19 August 2013

LXLE (Lubuntu) 12.04.2 LTS 64bit Review : Fast ,efficient , beautiful "Diaspora" of Lubuntu and extended Long term support(5 years) life for distro.

LXLE Lxde is a Light fast desktop remastered version of lubuntu using ubuntu LTS  shell  based distro for older hardware support as well as  it covers most users' everyday needs by providing a good selection of default applications, and it adds useful modifications and tweaks to improve performance and functions.




Actually Lubuntu is one of my favourite distro actually running one of the  clone of lubuntu ie wattos on one of my pc's .So I was interested to see how good actually this distro is ?.By name its an lubuntu extended edition ie long term version of lubuntu running on ubuntu os .  So actually downloaded the os made a live usb and started to boot from my Dell inspiron laptop to see  what the difference between lubuntu 13.04 and lxle 12.04 edition.



LXLE, is a Lubuntu  based LXDE version of Ubuntu that is lightweight and focuses on speed and lower end systems.The LXDE desktop is lightweight and plain compared to that of Ubuntu’s Unity Dekstop. There is no Unity task bar, no HUD but  still a nice desktop environment to use and so it doesn't matter it has power pack ability  or not.



So lets start up  the installer after live booting Distro you come up with beautiful looking wallpaper and conky hud which looks aesthetic beautiful  . so now cliking lxle installer icon  installer seems to be same as of ubuntu  installaer and it  is simple and straightforward and awesomely fast .Actually who know to install ubuntu also know lubuntu installation since both are same only themes and icons changed up .Installation took about 13 minutes for me including download of multimedia codecs .





  I had not uploaded installer photos completly  as its same as ubuntu only to show it Added it .

Hardware integration

wifi , touchpad etc worked well within my use for week and seems it has well configured hardware integration .Also brightness keys worked but keys for volume ie FN+F11/F12 didn't worked for me .



LXLE took about 220 MB RAM and 1-5% CPU usage to boot the default desktop with task manager running. In RAM consumption user experience is pretty good in it . The OS is pretty fast and never lags.



Applications

LXLE 12.04 has more-or-less the similar set of applications  as compared to previous releases as,

**Office:  Document viewer , homebank ,libre office 4.10.4 ., fbreader .
 **Internet:  Pidgin,claws mail, filezilla , firefox , flush , liferea , linphone , remote desktop viewer , uget , xchat Irc .
**Graphics:Document viewer ,font manager , Gimp , shotwell , simple image reducer , simple scan.
**Multimedia:  guvcview webcam,brasero ,Audacity , guadyene , minitube , movie player totem, asunder ,Openshot ,Pithos , winff .
**Accessories: Archive manager, Calculator, Xpad, Roxterm , clamtk ,Fast forecast , gnome commander , parcelite , random wallpaper , screenshot etc.
**And many time-pass games .



Application as seen resembles more about xfce based distros than purely lubuntu as also heavier then lubuntu apps but in terms of productivity ie in day to day use it has all the necessary apps for computing needs .While LXLE Lubuntu  is based on Ubuntu, it does not contain it’s full list of packages. IT uses Lubuntu Software Centre as the default package manager, and as standard only contains about half of what’s available in Ubuntu.





 Multimedia is quite rich with  totem player and played my all videos  correctly as codecs are pre-installed . If you want vlc it can be found in default repos .




I found Guadyene music players actually as good and better than Audacious in lubuntu.



Wallpapers available in LXLE are many around 50 best looking wallpaper but didn't find it specific to brands .Graphics section is quite  rich with as it include GIMP picture editor and shotwell   which is almost complete for most of your needs.






If you are missing ubuntu like hud interface then on same position a dock is enabled by default to search and navigate items efficiently as shown below



LXLE file manager  and it comes with PCManFM  1.0.1


Lubuntu LXLE has all the bell and whistles to provide flexibility of themes, fonts, setting up keyboard and mouse, and other setting adjustments everything there but  it its not integrated if it happens then it can rival the xubuntu and other lightweight distros Like all lxde, Lxle comes with openbox settings manager just makes your life easy.Lubuntu  LXLE lacks integrated settings manager , hope that developers take notice of it and come up with good integrated manager in next version.



Lubuntu Lxle uses lubuntu  software centre Gui than Ubuntu software center but it requires more steps to install applications than the ubuntu ones . I feel something like deepin software centre or ROSA LXde software centre  should be adopted here .Also synaptic there to manage software stuff.




I didn't had any issue when going through Indian language websites as I could easily read it which I was not able to do it  in Rosa desktop fresh which I reviewed earlier .

http://gujaratsamachar.com/



LXLE Lubuntu beats any Ubuntu distro on resource usage, fast  pace performance and some other screenshots.














TIME TO CONCLUSION

I am using wattos R7  in one of my production laptops and should I upgrade to LXLE yes may be .It is a pretty rich collection of  applications  and quite handy for daily usage if you just use browsing net then just spice up laptop to dual boot with win 7 /8and Lubuntu Lxle . You will feel how light it is and just will increase your lifespan of laptop and good for notebooks which has low ram.

Further if you are familiar with fancy Ubuntu desktop and folks coming from ubuntu will really miss out that apart from that its best desktop in terms of fast responsiveness and performance than ubuntu's surely You will enjoy it .Actually slogan Of  LXLE is Lubuntu extra life extension its good but in terms of brand aesthetic and icon themes it just resembles Lubuntu nothing changed to Lxle brand icons .

THINGS TO NOTICE
 Lubuntu gets the standard 18 months of support as it is not an LTS (Long Term Support) certified distribution where as Lxle lubuntu is just opposite of it and support for this distribution is maintained for 5 years as its uses ubuntu LTS core thats good for users who need lightweight long term distribution  .

Just try it as  an LTS release and targeted to lightweight user, but then also just try and try if it works for you will feel in love with a beautiful speedy remix of Lubuntu distro LXLE .

U can try it using ,

1. usb transfer.
2. unetbootin

NOTE 


If  you have any issue just visit their forum you will get answered to all your queries .

http://lxle.net/

You can download both 32bit and 64 bit LXLE lxde from here.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxle/files/ 

2 comments:

  1. I tried Lxle on my Asus EeePC900.
    What a bummer :
    "can not mount /dev/loop0 ( /cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs ) on //filesystem.squashfs"

    USB stick written with dd, imagewriter and unetbootin.
    OS : Debian stable

    If any one knows how to fix this i would be very happy

    ReplyDelete
  2. I used hybridiso and dd to dd the iso to a stick.
    http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/iso2usb

    ReplyDelete