Review of Xubuntu 9.10

[Steve Dodier]

Yay,

I mailed him with a few explanations for the OOO installed by default
problem, and some other notes about Thunar's network capability, ram usage,
etc. Here it is:




Hello,

I'm reading your article about Xubuntu 9.10 after Cody Somerville forwarded
it to the Xubuntu mailing list. Here are a few corrections for it:

* Xubuntu's not really designed for low-end or old hardware, it just happens
to be slightly (but not very very much) lighter than Ubuntu, so it'll run
noticeably better on hardware with 192 to 256MB RAM. Also, it doesn't have
compiz activated and XFCE is snappy, so you have a feeling of speed when
using it compared to Ubuntu.

* OpenOffice.org is installed by default due to a last second bug we didn't
have the time to fix: the language packages seem to have been badly packaged
and to be pulling the whole OpenOffice.org suite. Yay...

* There seems to be a typo or a lacking work around "less than acceptable"
in the performance chapter. I didn't get the meaning of the phrase


Some extra info you may find useful:

* Thunar should get network support for sftp/smb/ftp in XFCE 4.8 (well, if
it's ready by then, but I'm pretty optimistic – thanks to  Jannis Pohlmann's
work for that)!

* Xubuntu requires 256 MB to run decently, but with some tweaking and if you
disable some daemons in Applications -> Settings -> Session & Boot (or
something similar.. :p), then AutoStart tab, and if you disable useless
services in Applications -> System -> Services, you can get it to run on
128MB RAM hardware with a fair amount of swap, too. You'll very likely need
the AlternateCD to install though, for any machine under 192MB ram.

* I would also like to note that all multimedia related questions (codecs by
default, flash, etc) have to respect a rule: Ubuntu requires that the
software on the CD is free and can be legally shipped to restrictive
countries such as the USA and Japan, so it's the reason why they're not
installed by default on any Ubuntu CD.


Thank you for that review you did. As a contributor to Xubuntu, I
appreciated it a lot. :) If you ever wanna write about the Xubuntu
development, XFCE or similar topics, feel free to jump in #xubuntu-devel for
questions, or to bother knome on irc.freenode.net. It'd be awesome to have
articles to present the developers' work during the development cycle. ;)

Cheers,

2009/11/10 Cody A.W. Somerville <cody-somerville at ubuntu.com>

> For those not subscribed to xubuntu-users.
>
> Xubuntu 9.10 is getting a lot of good reviews. Good work everyone!
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Randy <Randy at 1800ubuntu.com>
> Date: Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 8:17 AM
> Subject: [xubuntu-users] Review of Xubuntu 9.10
> To: Xubuntu Help and User Discussions <xubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>
>
> I have started a new site for Ubuntu (all flavors) for beginners.  Just
> wanted to let you know I posted a postive review of Xubuntu yesterday
> (http://1800ubuntu.com/ubuntu-flavors/24-xubuntu-910-review.html), and
> thank the any of the developers on this list for an excellent distro of
> Linux.  I've been an Ubuntu user for quite some time, and as a result of
> the review experience I plan to switch to Xubuntu full-time on my main
> machine as soon as I can get some hardware to keep a copy of Ubuntu
> running for article reference.  Anyway, thanks again, and if any of you
> guys get a chance to read the review, I'd appreciate your letting me
> know if it contains any inacuracies.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
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>
>
> --
> Cody A.W. Somerville
> Software Systems Release Engineer
> Foundations Team
> Custom Engineering Solutions Group
> Canonical OEM Services
> Phone: +1-781-850-2087
> Cell: +1-506-471-8402
> Email: cody.somerville at canonical.com
>
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> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
>
>


-- 
Steve Dodier
Student at École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Bourges
Free Software Developer
OpenPGP : 1B6B1670
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