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Quick Look: Xubuntu 10.10

Posted by jimlynch on · 10 comments
Eye On Linux; By Jim Lynch 		Mail this story
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A quick look at Xubuntu 10.10, including a full gallery of screenshots. Last week I reviewed Kubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.10 over on Desktop Linux Reviews. This week I wanted to look at Xubuntu 10.10. I decided to do a quick look rather than a full-blown DLR review because less has changed in Xubuntu than in the other two distro releases.

Last week I reviewed Kubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.10 over on Desktop Linux Reviews. This week I wanted to look at Xubuntu 10.10. I decided to do a quick look rather than a full-blown DLR review because less has changed in Xubuntu than in the other two distro releases.

If you aren’t familiar with Xubuntu, it’s essentially a combination of Ubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment. Xubuntu is designed to provide a lighter-weight desktop experience than GNOME (Ubuntu’s default desktop). Xfce is set up to conserve system resources while still providing a great range of desktop functionality. Xubuntu is a good to Ubuntu alternative for older hardware or underpowered hardware.

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Comments (10)

Ridcully ·
This has only just occurred. My son bought a new Toshiba Satellite laptop, tv tuner and all, and after 3 hours of fiddling, Win7 finally put itself onto the hdd. It worked and he could use the tv tuner for recording and listen via the headphones when watching the sport items he loves. He wanted a Linux installation too, because he knows about the far better security and reliability, so we discussed the problem.

Rather than "touch anything" on the windows drive, we grabbed an unused hdd and swapped it for the Win7 hdd (yes, I know there are other options, but we elected to do something very simple and safe, especially because it is likely that most of his use will be on Linux). We then installed Linux Mint (half an hour) on the new one with near perfect results......but although the laptop speakers still worked, the sound would NOT arrive at the headphones. There were all sorts of fixes on the net in the forums, but none seemed to work, so my local Linux colleague suggested Ubuntu 10.10 ......and after saving my son's .mozilla file (he didn't want to set up all the tabs again) we did a Ubuntu installation (half an hour) plus the necessary dvd viewing codecs, and the headphones worked instantly. He's delighted and so am I....."straight out of the box" so to speak with Gnome running fast and simply. He loves it and I really, really like it and could even be persuaded to move from openSUSE and KDE - with a push. My only word so far on Ubuntu 10.10 (early days admittedly) is "impressive".
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herzeleid ·
Interesting... so mint is no longer necessarily an improvement on ubuntu...
Ridcully ·
From what I understand, it depends on the timing of the release cycles. LM is built on Ubuntu and my Linux colleague told me that the next release of LM is about a month away. He expects the catchup to take place then, but since Ubuntu 10.10 is only "just on the streets", it could be a little longer but I am no software engineer. From my perspective, the real difference between the two is that LM usually just works with respect to audiovisual material ~ it already has the necessary codecs and dvd software in place whereas you have to install them for yourself in Ubuntu......but that is very easy to do. This appears to be a "hiccup" with the detection of very new hardware configurations.
djohnston ·
I thought Mint was headed towards a Debian base. I recently tested a Debian Mint iso, released in September.
mortenalver ·
I don't think they are decided yet on whether to keep the Ubuntu base or switch to Debian. I've been using Debian Mint on my laptop for about a month, and I like it so far.
bigg ·
Debian Mint is just something that they are doing. They currently have no intention of switching to a Debian base for their main release.
montezuma ·
That is consistent with my experience too. With the upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 I noticed that pdf viewing and printing (evince) and general cups system printing are less buggy. I am yet to hit a bug on 4 upgraded systems. It was not like that on earlier Ubuntu releases so I say kudos to Ubuntu.
bigg ·
This is the first release for which I haven't heard loads of bad experiences. I usually test out the new releases and they don't work for me, due to annoying bugs, maybe I'll have to try it again.
tmx ·
About the sound, I use a soundcard by creative labs so Ubuntu doesn't detect it automatically. In the Ubuntu iso that I customized for my friends, I added the package "alsamixer firmware" and it detects the sound card. But I had to go to terminal and type "alsamixer -c 1" to access to the sound card setting and lower 48000khz to 44100khz for the music to play at normal speed.

("alsamixer -c 0" for the first sound card, "alsamixer -c 1" for the second) (You can try compiling alsamixer too, but I couldn't figure out to compile it correctly with 10.10)

--

9.10 was excellent, 10.04 had some issues, 10.10 currently have many annoying little bugs. Generally Canonical push the release out on time, but you have to give them a month to fix things up.

I had issues like kernel header failed to install and can't be removed/update. Mouse stopped working. Main menu imprints itself on the screen and not disappearing.
Steven_Rosenber ·
I'm not running Ubuntu on it now, but I have a laptop with a sound chip that's problematic enough to only do what it's supposed to do with ALSA 1.0.23, which means that Maverick is a better choice than Lucid (which has better video support for this particular laptop, although using the proprietary ATI driver fixes things up in Maverick).

You know, even when you're not running the LTS, a six-month Ubuntu release will be supported for 18 months total — enough time to evaluate at least two future Ubuntu releases before deciding what to do about upgrading.

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