Xubuntu has knocked me off of my feet with its speed, beauty and ease of use.
I downloaded the Xubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” alternative install (Beta), fired up VirtualBox (Ubuntu Hardy host) and took it for a test drive. Overall, this release feels a tiny bit heavier in regards to resource usage, but that’s probably because I’m only giving VirtualBox 180 megs of RAM to work with and things would no doubt be different on a real install.
After the install, it was just a matter of letting Update Manager run a partial upgrade, and voila, the lightweight but powerful Xubuntu was ready for business.
Overall, this is a very robust and excellent offering from the Xubuntu team and is perfect for anybody with aging hardware and also for those who want a blazing fast distro to use with modern hardware.
The “Last successful boot” option isn’t here on the Beta, but should be on the final 8.10 release
The alternate install offers full volume encryption and pre-boot authentication
The login screen looks great, minus the mismatched box 😉
The update manager popped right up and proceeded to upgrade to the latest packages
Tons of included apps offering tons of functionality with the endless freedoms that come with FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software)
The host is an older low-end Fry’s special with 384 megs of ram, 32 megs of shared video memory and an AMD Sempron 2400+, but even with the low specs and Xubuntu having only 180 megs of ram allocated to it through VirtualBox, it still hummed right along
Intuitive system configuration menu makes tweaking and administering your system a breeze
“Furthermore, Dell’s DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) is included, which allows new kernel drivers to be rebuilt without having to wait for rebuilds of driver packages.”-wiki.ubuntu.com
Xubuntu 8.10 is shipping with the latest Gimp release!
All in all, I’m ecstatic about this release and want to thank Canonical and all the *buntu devs for all of the great releases and their hard work! 🙂
No Security In Sleep 