Ubuntu Linux has millions of fans. What’s not to like? A
free operating system with ten thousand free applications, websites covering everything you might
ever want to know, tutorials, active forums, and more. Yet for all these benefits, situations pop up when you want a
faster, lighter operating system. Perhaps
you have an older computer, or maybe a netbook or
a mobile device. Wouldn’t it be great
to have a lightweight Ubuntu?
That day has finally arrived. Lubuntu offers a way to stay in the Ubuntu family — with a product that performs better and uses
fewer resources.This article details how Lubuntu differs from Ubuntu. It also compares
Lubuntu to other lightweight Linuxes. It focuses on Lubuntu 10.04,
which is based on Ubuntu’s 10.04 Long Term Support release.
(Lubuntu 10.10 is the latest release, with 11.04 due out
at the end of April.) Sample screenshots
follow the article.
The Criteria
Before we start, here’s where I’m coming from. As per previous articles
in this series at OS News, my interest in lightweight operating systems
stems from my activity in refurbishing computers for charity. The best
software for this purpose is:
- Resource light — charitable donations are between five and ten years old
- Easy to use — recipients use donations with little or no training
- Easy to install and configure — volunteer labor doesn’t like complexity or wasting time
- Free — charities don’t have money to buy software
- Open source — commercial licensing agreements unduely restrict install and distribution procedures
- Good support — this is why I favor the LTS (Long Term Support) releases in the Ubuntu family
In future OS News articles, I’ll review competing low-end distros like Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. All my reviews judge by these criteria.
How Lubuntu Differs From Ubuntu
Lubuntu changes Ubuntu in three major respects to become a faster,
lighter
system:
replaces
GNOME
2. Default daemons and services are paired down to the minimum
3. Faster, lighter default applications replace Ubuntu’s default applications
Let’s discuss each of these techniques.
LXDE — The graphical user
interface or GUI is the most resource-intense component of consumer
operating systems. Lubuntu tackles this challenge head-on by using as
its default the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment or LXDE. LXDE replaces
Ubuntu’s easy to use but resource-hungry GNOME.
LXDE uses less memory than GNOME for typical workloads. Its twenty or
so components are loosely integrated, so they can run independent of
one another, saving resources. The Openbox window manager
is especially important from the resource standpoint. This
comparison
of popular window managers shows that Openbox yields a full range
of features at a very modest resource cost.
From the usability standpoint, LXDE is less sophisticated than
Ubuntu’s GNOME desktop. But it’s nearly as easy to use. You can
still add desktop icons, panels, panel applets, and the like.
And you can quickly customize your desktop. The first time I used Lubuntu, it only took me a few
minutes to alter its default interface to my preferred style.
Minimal Daemons — You can
configure either Lubuntu or Ubuntu to start up whatever daemons or
services
you prefer. By default, Lubuntu starts many fewer than Ubuntu.
You can view the Lubuntu startup applications by entering:
Session Settings -> Automatically Started Applications (Tab)
The equivalent under Ubuntu is:
Applications -> Startup Programs (Tab)
In older Ubuntu releases you can also look under the “Services” panel:
By pairing down Ubuntu’s default startup programs, Lubuntu boots
lean and mean. You can always add additional services if you need them
by navigating to the panels referenced here.
Lighter Applications —
While Lubuntu uses less memory than Ubuntu at idle, where you really
see
its utility is when you open many applications concurrently. Since the
apps require less memory than their Ubuntu equivalents, the cumulative
effect is a faster, more performant system.
I especially like the file manager, PCMan, an LXDE
component. I’ve found it
visibly faster than Ubuntu’s Nautilus on older computers, with their
limited memory and slow PATA/IDE hard drives.
GNOME Office
replaces Ubuntu’s OpenOffice, so Lubuntu comes with
AbiWord and Gnumeric, instead of OpenOffice Writer and Calc. Lubuntu
bundles no equivalent to Ubuntu’s presentation tool, OpenOffice
Impress. Lubuntu also includes the handy Osmo
personal organizer and calendar.
The theme of lighter apps runs throughout Lubuntu — Leafpad replaces
Ubuntu’s Gedit, LXTerminal is included instead of GNOME Terminal,
Sylpheed handles
email instead of Evolution, and the Xfce4 Taskmanager tracks
performance instead of
Ubuntu’s System
Monitor.
In a move that has inspired controversy in web forums, Lubuntu uses Chromium
as its default browser instead of Firefox. To me Chromium seems a
bit faster than Firefox on low-end computers. Its clean,
simple, intuitive interface certainly fits the Lubuntu emphasis on ease of use.
Of course, if you prefer Firefox or any other application that is not bundled with Lubuntu, you can easily
install it. Lubuntu uses the same Synaptic Package Manager and accesses
all the same software repositories as Ubuntu. So you could start out
by installing Lubuntu as a small, efficient operating
system, then cherry-pick critical Ubuntu apps you
require from
the shared repositories. You’ll get the quick system you want without the
overhead of the applications and daemons you don’t need.
Resource Use
Lubuntu’s goal is efficient resource use. So let’s measure it.
Lubuntu bundles the Xfce4 Taskmanager
for measuring resource use, instead of Ubuntu’s System Monitor. Linux
line commands like free, top, vmstat, and
df can also be handy.
Let’s look at some numbers:
| Download File Size: |
Disk Install: | Memory Use: | |
| Ubuntu 10.04 |
686 m | 3 – 5 g | 110 – 250 m |
| Lubuntu 10.04 |
521 m | 1 – 2 g | 60 – 130 m |
| Puppy 5.1 |
130 m | 500 – 1000 m * | 30 – 120 m |
| Damn Small Linux 4.4.10 |
50 m | 200 – 300 m * | 25 – 100 m |
* For a “full install.” A “frugal install”
requires about the same space as the download. All measurements are by the author.
The size of the disk install will vary, depending on the apps you add
to
the base system. In rough terms
it’s fair to say that an Lubuntu
install consumes one-third to one-half of the disk space used by
Ubuntu. Want an exact number?
It varies by user, product release, and
what you add to the base install. The only way to get exact
numbers is to measure disk footprints for your own systems.
Lubuntu generally uses about half the
memory of
Ubuntu. But be careful again:
memory measurements vary because we’re talking the size of the
operating system plus loaded apps (we exclude the buffers or cache used
by the OS). Obviously this number could be all over the map depending on
the applications you start. And, how you use them. The numbers I list above reflect my
own typical use of these systems. Your numbers will vary depending on
your use of your computer.
If you collect your own measurements, you’ll immediately find
that certain apps eat up way more memory than others. For example,
browsers are famously ram-hungry. The more tabs you open, the more ram they eat. So if you compare memory use between
Linux distributions, open functionally-equivalent apps (and the same
number of tabs in the
browser) from a cold startup.
In my experience the upper
range of real memory used by Lubuntu corresponds to the lower end of
what Ubuntu consumes. Almost anyone
will find that Lubuntu uses
dramatically
less memory than
Ubuntu.
I added Puppy 5 to the chart as a directly competing product from
outside of
the Ubuntu family. I found Lubuntu’s memory use to be roughly similar to Puppy’s,
though Puppy uses less at initial load and at idle. Puppy has a much
smaller download file and installed disk
footprint.
I also added Damn Small Linux to the chart to bracket the numbers on
the low end in the same way that Ubuntu brackets them on the high end.
Comparing Lubuntu to DSL is really like comparing apples to oranges.
DSL uses way fewer resources. But it bundles fewer apps and doesn’t
offer anywhere near the same ease of use as Lubuntu. DSL is a great
tool for hobbyists and IT professionals, but it isn’t suitable for untutored computer users like Lubuntu.
My Experiences
I’ve had Ubuntu 8.x and 9.x running on five P-III’s and four P-IV’s
since those releases came out. Ubuntu
10.04 disappointed me on this older equipment. Due
to video issues it
didn’t
install, out of the box, on any
of the five P-III’s. It installed
successfully on all the P-IV’s but one, a Gateway Profile 4 All-In-One
PC. I eventually got Ubuntu 10.04 to run on all these computers but
it took some geeky tweaks. OS News readers could certainly implement these
techniques. But they are probably beyond skill of the average
computer consumer.
Lubuntu 10.04 installed right out-of-the-box on the three P-III’s I
still had access to. No tweaking required. It also ran immediately on
all of the P-IV’s, including the Gateway Profile 4.
I conclude that while Ubuntu runs great on P-IV’s, with
version 10.04, it finally leaves
P-III’s
behind. This makes sense because P-IV’s have been out since 2000
and P-III’s stopped production in 2003. Lubuntu appears to
pick
up the slack for P-III’s and may be a good alternative. Lubuntu will
run on systems with down to 128M of memory, but to install
it from Live CD you need at least 160M. (See the system requirements for details.)
I’ve really been impressed by Lubuntu’s snappy responsiveness on older
computers. The contrast to Ubuntu is noticeable. The personal rule of
thumb I’ve developed about when to use
Lubuntu versus Ubuntu is this:
- For P-IV’s or better with 512 M or more of DDR-1 memory, go with
Ubuntu
- For P-IV’s with lesser memory, and all P-III’s, go with Lubuntu
If you have an old machine in your attic or basement, Lubuntu is a
great tool to revive it and make it useful again.
In my tests Lubuntu provided a
nice, responsive system on all the old computers listed below. Machines
like these have little to no resale value and you can often pick up them up for free from friends, family, co-workers, Freecycle, or Craigslist. Pretty
amazing that Lubuntu makes them all useful, when you think about it!
| Processor: | CPU Speed: |
Memory: | Disk: |
| P-III | 550 mhz | 512 m (PC-100) | 20 g (PATA/IDE) |
| P-III | 933 mhz | 256 m (PC-133) | 40 g (PATA/IDE) |
| P-IV | 1.5 ghz | 512 m (PC-133) | 40 g (PATA/IDE) |
| P-IV | 2.4 ghz | 768 m (DDR-1) | 160 g (PATA/IDE) |
| Celeron | 2.6 ghz | 1 g (DDR-1) | 120 g (PATA/IDE) |
From the standpoint of charitable work, machines like these are valuable to
those who have no computer otherwise. (One
in four Americans do not own a computer.) They also make good secondary
machines for large families that have more kids than computers. I
know IT professionals who keep their old P-IV around as an
emergency backup if their current computer fails.
Lubuntu
fulfills an important role in the PC ecosystem. While these computers have virtually no resale value they still
provide value if placed and used appropriately. If you have
computer up to ten years old you don’t use, please donate it
to a charity like FreeGeek that will reuse it. Recyclers will only destroy it, then recycle the raw materials.
Comparison to other Lightweight Linuxes
Some web sites promote Xubuntu as a light alternative to Ubuntu. Xubuntu uses the XFCE interface
instead of GNOME and it bundles lighter apps than Ubuntu.
During the
8.x and 9.x releases I ran several benchmarks pitting Xubuntu against
Ubuntu. While Xubuntu generally used less memory than Ubuntu I wouldn’t
characterize the difference as significant. Xubuntu’s memory advantage
was small enough
— usually 0 to 20 m — that I wrote off Xubuntu as a tool to revive
older systems with too little memory to run Ubuntu.
This Linux Magazine article comparing Lubuntu,
Xubuntu, and Ubuntu reached the same conclusion. The Wikipedia article
on Xubuntu summarizes the situation by stating that “Testing has
concluded that Xubuntu 9.10 beta’s RAM usage actually is greater than
Ubuntu’s 9.10 beta with GNOME.” So
while Xubuntu is an excellent system, it didn’t contribute towards my goal
of making computers useful that are too resource-limited to run
Ubuntu.
U-lite is another possibility.
Like Lubuntu, U-lite is based on Ubuntu. It employs LXDE and bundles lightweight applications
into the base system. I didn’t test U-lite mainly because there
appears little possibility that it will become an official member of
the Ubuntu family. The project was originally called “Ubuntulite” but
changed its name following a communication
from Canonical Ltd. that the name violated Ubuntu trademarks. In
contrast, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, personally invited the Lubuntu
project to start up. The prospects appear
excellent for Lubuntu to become an official member of the
Ubuntu family soon.
(For example, you can already mark your question as pertaining to
Lubuntu in the official Ubuntu forum.) U-lite may be an excellent distro but it fell out of scope for this project.
Puppy
is an innovative light distro that consistently places among the top dozen
distros according to the popularity rankings at Distrowatch. Puppy
automatically loads completely into memory, and runs solely from there,
on any computer having 256 M or more. This eliminates slow disk and
CD/DVD access and speeds system performance.
Puppy’s resource consumption is less than or equal to Lubuntu’s, as shown in the chart. Puppy
achieves all this with ease of use I’ve found sufficient
for end users (as long as the system has been installed and configured
for them). I’ll review Puppy next month.
From the perspective of computer refurbishing, both Lubuntu and Puppy
are great candidates. It’s nice to have choices!
Older Computers?
One question I have about Lubuntu is whether it will run on computers
under 500 mhz that still meet its system requirements. This encompasses
Pentium II’s, early Celerons, and even some Pentium I’s.
Competing
distros take specific measures to support these older machines that Lubuntu
does not. For example, Puppy supports a “retro kernel” release in
parallel for each new version. You can run Puppy with either the retro
kernel or a current kernel. Damn Small Linux still uses the 2.4
kernel and offers the SYSLINUX boot loader for systems that can not
boot
ISOLINUX.
In
the worse case, if the current release of Puppy or
DSL won’t boot
on your old computer, you can go back and try older releases
through
five or six years of product evolution. I’ve sometimes
had to resort to this to pick up support for older devices. You can’t
do this
with Lubuntu. It’s new and was first released in 2010. To my
knowledge, it’s not specifically tested on old computers that it could,
theoretically, run on from the standpoint of system requirements.
What this means is that there are really two kinds of lightweight Linux
distributions. Some specifically support older computers, while others
offer current software for reasonably current machines that just happen
to be resource-light. I suspect that Lubuntu fits into the latter category.
If any readers have tried Lubuntu on sub-500 mhz computers please
share your experiences with us by posting a comment. Did Lubuntu boot without tweaking? Did it recognize your old
devices? Please post experiences with Lubuntu on
netbooks, too. I had only a single netbook to try it on and it worked fine.
Thanks for your feedback.
Ubuntu Means “Change” in Bantu
Does “Ubuntu” mean “change” in Bantu? Well, actually no. Ubuntu is named for the south African concept of “humanity towards others.”
But
in terms of operating system compatibility, Ubuntu does mean Change.
One of the Ubuntu family’s big advantages is that it quickly
capitalizes on new
technology. These are fast-moving distros. The downsides are occasional
incompatibility or disruptive change across releases.
In the last two years, the Ubuntu family has moved from the GRUB boot loader to
GRUB 2, to continually changing networking management tools, to eliminating
the xorg.conf configuration file and moving to RandR for video. Lately I’ve heard they may replace GDM with LightDM, move to more regular updates, replace X.org with Wayland, switch the user interface
from GNOME to Unity, and replace OpenOffice with LibreOffice.
These are changes to Ubuntu, not
Lubuntu. But Lubuntu follows Ubuntu and this philosophy of rapid change is fundamental to the Ubuntu family.
So consider your needs carefully when evaluating Lubuntu. Do you need rapid updates and improvements? The
Ubuntu family does a superior job in providing them. Or do you crave
stability and backward compatibility? In this case you may find
Ubuntu’s constant push for new technology and features annoying or burdensome.
Lubuntu Is a Winner
Lubuntu successfully extends the Ubuntu family to limited-resource
computers. I love its responsiveness on five to ten year old machines! The Lubuntu
team has clearly done an excellent job in figuring out how to preconfigure a
leaner, meaner Ubuntu.
While
Lubuntu is a faster, lighter alternative to Ubuntu, you still
get all the important Ubuntu benefits — the thousands of downloadable
applications,
the forums, the helpful websites,
the wikis, and more. You can get the best of both worlds by installing
Lubuntu, then adding any extra applications you need from the
Ubuntu software repositories.
If you
seek a resource-light, well-supported Linux, Lubuntu could be your solution.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who
specializes in
databases and operating systems. His hobby is computer refurbishing as
a form of social work and environmental contribution. You can reach him
at contactfci at the domain
name of sbcglobal (period) net.
| Lubuntu Links: |
| Website |
| Download |
| Wikipedia article |
| Another Review |
Previous Articles on
Computer Refurbishing
| 1. | Smart Reuse with Open Source |
How refurbishing defeats planned obsolescence |
| 2. | Scandal: Most “Recycled” Computers Are Not Recycled |
What really happens to many “recycled” computers? |
| 3. | How to Revitalize Mature Computers |
Overview of how to refurbish mature computers |
| 4. | How to Secure Windows |
A step-by-step procedure to secure Windows |
| 5. | How to Tune Up Windows |
How to tune Windows (any version) |
| 6. | How Microsoft Missed The Next Big Thing | How Microsoft missed the boat when it comes to the exploding popularity of small portable devices |
| 7. | How to Run Multiple Operating Systems | Describes and contrasts techniques to running multiple operating systems on a single computer |
Lubuntu 10.04 Screenshots
The Basic Screen
The initial Lubuntu desktop has no icons. Like Windows, the system menu
always
starts from the lower left-hand corner of the screen. (With LXDE — unlike XFCE or JWM — you
can’t right-click anywhere you like to bring up the menu.) This
screenshot
shows the Accessories bundled with Lubuntu:
Memory Use is Low
In this example I’ve opened mtPaint, AbiWord, Gnumeric, the Xfce4
Taskmanager, and the Chromium browser with three active tabs. Total
memory use:
114m. Wow!
The File Manager
The PCMan file manager replaces Ubuntu’s Nautilus. I’ve found it runs visibly
faster on slow computers. PCMan is an LXDE component. By
default Lubuntu dynamically mounts all partitions on all disks. This is consistent with Lubuntu’s excellent ease of use.
Monitoring System Resources
The Xfce4 Taskmanager is a comprehensive but easy-to-use tool for
managing system resources on a low-end box. It replaces Ubuntu’s System
Monitor.
Synaptic Package Manager
Lubuntu uses the same Synaptic Package Manager as Ubuntu. Here I am
searching Synaptic while trying to figure out how to take screenshots
by looking for an
appropriate package to install, since none is bundled with Lubuntu.
Turns out I
didn’t need to download anything. Lubuntu has the scrot line command. I used this
command to take all the screenshots you see here, with a delay of 10
seconds and the top
quality of
100%: scrot -d 10 -q 100 -u
Lubuntu is a nice upgrade for the original palmtops from Acer, the 701-4G. Access to more modern apps than the bastardised Xandros that ships with them, without negatively affecting the experience too much. It’s very tempting to migrate all our 701s to this … if only it didn’t take so long to install/configure 100 of them.
Unfortunately, there’s a small glitch with the Intel video driver that causes the entire screen to flicker/redraw when opening apps, or moving windows, and such. Not sure which version of Ubuntu brought this driver, but it’s a little annoying.
I debated using Lubuntu on my Acer 1005, but went with KDE4 and the plasma-netbook interface.
Acer ? As a former EeePC 701 owner, I’d rather say Asus
Ooops, you’re right.
if you have 100 identical machines, why don’t you just install it on one of them and use clonezilla or something similar to copy on the rest of them?
You’d still have to touch 100 machines.
We’re a diskless shop, where everything is installed on the server and accessed via NFS. Our desktop setup is “edit dhcpd.conf; turn on desktop”.
Schools bought the eeePCs against our wishes, so we’re very hands-off on them. Now that they’ve reached the limits of the Xandros install, they want them upgraded, but we really don’t have the time to spend on them.
Even 10 minutes per system to clone/test them … is a couple days of a tech’s time doing nothing but cloning.
We’re considering options for dealing with these over the summer, though.
Why don’t you make it part of a student computer class and have the students do it?
We’ve floated that suggestion a couple of times, but it’s always been shot down by either the teacher, the school, or the school board.
These are in elementary schools, where you’d think it would get students interested in technology by seeing the inner workings of an OS install … but it’s been poo-poohed by the higher ups.
Gotta love the education system. We’re dealing with overt cheating here in Atlanta, with the school board actively threatening teachers who attempt to report it. Makes me embarrassed to admit I live here, and I’m just in the metro area, not even the city limits.
As for the netbook issue, well if your team didn’t want them in the first place why did the school buy them? Do they not listen to their IT staff? Call me ornery, but I would approach the board like this: Let the kids help us install upgrades in a win-win scenario (educational and free), or buy us exactly what we recommend as suitable replacements and drain the budget in doing so.
You wouldn’t even need to go with Ubuntu based distros since you said it has video problems; you can create a fully customizable Tiny Core Linux image, or go with one of the Puppy Linux variants.
Yeah, you gotta love politics.
I’m a lower-man on the totem pole, so all I do is make the suggestions to management, provide options, and handle the follow-through on what they decide. Yeah, it’s not a perfect system, and rarely does the best solution get picked, but it’s what we have to work with.
I’m just waiting for enough of them to die that it becomes feasible to replace them all. Or for the teacher to leave and the replacement to not want to use them.
I run Ubuntu 10.4 on my main machine at home, and recently picked up a top-of-the-line G4 (PPC) Mac Mini (because I wanted a PPC machine, and didn’t want to have to haul around another tower), which was about to get the Ubuntu treatment.
Does Lubuntu support PPC? It seems it would be a better fit, as the G4 runs at only 1.5 Ghz, has a half-gig of RAM (and tops out at 1gig). Its probably equivalent to a fast PIII or so.
Don’t think so, Ubuntu dropped PPC support a while back.
Think that Fedora or Suse still support PPC. Theres always Yellow Dog.
The official ppc builds are gone, but there is a port over here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.04/release/
You can also find the newest release here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/10.10/release/
A minimal or netinstall is possible. You can get the lubuntu desktop then by typing apt-get install lubuntu-desktop. This should work pretty fine.
Ah, that sounds like it ought to do the trick!
Unofficial, but it works.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/maverick/release/
lubuntu will not install on a ppc because the default browser is chrome and that doesn’t have a ppc version. You can install ubuntu and then install the lxde desktop but it gets messy that way.
That makes me wonder: Chrome is RAM hungry (process separation and all goodness), so why would that be the default on machines choosing such a light weight window manager? Not expecting an answer, just wondering out loud. Thanks for the heads up though.
Probably because it runs well. Since it uses GTK+ instead of a scripting language like XUL+Javascript it tends to be more responsive than Firefox, especially on low end machines and especially on Linux.
It is believed by alot of Firefox users (as I did once) that freezing/stalling is a result of taking up more CPU & RAM resources. This is because Firefox has had bugs where it takes up 100% CPU on Windows and freezes. But if Chrome is taking up more resources than Firefox without freezing the cause must lay elsewhere.
I use the stable Debian PPC port with LXDE; http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.0/powerpc/iso-cd/debian-6.0…
Also, I thought the maintainer of U-Lite had joined the Lubuntu team but I see a post from him on the ulite.org from October…
And possibly MorphOS, you can get a free trial that works for 30 minutes as full version. (Per boot).
MorphOS is worth a try, OWB is a pretty good webrowser, a new version released today. The OS is fast, although it must be said, not for everyone. It’s not as rock solid as a stable Linux, or heck, OS X install, and there’s not a good flash player for it, but then I suppose there’s not a good flash player for PPC Linux either.
If you want you can download it and instructions from http://www.morphos-team.net/downloads.html
It works from the CD, Live CD style, so it’s worth a some of your time. you might like, or maybe not.
Debian.
Lubuntu’s goals are great, but I think they could be met with a program rather than another freaking distro.
Why not just write some sort of control panel / configuration manager type thing (yes I know synaptic) that removes the fat bits and replaces them with lean bits?
Same goes for all the other *buntus.
Choice is great, but I think it can be achieved with some collaboration. What I mean is I think it would be great if all the *buntu developers worked together a bit better, and come up with something sort of like Microsoft’s browser ballot box type thing to install the relevant bits.
Uh, it is just like that.
You can install any *buntu. Once installed, you just:
aptitude install lubuntu-desktop
aptitude purge kubuntu-desktop
Put any *buntu-desktop into the lines above to make it work.
Each “distro” is just a single meta-package in the standard Ubuntu repositories.
I actually put Lubuntu on a Thinkpad 570. This thing is a PII 366 with 192 MB RAM… hardly a powerhouse. Lubuntu is quite usable on the machine. I can do basic web browsing using a modern web browser, listen to music, play back most standard-def videos full screen, view and edit most documents… most everything you would do on any other machine. The only things it won’t do are Flash (which sucks under Linux in general), high-def video, and 3D games. All in all, I couldn’t be happier about how usable this 12 year old machine is.
Whoever thought was a good idea? Oy. Unity is a bit better in that regard.
On older computers, having everything “light”, is good ofcourse. But if you are the type that run “light” for maximum speed on modern computers, I’ve found a shaved kernel, to impact performance, in much a more noticable way, than just having a “light” distro. For instance, in my current config, I turned off everything I suspected to increase os-jitter. I can now run 0.363 latency in audio applications, on my firewire card, with little dropouts. On old computers this can ofcourse be good too, but you may want to leave a few of the features on, that I turned off then. Like swapfile, memory compaction and other things.. (http://www.paradoxuncreated.com/tmp/.config)
You _still_ haven’t read any of the papers on what “OS Jitter” is???
How many cores does your computer have?
If it’s less than 4, there’s _zero_ chance that “OS Jitter” is a concern.
You’re blaming something that has _nothing_ to do with the problems you are undoubtedly experiencing.
“Shaved”?
Please just post in Nyorsk or BokmÃ¥l. I’m sure I could do better with a some basic translation tools, like a dictionary and grammar guide.
I’m being _generous_ in trying to assume that it’s a language barrier causing all your posts to be utter nonsense.
I know LXDE has matured for a while, but i am pretty certain that Leszek Lesner has made Lubuntu videos on youtube for a certain while. ( i think for over a year ) And it feels like it is just gnome. The speed difference in my oppinion is not that different either.
If you want fast, easy to use and rather pretty, pick ubuntu net-boot, install amiwm and Xorg, slap a good wallpaper on it and pick the prettiest non-pixbuf gtk+theme you can find on gnome-look.org. Then install whatever apps you like, disable the system tray functionality on app basis, then learn to use the awsomeness of virtual screens in amiwm.
This is what i would do on a 500mhz pc, not use Lubuntu. But i digress, i am not like most other people on this matter.
Agree with you. Mini.iso is the way to go, though I’d personally go with a Debian netinstall if I wanted apt.
Slitaz would still get my vote over any other “out-of-the-box” distro for older hardware, though. Crux would be a good choice if you could find the time to get it configured.
Any recommendations?
Or better yet, any way to easily tell themm appart from the pixbuf/heavy ones??
Or does it mean using only gtk1 themes?
TIA
Edited 2011-03-01 23:32 UTC
Yes it is a bit old news since Lubuntu has been around for about a year or so.
I for one installed Debian “Lenny” from a net-install disk and installed Xorg plus LXDE, on a old Pentium II compatible with only 64 MiB EDO-RAM. Of course this isn’t a speed demon but hey it works 🙂
Thanks for your information on amiwm. Sounds Amigaish. Will give it a try.
The minimal system requirements for Lubuntu are 128 MiB RAM.
I usually tire of trying different *buntu distros, but I’ll bite on this one (I’m currently using Linux Mint – as I like the overall design).
Maybe this weekend I’ll throw Lubuntu on a couple of my shitty laptops (which I usually test Haiku on) and see how it runs.
GALPon MiniNo is better for ten years old computers, it’s impossible to install Lubuntu in my old Toshiba, for example, because Lubuntu shares kernel with Ubuntu and Ubuntu has its kernel optimized for new computers.
Minino is easy to use too, it has a lot of facilities for newbies (and for experts) users, that is not present in Lubuntu, Puppy or Damnsmall by default.
Minino is easy to install and really fast, and the most of hardware configuration is automatic like most of distributions.
It’s opensource and has long support, like Debian and share its repository 🙂
And it has a good support too.
Wiki: http://minino.galpon.org
Characteristics: http://minino.galpon.org/wiki/doku.php?id=galpon_minino_characteris…
Minino in action: http://gruvi.galpon.org/minino/miscelanea/promo.mpeg
Downloads: http://minino.galpon.org/wiki/doku.php?id=descargar_galpon_minino
Yet another Linux distribution… *yawn*
Someone seems to have forgotten to check if this already existed: http://www.xubuntu.org/
Also the hardware requirements are practically the same, so this is pretty pointless. You could probably just install the alternate desktop this uses from xubuntu too.
In my humble experience Lubuntu preforms a lot better then Xubuntu on older computers.
Someone seems to have forgotten to read the article before put up a comment..
It is a rather long article to read about just another distro though. So can hardly blaming him for not reading it all and just mention his observation.
In that case, he shouldn’t have been so assertive… as if he has read the article when in fact he hasn’t. That’s dumb.
I remember reading here and every other Linux site about not needing to have antivirus/malware in Linux because it was oh so secured!
I kept saying that obscurity on the desktop kept it secured. Now that Android (Linux) has become so popular with phones, the cat is out of the bag boys. Better get some protection for your phone or will be rooted and all data stolen.
Read this article and check your own phone:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/content/2011/03/maybe-apples-app-revi…
I understand the intent, but the article is, say… A bit one-sided ?
Oh, well, it’s the way phone OS manufacturers have chosen to go when they decided that they didn’t need strong security if they had an app store
you can’t patch stupid. If you download and run malicious code onto your machine it can and will hurt you no matter your OS. Social engineering and stupid users will always find a way to get bad code onto machines. This does not change the fact that Linux has fewer exploits and venerabilities compared to other OS as well as a better security model that limits the extent of the damage clueless users can do by mistake, and when exploits are found they tend to be fixed faster and in a more open manner. I see no new information that changes this.
TLDR: The best locks in the world won’t help you if you let the bad guy in willingly. And if you do, don’t blame the locks.
I like the attempt to quantify resource use in the comparisons (crude though it may be). This is what we need more of in OS News articles. Otherwise, too many opinions, not enough underlying evidence.
I have been using it for 3 months.
Great on my pc, great in vmware.
LXDE works well in terms of slimness, but in terms of light weight + elegance there is no beating the Enlightenment desktop. Bodhi Linux utilizes this and runs on hardware with as equally lows specs as Lubuntu does – http://www.bodhilinux.com/
Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland
“Ubuntu Linux has millions of fans. What’s not to like?”
Ouch, what a way to start an article… a lot of things could be listed as *not* to like about Ubuntu. I could list a bunch myself; distros like Linux Mint seem to agree and are doing excellent not following all of Ubuntu’s quirky ways. Otherwise, why would there be tons of Ubuntu-derivatives like there are now? Of course, on the other hand, Ubuntu does have many desired features and can provide a solid base OS to build new distros from.
So yeah… I would say that like anything, Ubuntu certainly has its flaws, as well as some desired traits. As for what’s not to like? Well, I’ll refrain from going over that again, and complaints are all over the Web… it’s certainly not ideal for everyone, and it has been straying further and further from my interest for the last several versions now. I honestly don’t really care about it any more, but some of its spawns are pretty nice.
I tried this on an older machine – 400 MHz Celeron with 256 MB of RAM. Would not even install. Would freeze after disk partition.
Gave up after a few tries, and installed Zenwalk Linux. Smooth and excellent performance.
Well, I think Lubuntu is quite a interesting distro for Windows converts. LXDE looks quite Win9x-ish. My Lover for example hates all those eye candy stuff on Win Vista/7, KDE etc..
Then I installed LXDE on Ubuntu on one of his laptops and he loved it.
There for IMO it’s a good decision of Canonical supporting it as a official branch.
Openbox FTW! Honestly, this is an incredible window manager. I love its speed and sheer simplicity. Apparently many projects are beginning to agree with me and are bundling it together with their releases. This is GREAT news!