On October 13 2011, the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, 11.10 (codenamed Oneiric Ocelot), was released, along with all its derivatives, including Xubuntu. Keen-eyed readers may notice that my last Xubuntu review was a year ago, for Xubuntu 10.10 and that I seemingly ignored Xubuntu 11.04. Unfortunately, I was between houses when 11.04 (codenamed Natty Narwhal), by the time I was in my new house and had updated my machines, it seemed a bit late for a review.
Since my review last year, I have joined the team that produce Xubuntu, so have seen first hand the level of commitment and dedication that goes into each release. Other than the Ubuntu base system, upon which Xubuntu is built, the company behind Ubuntu, Canonical, do not contribute to the making of Xubuntu; all of the work is done by volunteers, giving up their free time so that others can benefit from what, in my opinion, is the best of all of the Ubuntu derivatives (and, since Ubuntu moved from the Gnome 2 desktop to their own Unity offering, it’s probably better than Ubuntu too).
I must admit that, as yet, I’ve not contributed to any major parts of Xubuntu, so I can’t claim much credit for the polished operating system that’s freely available to all, but if you do check out the documentation shipped with the system, or the Xubuntu.org website, I did proof-read those. From small acorns…, as they say 
OK, so that’s enough about me, so let’s get started with my review. Before I start, I should point out that I do have a reasonably customised system on my desktop and netbook, so my comments may not be totally relevant to a stock installation. I also update both machines by running an in-place upgrade, rather than a fresh install.
Issues with the Upgrade Process
- For some reason, the upgrade process installed Nautilus, the Gnome file manager, which then took control of the desktop on login. I’m not sure why Nautilus is needed and uninstalling it hasn’t caused me any problems so far.
- Ubuntu and Xubuntu switched from the GDM display manager to LightDM in 11.10 and both of my upgrades ended up with the Unity Greeter theme being used for the login screen, rather than the LightDM GTK Greeter theme, which should have been the default. This was easy enough to to fix (just edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and change “greeter-session=unity-greeter” to “greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter”), so thanks to all those people in the #xubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode who helped me sort it out.
- I also had some issues with loggin in via LightDM – whenever I tried my own login, the screen would just refresh back to the login screen, yet other logins worked fine. This was sorted by logging in on tty1 (just press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch, then Ctrl-Alt-F7 to switch back) and removing the .Xauthority file from my home directory, which seemed to have become corrupted somehow.
- Every time I logged in, the new on-screen keyboard application, Onboard, would start, with no apparent way of stopping this. It turns out that this is a known bug caused if you have set Xfce to load Gnome services on startup and can be corrected by switching this option off. Doing so has had no noticeable affect on my system.
New Software
- LightDM: As mentioned above, this release of Xubuntu switches GDM for LightDM and I have to say I think it’s a good decision (well, I do now I’ve got the default theme showing ). LightDM should be, as its name suggests, lighter on system resources, but I’ve not done any tests before and after to prove this. It is very customisable and I’ve already replaced the default background with my own desktop wallpaper, to make the login screen to desktop transition look smoother. This was achieved by editing /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf and changing the line starting “background=” to point at the image file to be used.
- Leafpad: Mousepad, the default text editor for Xubuntu ever since I started using it in 2008, has been replaced in this release by Leafpad. At first, I didn’t notice, because these two applications look identical. In fact, after an extensive search, the only difference I’ve found is that Leafpad offers a Print Preview feature and Mousepad doesn’t. They even used exactly the same the same memory footprint when opening the same file.
- Plymouth theme: OK, so Plymouth (the boot splash application) isn’t new, but this release is the first one that’s has a Xubuntu theme and it looks really good .
- gThumb: This replaced Ristretto as Xubuntu’s default image view, but I’d not really used either before, as my preferred image viewer is gPicView. gThumb has a few features that gPicView doesn’t, such as a pane showing thumbnails of all the images in the same directory as the image being viewed, plus a sidebar showing a directory tree and properties of the selected image and some basic editing functionality. This extra functionality comes at a price, however, and that price is screen real estate. gThumb displays images in a scrollable frame, with the thumbnail pane below it and the toolbar above, whereas gPicView defaults to displaying the image as full size as possible, with just a very small toolbar underneath, allowing you to navigate to the next / previous image in the directory (with no way to preview them), rotate / flip the image or start a slideshow of all the images in the directory. In that respect, it’s much more of a “one trick pony”, but that’s just what I want from an image viewer – the best view of an image, without other stuff getting in the way. I’ll keep gThumb for now, as it might prove a suitable alternative to the GIMP for basic image editing, but gPicView is staying as my defualt image viewer.
- Onboard: I’ve not used this yet, but see my note above on how to prevent it starting every time you log in.
- PasteBinIt: I’ve not used this yet, so can’t comment on it.
Notable Improvements
- Messaging menu: The Messaging menu, which in 11.04 only allowed you to launch your instant messaging client and view / respond to incoming instant messages, now allows you to set your online status and monitor your email accounts as well. I use Empathy as my IM client instead of the Xubuntu default of Pidgin and in 11.04 Empathy didn’t appear in the notification area as it was controlled by the messaging menu in the indicator area. Interestingly, it’s now back in the notification area, as well as in the messaging menu, which seems to be a backward step.
- Update Manager: The Update Manger now appears as an indicator applet in the indicator area, rather than in the notification area and provides the option to install updates directly from the drop-down menu, rather than having to launch the application first. I still prefer to do this, so that I can review what’s being installed, but, in another change, because I’m an admin user, I now no longer need to enter my password to install updates. This is by design, but I’m not sure yet how I feel about this.
So, that’s about it for my review; if you’d like to join in yourself, we hold a weekly meeting in the #xubuntu-devel channel on FreeNode. The meetings alternate between Sundays at 2200 UTC and Mondays at 1900 UTC, so join the Xubuntu Development Mailing List for more information.
