WATTOS R7 x86-64 lxde review : Jack of all lightweight distro and old pc.

WattOS is a new lightweight Ubuntu-based operating system. It features Openbox, a light-weight, energy-efficient desktop environment. An Ubuntu based distro, WattOS uses Openbox and is optimised to be lightweight, low-power, and able to run on older machines .WattOS will be fast and easy, and now is the right time to rethink our energy use and computers in our daily lives. To be precise Use WattOS .

Why actually I reviewed this distro its exactly a lightweight distro based on ubuntu .In the past I had some issue with my computer and suddenly something went wrong so I was not able to install win xp on one of my computers at that  time .Its around 3 yrs back  so started searching some lightweight distros and start booted in live but nothing was booting but Wattos r4 just booted nicely  and through it  was able to restore my pc so still I kept a copy of Wattos r4 but now new version which I downloaded when I just used it is not as lighter than Wattos r4 surely . so I still fire my pc if I had issues with it and use Wattos r4 . As the name might suggest, it is also focused on low power usage and is said to work well with older and less powerful hardware.

But now its time to review Wattos R7 x86-64 based distro so created live usb and just  rebooted my pc and with a surprise a nice  green boot screen for login appeared . really one thing to say beauty of it has just risen from past version.

The 64bit system has the following items

Core system - Linux Kernel 3.8.0.21
File manager - PCManFM 1.1.0 (now includes gui based simple search!)
Graphics Editing - Pinta 1.3
Web Browsing (including flash support) - Chromium 25.0.1364.160
File transfer - Filezilla 3.6.0.2
BitTorrent client - Transmission 2.77
light word processing - Abiword 2.9.2
PDF viewing - ePDFViewer 0.1.8
Light spreadsheets - gnumeric 1.12.1
Music Player - Audacious 3.3.4
Web Cam - Cheese 3.6.2
Video/multimedia player - VLC 2.0.6
CD burning utility - XFBurn 0.4.3
Power management utilities like powertop to optimize settings, support for power
manangement features of laptops,

wattOS R7 Release notes

" wattOS R7 (release 7) is a remaster of ubuntu 13.04 and is fully compatible with ubuntu repositories. wattOS is nearing 5 years of being available as a distro. It is running a custom LXDE desktop with the utilities you would expect with as little fast as possible for the average user. The philosophy is to be minimal but functional and let you choose what you want to install but to give you a good basic OS with a foundation to customize how you like. wattOS also can support the fastest and newest systems with the 64bit multi-core systems and large RAM and performance requirements. "

IMPORTANT:
The liveCD has a default user name of "guest" (which you must type in)with a blank password. (just hit enter).



Installation is just simple where some steps are required actually language,keyboard,geographic location and location to install distro alongwith root and user password.It took me around just 4 minutes to install it on dell laptop .you can just check installation guide of ubuntu.

Tag line for WattOS is "light fast now"

Wattos background and it comes with PCManFM  1.1.0 and openbox obconf 2.0.4.

Actually in wattos R7 the main concerns where it still doesnt include any default email client and also screenshot was not included in live mode . Sure, a lot of people are now invested fully in web based email like Gmail, but most businesses still like to keep it on clients. You can always install one from the repos though, and while WattOS prefers lightweight software, you’re definitely not restricted to it.

While wattOS is based on Ubuntu, it does not contain it’s full list of packages. Instead of using the Software Centre, Synaptic is the default package manager, and as standard only contains about half of what’s available in Ubuntu. While that’s still over 40,000 packages, it may be missing one or two you’d desperately need.Also u can use gdebi for package installation from source.

Installation of the distro is quick and straightforward, using the Ubuntu installer directly from the Live environment. Unlike some other Ubuntu based distros, wattOS replaces all the branding, and just does away with the information panes that scroll in the Ubuntu installer after username and time zone are sorted out.It took me just 4 min to install thats sound amazing on my dell laptop.One thing surprises as ubuntu software centre is replaced by synaptic as package manager 0.80 exp2.

It has  launcher  classical which is default one.

The combination of lxde/openbox in Wattos R7 just works perfectly and extremely fast.the boot up speed of wattos R7 is really very fast as more and more computing hardware ships with powerful systems.I am  very impressed with the performance of the distro as its based on ubuntu 13.04 and changes made by it but it still lacks native email client and screenshot but nothing to complain more that can be avoided without sacrificing much usability . The remastered version  of ubuntu is first -class .In terms of aesthetic nothing has changed from past only login screen is something new .Aesthetic looks with a beautiful conky  widget .I just installed to show how it looks not installed by default.

All multimedia codecs and Adobe flashplugin are  not installed in the distro but mp3 and vlc  just works even on live boot. Except for Office (which is loaded with lightweight applications and doesn't have LibreOffice), the rest of the applications categories are quite rich. Special mention is to be made that firefox can be installed afterward but chromium is just sufficient. For multimedia, audacious player is one of my favorite and it worked really well with my mp3 collection. Further, VLC is pre-installed and it is capable of playing all the video formats - undoubtedly the best video player I have used.On youtube it just played videos very well .

wallpapers available in wattos only one.Graphics section is not rich with as it doesnt include GIMP picture editor but pinta fills gap.

Further, I am using wattos R7  in one of my production laptops and It is a pretty rich collection of light applications  and quite handy for daily usage if u just use browsing net then just spice up laptop with dual boot with win 7 /8and wattos R7  You will feel how light it is and just will increase Your lifespan of laptop.

Like all lxde, wattos  comes with openbox settings manager just makes your life easy.

Hardware integration

wifi , touchpad etc worked well within my use for week and seems it has well configured hardware integration .

when you logout screen just look like some screensaver playin in background.

wattos took about 200 MB RAM and 1-3% CPU usage to boot the default desktop with task manager running. In RAM consumption user experience is pretty good in wattos . The OS is pretty fast and never lags. now how well it detected my volume and brightness keys on dell laptop volume key working fine even brightness key performed well .

When it detects pendrive or external hdd how it looks n recognize it.

TIME TO CONCLUSION

I rate wattos as an impressive   lxde spin only 2 or 3 more needed apps like screenshot/ office and email client would have been included then it would be best in town of lxde .It actually performs better than lubuntu but lubuntu is more beautiful then wattos r7 .Actually other lxde spin like Pclinuxos and Rosa are much better in terms of apps and application centre but they consume more ram than wattos so surely wattos R7 is lightweight lxde in  town. wattOS LXDE is very easy to install and use even for a Linux novice. Low resource consumption and speed, I guess, will appeal to the more lightweight users.

Just try it but one caution as it is not an lts and targeted to lightweight user but then also just try n try if it works for u will feel in love with a beautiful distro.

u can try it using ,

1. unetbootin

NOTE

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

http://www.planetwatt.com/

you can download both 32bit n 64 bit wattos from here

http://www.planetwatt.com/pages/downloads