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[Review]Xubuntu Feisty

November 11, 2007

Re-buntu:-The reviewing distro

Finally a distro that beats ubuntu. Hold your breath and witness the miracle

So which one is it? This is a distro that’s been released along with ubuntu 5.10(no it’s not Kubuntu). Though many know about it is seldom used. Ok lets cut the suspense it’s Xubuntu-7.04. No don’t close the page read the review to find out why it really beats Ubuntu.

Why the hell did I even try out Xubuntu?

Well I needed to install it on a pretty old system(Pentium-3 700Mhz and 256Mb RAM. So what better than the good old XCFE desktop. While puppy(an 90mb distro using XCFE) misbehaved on this system, Xubuntu did not. It worked like a charm although with slow startup time but still very user friendly.

Installation

Installation wasn’t a complete breeze.Even though it has the same 7 step procedure as Ubuntu there is a small installation bug. The fix is found here .

Apart from that there was no problem at all.

The Desktop

The splash screen is the ubuntu logo with a rat in the center. The whole distro sports a blue look which makes it look really great. The login window is designed to perfection. Here is a picture of the desktop

The file manager is thunar which bears close resemblance with nautililus

The default theme is pretty decent but it comes with a large number of themes each one better than the other. Here’s the theme manager

One thing I liked about Xubuntu is the right-click(Yeah! That’s right the right click). While some like the right click menu others donot. So which one does Xubuntu have.

One can actually choose if one want’s right click menu or not. Pretty good option right. The second thing I liked is the settings manager which is similar to Dsl’s panel.

Xubuntu comes with a terminal.

Abiword and Gnumeric(spreadsheet) for office

It comes with Mozilla Firefox for a internet browser

It comes with gxine for audio/video but cannot play mp3 out of the box.

Most other aplications are the ones that come with ubuntu, but where it shines is more customizability. There are a lot of options for configuring your system.

Only problem I had was taking screen shots.For which I had to install the software and printscreen button didnot do anything even after installing the software. The program had to be run to take screen shots.

Pimpin’ it up

The default Xubuntu theme is pretty good but it can be made much better.

First select the theme that you like.Then open settings manager and select user interface. Here there are window decorators like keramik plastic redmond etc(similar to Kubuntu). Select the one you like. Here we choose dusk giving it a black look.

Next put your favourite wallpaper to match your new theme.

Next one needs to add desklets to improve the functionality.

Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install gdesklets

This installs gdesklets. Start the gdesklets and add the desklets you want.

You can also create a new panel and add your favourite programs to it.

Heres a picture of the final desktop

Final Thoughts

Xubuntu definitely beats ubuntu 7.04, though I am yet to compare 7.10 versions of both, I am pretty happy with this one and find no reason to shift. I would suggest everyone to atleast try the live cd of this distro. Watch this space for more great reviews of Linux distro’s.