linux.gotfoo.org

Summary
Xubuntu 6.06 is a derivative from the popular Ubuntu Linux distro with the difference being Xubuntu uses the Xfce Window Manager instead of Gnome or KDE. Xfce is a light weight Open Source window manager that is fast and efficient which makes Xubuntu ideal for lower end computers. Or if you want a super fast system try Xubuntu on a newer system like a my Gateway MX6440 Laptop (1.8Ghz Turion64 with a gig of RAM) and you'll be amazed at how fast Linux can run.

*updated 2006-10-27 : minor text changes*
History
Over the past few months I have been immersing my self back into the Linux world after a few years on hiatus. One thing that has struck me the most is the abundance of LiveCDs like Ubuntu, SLAX and Knoppix just to name a few. I have gone from Fedora 4 then to 5 and then to OpenSuSE 10 only to find that these "major" distros are no better or any more stable than the "minor" distros and LiveCD's. For awhile I had settled on Kanotix but that all ended when I got a laptop upgrade and Knotix no longer worked properly. This restarted my hunt for a distro again.

Xubuntu, I Think I Love You

For the longest time I felt that Ubuntu and all of it's counterparts were not real Linux distro so I never gave them a second glance. At the time I was becoming a die-hard Knoppix/Kanotix fan. Both Knoppix and Kanotix worked fine on my old HP ZE4560 Laptop and I had read Knoppix Hacks so many times that I could recite the book in my sleep. Then one sad day my HP laptop died so I went to Best Buy and used the "lemon law" on the warranty to get my self a brand new laptop. But instead of getting another HP like I wanted they gave me an upgrade for my troubles which ended being a much better laptop. It was a Gateway which was not exactly my first or second choice but it was a pretty rockin' machine.

The first thing I did when I got home was pop open the CD/DVD drive and insert the Knippix Live CD. The machine started to boot but then it hung on the Ethernet card. Humm? I then tried the Knoppix 5.01 DVD and the machine boot up fine but the resoultion was a mess (15.4 inch wide screen w/ ATI Video Card) and it could not find any network cards. Grrr!

I spent the next week trying every distro on the planet to work. Fedora, SuSE, Slax, SimplyMEPIS and RedHat 9 just to name a few and not one of them could get both the monitor and the Ethernet working properly. Since I broke the seal on the laptop box I could not return it so I was stuck with a really nice laptop that was not very Linux friendly.

Then late one night (it probably wasn't but it sounds good) I, for some strange reason booted up the Xubuntu LiveCD. As soon as the screen flickered to the Xubuntu desktop I was sold. The resolution and fonts were perfect. Not just perfect it was awesome. The second thing I noticed was the shear speed of the UI. So I started poking around to see what I could do on the system which turned out to be not much in the way of apps. I was used to Knoppix which has more apps installed then you can imagine.

Just as easy to install as Windows XP
To truly see if Xubuntu was to be my new distro I would have to install it on my HD. I had downloaded the x64 version of Xubuntu because my new rig has an AMD Turion 64 cpu but for some reason the installer kept failing at a certain point. I then tried the i386 version and had better luck.

The install process is a frickin' breeze. It's asks for you language (twice?), your location, some user details (name, username, password) and then it gives you some HD formatting options. I choose to go for the default which was 2 GB for the swap, 20 GB for the root and the rest (75 GB +/-) for /home. Click to confirm and then it starts the install process which only took 10 minutes.

If the average user can't figure out how to install Xubuntu then they should not be using a computer. If a user can install Norton or MacAfee then they can install Xubuntu.

Getting more Apps
When I said there was not much in the way of apps I mean Xubuntu ships with the bare minimum of apps for a user but if they want/need more the Ubuntu team has made it very easy to obtain/install new apps through the Synaptic Package Manager. The Synaptic Package Manager is very easy to use and makes adding new apps a breeze. You just search for the app by name or by type and then browse through the results. You can read descriptions and not as well as dependices for each app. Once you've found the app you want you just click the square icon and select "Mark for Installation" and if it has any depend ices that are missing it will inform you of what is missing and give you the option to install them automatically. Very easy. *Please see Enable Extra Repositories in Xubuntu for more info on unsupported/unofficial app.*

The other very easy task is updating you system. In Ubuntu there is a task-tray app that checks for updates automatically but this is missing in Xubuntu. So to update Xubuntu you just click Application->System->Package Updater and then click "Check for Updates" a few seconds later it gives you a summary of what needs updating. Then click "Update" and wait until the app finishes. Or you can do it the har way by using a the command line like this:

Again very simple.

A lot of apps that I like were developed for use in KDE and to ge them to run in Xubuntu (Xfce) I needed to install some extra KDE library's. The upside of using Synaptic is that it will get any extra libs you may need to install an app but the down side is that you are adding in libs that will/may decrease performance. So far I have only noticed that it I can count to 15 when the Xfce desktop mouse is spinning as opposed to counting to 7 on a fresh install. I think some of this is due to all of the applets I have running on my task bar.

The other cool thing is that Ubuntu is becoming so widespread and popular almost every app that I find has a Ubuntu package/installer. Or in most cases they simply have a cut & paste command that you can use like this one from EasyUbuntu.

or this one for the VLC media player:

Got Wifi?
I had reached a point where I had accepted that I would never be able to use my wireless card and I was okay with that. But for some reason I kept trying to get it working.

I first found this How to: Broadcom Wireless cards without Ndiswrapper which then led me to this Wireless BCM4318 AirForce Card because my laptop has the BCM4318 card. The BCM4318 did work fro me the first few tries and then I made a small change to the instructions. In Step 3 it says to use bcmwl5.inf so I used the alternate driver bcmwl5a.inf and it worked like a charm!

Too Much of a Good Thing
Depending on the day I sometimes feel that Linux has become too easy to use and that a new user will never learn anything. On the other days I feel Linux is a pain-in-the ass and that I don't want to fiddle with make files or config files to get my resolution or NIC working properly. With the mindset of the hard-way is the better-way I always regarded Ubuntu as the Linux for Dummies and that it was not a real distro.

In some ways it just seems wrong that you can plug in an external usb hard-drive which has been formatted to NTFS and have it show-up on the desktop automatically. I mean why dodn't I have to type in a command like:

Oh and what are they thinking allowing me to read an NTFS drive with out having to configue a thing?

There is a war brewing between the Debian and Ubuntu dev communities about not giving back and all that zealot jazz but I have to say if a company can make Linux this easy to use then more power to them.

When comparing Ubuntu to other distros it as if they went over

Is Xubuntu for You?
Only you can answer this question after you give it a spin for your self. But just to give you a nudge here are some pros/cons:

Pro/Con:
Light-weight and fast but it's not as pretty as KDE.
It doesn't come with many preinstalled apps which is a Pro and a Con.
Can run Gnome and KDE apps but requires additional packages which may cause some performance issues.
It just works but it's not as cool as Slackware and Knoppix etc;

Xubuntu is just as good as any other distro and it only lacks the eye candy of KDE and the abundance of apps like Knoppix.

For me the selling point was the Laptop wide screen being automatically configured and getting the wireless card working.