Review of Xubuntu 13.04

Last week the regular series of Ubuntu Linux distributions were released. The only one that concerns me is Xubuntu because the XFCE desktop is my preference. I never was a fan of KDE and screw Unity.

The installation requires at least 5GB of hard drive space which automatically disqualifies it for the Asus EEE-PC challenge so I installed it on my MSI Wind netbook which I am currently writing this on. The first problem I had was that there was an incompatibility that prevented me from installing Google Chrome. However this is a Chrome issue and not a Xubuntu issue. There are two fixes. One is to install Chromium, which is the open source equivalent of Chrome, the other is to download the libudev0 dependency.

While I was trying to customize my install I noticed two programs that I find essential that were missing in the installation. Those were GDebi and Synaptic. These programs allow you to install things that aren’t in the Ubuntu depositories. Granted I could easily use the Ubuntu Software Center to get most of what I need but since this is an older and less powerful computer than current laptops I found the UI for the software center to be slow and kludgy. GDebi and Synaptic can both be downloaded from the software center of the terminal if you’re so inclined.

Other than that it’s a really solid distro. It does what it’s supposed to do with minimal fuss and is highly customizable.

Speaking of customization for my personal preferences I swapped out the lower XFCE dock with Cairo Dock, Audacious instead of gmusicbroowser, QBittorrent instead of Transmission and Gnome MPlayer instead of Parole.

Now that the new Ubuntu distros have been released it’s like Christmas for Ubuntu fans like myself. It means that in the next few weeks we should see new updates as well from the descendants of Ubuntu like Linux Mint, Zorin OS and my personal favorite Voyager.

Xubuntu gets the Trench Reynolds seal of approval. *bark bark*