Starting Up With Xubuntu

Hello newbies, welcome to the world of Ubuntu [oh wait there…] Xubuntu! So what’s fancy about this distro. Well, I say, lightweight, then, in turn, lights up this tiny bulb in your brain faster computing speed, resource-saving and … (you guess what’s more).

Xubuntu is a variant of Ubuntu without GNOME as its default desktop environment. It comes with XFCE desktop environment, and X-F-C-E just pronounced as it is, is not an abbreviated word at all.

What’s special about ‘X’ in Xubuntu?

So you might’ve been hearing about Ubuntu from around your pals, the internet, from blogs or through social media and alas! Xubuntu kinds of get your mind fancying what’s X for and why is it prefixed to the word Ubuntu. To be honest, X in Xubuntu is not something “dangerous” as mostly depicted in movies [X-files, eh?]. It just means  

XFCE + Ubuntu core = Xubuntu.

By the way, XFCE is not the most lightweight desktop environment out there. There are others too: LXDE, Openbox, i3wm, etc. But let’s just get that out of the picture and focus on XFCE. Unlike other desktop environments, XFCE comes with modern applications instead of being “every application installed on this computer should be lightweight” which is the usual caveat with other environments during packaging. So in simple, you get to enjoy the Firefox web browser instead of Midori, LibreOffice suite instead of AbiWord and Gnumeric.

Recommended hardware

Every computer has different hardware specifications and that’s a very good reason to check out below if your hardware meets the requirements or not:

• RAM – 1GB
• ext4 partition – 20 GB
• PAE support – Required

Xubuntu can run well on a 512 MB RAM but that’s not recommended as you won’t be able to enjoy smooth computing.

What is nice about it?

Xubuntu works well on old computer hardware. It is preferred by Linux users who need enough computer resources (RAM is the usual answer) for their resource-intensive applications. Ubuntu Studio is a great example that comes with XFCE installed as its desktop environment. By the way, Xubuntu can be installed on newer platforms with the latest cool processors too.

What is not nice?

Well, there are some users who tend to vote towards cool looks rather than minimalism. I’m not implying XFCE is minimalistic! However, it lacks GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, etc when it comes to the visual look and feel: the animation, slightly heavy use of composition, cool layout in windowing, etc. But that’s the tradeoff when lightweight is considered a priority over computer resources.

Download Xubuntu 18.04

Conclusion

​There we go and let’s gear up one more step, download Xubuntu and test drive for yourself. In case you liked it why not recommend it to your friends, families or shout it out to the world by sharing this article on one of your social media platforms. Or you could let me know what you really liked about it in the comment section below. Be sure to sign up for Disqus if you haven’t. Till then Have a nice time 🙂