worked a lot since I tested Xubuntu 11.04. Regarding the replacements you propose for the packages, they seem very successful to me, except for Evince, which is more powerful and faster than Epdfview (it even consumes less ram, although it is true that it depends on Gnome packages), and Ristretto's, which has been vastly improved and is part of the XFCE project.
The truth is that I have times of not trying xubuntu the last one I tested was 8.04 and I liked it but at that time I didn't even know that synaptic XD existed on Linux.
So no longer use it currently I use LMDE.
I really hope that the sound drivers have been fixed that 2 years ago the sound did not work for me on this same computer.
and since I was a novice (and it is not that I have stopped being one) I did not even know how to install a program and with documentation in English and I rarely had access to the internet as you can imagine.
Well I will tell you that since I met Xubuntu it is the system that I use in an old Pentium IV laptop with only 500MB RAM and 2.66 GHz and nothing that I am super happy with Xubuntu and since I tried version 12.04 it is super faster than the one I had currently 11.10… so nothing .. Congratulations to the Xubuntu team.
ps I have a 9 year old pc with 275 ram. 40GB on the hard drive. I have updated the firefox with 3 open pages listening to radioFM the last Fm complement and chatting from the emese and no problem .. greetings for those who complain so much ...
Let's see how it goes with the update 12.04… ..
and does anyone know how to make conky work on xubuntu, i set conky and always
makes desktop icons flicker.
Greetings to my xubuntu, I just want to be able to configure conky well to make it perfect