Lubuntu ISO images are Available via Official Ubuntu Servers (Finally!)

Lubuntu is an excellent, Ubuntu Linux based GNU/Linux distribution that comes with the LXDE desktop which is at the moment is one of the fastest, light-weight desktops out there (even faster than XFCE). Although it was started as a derivative rather than an official part of Ubuntu but since Ubuntu did miss the LXDE desktop version in their long list of other options such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu... soon after the initial release of the Ubuntu 11.04 release Mark Shuttleworth said that now they'll consider treating Lubuntu as one of their "own", soon enough.

I think that pretty much became a reality for the Lubuntu developers since from now on we can download Lubuntu from the official Ubuntu servers!. Now before you're gonna go ahead and download please be aware of the fact that, according to the official announcement these images are not quite ready yet and are missing splash images, over sized (over 800MB in size thus won't fit in a CD!) and won't even load the default desktop session, etc. In simple terms, they are not stable.  

Anyhow you can still use them using a USB drive or DVD, etc... and these images currently have ...

*. Chromium web browser (well I guess it's better at low resources rather than Firefox, or maybe not).

*. Openbox as the window manager.

*. PC Man, the default file manager of the LXDE desktop, which is quite fast and resembles a "lighter" version of both Nautilus and Thunar.

*. Abiword and Gnumeric (excellent spreadsheet application which is not that famous thanks to both LibreOffice and OpenOffice :D).

*. Pidgin as the default IM client.

*. Gnome mplayer as the multimedia player (excellent front-end that uses the MPLayer "engine").

*. Audacious as the audio player.

And also not just the LXDE desktop but you'll also get some portions of the Gnome desktop such as file-roller (archive manager in Gnome) and Gnome-Keyring (a password keeper). Well, that's about it mates!. But as said these are the daily build ISO images and are certainly not stable at the moment. So use it at your own risk ;-)... (seriously!). Oh and congratulations to the Lubuntu Geeks as well, finally, you made it!.

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Vanillux - An Ubuntu Based GNU/Linux Distribution that Comes With Gnome3!

Since we're gonna be, somewhat missing the "Gnome support" in the future versions of Ubuntu (starting with the 11.10, although it'll still be officially supported through online repositoreis but not in the CD/DVD) it's about time that someone comes up with GNU/Linux distribution that's based on Ubuntu as the "core" yet uses the Gnome 3 or the Shell as the default desktop rather than the Unity interface.

It's called Vanillux and it's so new at the moment that it's not stable thus not recommended for everyday usage. Now to be honest I haven't tried it (yet) but the thing that got me excited, as said, it uses Ubuntu as the core + supports Gnome desktop only (both the classic and the new Shell). So basically if you (like me) happened to both hate and love Ubuntu at the same time then I'm pretty sure that could be the sort of a community that is building the Vanillux Linux at the moment.

According to their home page the aim is pretty much straight forward, quoting...

"Contrary to most other OS suppliers out there, our goal is not to take large amounts of market share; Our goal is to keep our users happy and involved, regardless of their numbers..."

Nice and clean Gnome 3 desktop...

Now they have a downloadable ISO images but according to themselves they are a bit troublesome at the moment. Because of a possible "bug" with the ubiquity (Ubuntu's installing wizard) if you use those ISO files you cannot install the OS into the HDD but since they're liveCDs you can enjoy experiencing the OS nonetheless.

By default it does not come with a lot of applications since again according to the developers own words...

"The basic Vanillux desktop is simple and only includes the basic to get you running..."

Although I'm not entirely sure about all the software packages and their version (as said I haven't used it) but you'll get ...

*. Gnome 3 as the primary desktop.

*. Also the classic Gnome version (for those of us with slower hardware, you ain't alone in that :D).

*. Chromium web browser rather than the Firefox.

*. VLC and another media player (so that we can run proprietary codecs/files by default, man what A relief!)...

If you want to get more software such as LibreOffice and Flash, etc for the Vanillux OS then you can do so by using their online repositories. As said the LiveCD version does not let you install it because of a bug.

But if you want to install it permanently then you'll have to install the most basic version of Ubuntu using the minimal installation CD and then (make sure you have a faster Internet connection) after the installation issue the below command in the Command-line environment.

wget http://dl.vanillux.org/ubuntu-vanillux/vanillux-install.sh && chmod +x vanillux-install.sh && sudo ./vanillux-install.sh

This script, according to their wikipage is designed to automatically install the Vanillux graphical desktop and the applications. So all you gotta do is just run the script. Other things like System requirements are unknown (I didn't find them on the site) but they do have some nice screenshots at the moment. Although it would be nice that they could give the system requirements (I understand that it's might be too early for that but...).

But as a final note, it's no way in its final stages, only experimental at the moment so use it at your own risk. In the mean time if you want one of the most secure and stable GNU/Linux distributions but willing to let go of the need of having latest software versions, etc then I highly recommend the latest CentOS 6.0.

Anyhow, I'd like to wish good luck to the Vanillux developers one more time, Oh one more thing I almost forgot!. You can get the latest versions of the full ISO images from this FTP page. Good luck.

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Meet the "Ping-Eee OS 11.04" : Netbook Optimized Version from Pinguy OS!

Netbooks are really popular these days. Although both Laptops and Netbooks are a lot alike each other but Netbooks can be considered the more "lighter" version of the conventional Laptop. They're more light in weight, cost less (not always though), thinner, small in size and have a longer battery life are the usual advantageous in general.

Although on the down-side they're usually a bit low in performance because of the RAM, CPU and the GPU + if you're a touch typist, then most wouldn't like that fact that they come with smaller keyboards (again not on all the models, there are few Asus and others that comes with 95% of the standard keyboard size anyway).

Anyhow, unless you're going to use it for a certain purpose like video encoding which needs a lot of system resources then having a Netbook optimized operating system is the ideal environment for a Netbooks for speeding-up things a bit.

This is why some GNU/Linux distributions come with a separate version for the Netbooks with software packages optimized for those lower-end hardware, etc. The Ubuntu Netbook edition is the most popular example, although sometime ago they decided to stop develop it as a separate project and merge it into the Unity desktop which will behave more and more like a touch-sensitive device optimized OS in the future.

Anyhow, following the trend Pinguy OS developers also have come up with their own version which is optimized for netbooks called Ping-Eee OS 11.04. If you haven't heard, then Pinguy OS is another Ubuntu derivative that works out of the box. Meaning that it comes preloaded with all the proprietary codecs installed (including Java, etc) which is ideal if you don't have an internet connection available.  

According to the Ping-Eee OS release forum thread, the OS was built (compiled, etc) using ASUS Eee 901 (Asus famous netbook brand name - Eee). Due to bit high memory consumption, Rhythmbox is replaced with Banshee instead. Other popular applications that's included in the default Pinguy OS such as Gnome DO, Glipper and Vineyard are also removed from the netbook edition.

Since most netbooks does not have a CD/DVD burner, burning utilities are also "skipped". The desktop looks clean and at the bottom has the popular application dock, Docky. I haven't installed the OS so cannot say much about the actual performance and I couldn't find a system requirements link either :/.

The downloadable ISO file has a size of 1.38GB which can be obtained from this page. Good luck oh and I should be thankful for Andrew from Webupd8 for the news.

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