Ubuntu.
However, my past experience with Ubuntu Desktop told me that GNOME was becoming too re
source intensive for my current PC. Its an old AMD Athlon XP 1.2GHz, with 1GB PC2700 RAM, 8x AGP Nvidia Geforce FX 5600 graphics, Sound Blaster Live sound card, 160GB ATA-133 hard drive, and 16 DVD-RW. I built it many years ago and its go through several motherboard changes since then. I didn't want to deal with the hassles of Windows XP, keeping anti-virus software up to date, and most software is moving to the new versions of Windows as XP is slowly being phased out by Windows 7. I didn't need the headaches, so I went with an operating system I actually enjoyed using and that was Ubuntu. Or, to be more accurate the official derivative known as Xubuntu (pronounced zu-buntu).
Xubuntu is not developed by the UK company Canonical but a third party group who are officially recognized by Canonical. Canonical offers support for Xubuntu in their online forums and email mailing lists. The main difference between Ubuntu Desktop and Xubuntu is the default desktop environment. Xubuntu uses XFCE, a very popular lightweight desktop environment which is based on GTK+. GTK+ is a GUI runtime library used by a lot of s
oftware to generate a graphical interface. The GIMP uses GTK+ to create its windows. Because of this XFCE uses very little memory and places very little demand on the processor. At the same time it has the look and feel of GNOME used on Ubuntu Desktop with only a few noticeable differences. The Notification Area, a small envelope shaped icon on the system tray used for email, Twitter, Facebook, and instant messenger notifications is missing. There are only two menus instead of three.
The menus are...
Applications - A menu of the installed software listed in categories; Accessories, Games, Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Office, and System. It is here you will also find the Ubuntu Software Center, an icon for the help system, and a icon for logging out or shutting down the computer.
Places - A listing of folders in your Home directory and all of hard drives and removable drives currently attached to your computer.
The System menu, which is normally separate in Ubuntu Desktop is incorporated into the Applications menu in Xubuntu. Xubuntu also places several configuration screens into a Control Panel like window called the XFCE 4 Settings Manager.
The XFCE 4 Settings Manager replaces the Preferences menu you'd find in Ubuntu Desktop. The Settings menu on the Applications menu replaces the Administration menu from Ubuntu Desktop.
On my old PC Xubuntu runs very fast, and boots very fast. Time from system power-on to login screen is less then 10 seconds, counting the slow as hell BIOS screens. From login screen to usable desktop is 1 to 2 seconds. Everything loads really fast, the menus are snappy, and nothing lags anywhere. There are a few instances where you do see some lag. The Thunar file manager lags a little on huge file transfers. Like when I moved my massive 1.3GB anime wallpaper collection into my Pictures folder in my Home directory from my backup drive. Also, when installing software from the Ubuntu Software Center the windows will lag but the system as a whole will not. These are tiny quirks which aren't deal breakers. This is an old system and its running really well with this operating system.
Xubuntu comes pre-installed with a lot of nice software. Much of it is geared towards low-system-resource usage so instead of OpenOffice.org you get Abiword and Gnumbers for your word processor and spreadsheet. There's nothing stopping you from install OpenOffice.org and it will run on this old system fairly well. AbiWord isn't bad, its a great word processor that has a huge fan following and it indeed uses very little in the way of system resources. It starts fast, the second I click its icon in the menu its on my screen and it loads OpenOffice.org .odt OpenDocument Text files just as fast. For getting out onto the web Xubuntu uses Firefox. Not exactly the most lightweight of browsers, so I installed Chromium. This is the open source web browser that Google Chrome is built from, and it still supports Google Sync so I was able instantly get back all of my bookmarks, extensions, passwords, and even the visual theme I was using before. Instead of Gwibber the Pidgin instant messenger used. It still works with all of the major networks: ie; MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, ICQ), but doesn't connect to Facebook and Twitter like Gwibber does. You get Transmission for Torrents, which is by far the best Bittorrent client for Linux hands down. For email Thunderbird is installed instead of Evolution, which is the Ubuntu Desktop default. For burning CDs or DVDs you get Xburn. It not as feature rich as K3B which you find on Ubuntu Desktop but it is lightweight and serves its purpose. There is also Mousepad, the default text editor for XFCE which is basically like Notepad for Windows, and Catfish which is a search tool that offers up features that file searches on Windows and most other operating systems usually don't give you.
Overall, everything runs really fast. I was able to enjoy a Youtube video using Flash. I have not yet tested HTML5 video in the Chromium browser yet. This is something I couldn't do with Ubuntu Desktop, even with the benefit of hardware acceleration. When visiting Gmail in Chromium its not as laggy, and is actually less laggy than when I was using Chrome on Peppermint One. I am also able to play all of my video files on my 1TB USB drive. Xubuntu uses the Parole Media Player, a lightweight media player that uses the GStreamer framework in Linux for handling multimedia (sound, video and sometimes graphics). Its fairly decent at playing most video formats and DVDs, but I installed VLC because it supports far more video formats and is better at playing DVDs. VLC isn't heavy on resources either and its one of the most popular open source media players around. For music you get the Exaile, which I'm familiar with because it was also included with Peppermint One. Its a decent iTunes like music player that runs smoothly and will also play Shoutcast Internet radio streams.
For graphics Xubuntu offers The GIMP, a professional level photo editor with all the bells and whistles you'd find on Adobe Photoshop. There is Ristretto, a tiny lightweight image viewer, and Simple Scan which works if you have a scanner. Ubuntu works with a lot of USB based scanners so you could easily go to the store, buy one, bring it home, and it will most likely work.
I even plugged in my very generic Playstation 2 to USB adapter in and it works. I'm able to use it with native Linux games but it doesn't work with anything I run with Wine. Wine is software that mimics a Windows environment for running Windows programs and games on Linux. I installed Steam, downloaded Final Fantasy XI and was able to get it to run and log into the server. The game runs very choppy but its not really the fault of Linux. FFXI uses very little GPU optimization and so its very CPU intensive. If I had a more powerful processor on this computer it world run better. I can upgrade to a 2GB AMD Athlon XP or Sempron for very little money so I may do that. FFXI didn't run all that well when I was running under Windows XP, so its no real surprise it doesn't perform well under Wine. I'll post an update after I upgrade my CPU. Even getting our color laser printer work was easy. I didn't even have to download drivers.I've only been using Xubuntu for about a day now. Overall, its been much easier to customize to my own preferences than Peppermint One had been. XFCE even has a built-in feature for changing your wallpaper from a list so I didn't have to go hunting for one myself. The installation and setup were pleasant experiences. The installation was very easy to follow using plain English explanations of what was happening and the OS boots very fast. I'll post an update of my experience with Xubuntu in a few months.
If you want to try Xubuntu yourself you can without making any changes to your computer. Get a copy of the LiveCD, burn a copy for yourself and your friends, and test it out. You can even install it like an application in Windows without needing to change your disk partitions so you can boot Xubuntu without making changes to your hard drive. I think you'll like it. If you have an old computer that's gathering dust in your closet, bring it back to life by using Xubuntu and make it usable again.
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