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Linux Cheat Sheet

Have a look at our Linux Cheat Sheet for quick one-liners, commands and tips.

With Ubuntu 14.04 closing in to the release date, which is set for April 17th, I took Lubuntu for a spin from the daily live ISO image. Lubuntu is the most lightweight distribution in the Ubuntu family (the other one being Xubuntu which uses Xfce), using LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment), as well as a set of applications intended to be low on resources.


Although light, Lubuntu bundles all the necessary applications needed to surf the web, edit documents, listen to music and watch movies, or chat. Well, LXDE is not exactly MATE, however to a certain degree it resembles the old GNOME 2.

It has been announced earlier in Ubuntu development that except for Ubuntu itself, all the flavors based on it will be Long-Term Support releases. This includes Lubuntu as well, which will benefit of three year-support.

So, let’s take a look at what this Lubuntu release brings.

The new default wallpaper was chosen after the Lubuntu Wallpaper Contest finished. Here is the default desktop as of April 11, 2014:

lubuntu_desktop

And below are the wallpapers which won the wallpaper contest, and which are included in Lubuntu 14.04:

wallpapers

The main focus of Lubuntu is to remain fast and easy to use, which it accomplishes pretty well. It comes with a bottom panel with several items by default: a classic menu to access your applications, a quick launch area, the taskbar, system tray, the clock and the logout entry.

The default applications include the Firefox web browser, Gnumeric spreadsheet application, Abiword rich-text processing tool, GNOME MPlayer video player, mtPaint painting program, Xfburn for burning CDs/DVDs and Audacious for playing music.

Firefox 28 – other choices could have included Midori or Chromium:

firefox

As an alternative to the more complex LibreOffice suite, Lubuntu ships with Abiword for rich-text processing and Gnumeric as a spreadsheet application. Both bundle enough features to get going, Abiword being less bloated and Gnumeric being quite powerful.

Abiword is fast on start-up and lighter than LibreOffice. If you need a fast word processor which still provides decent formatting tools, it is the perfect choice:

abiword

Lubuntu provides GNOME MPlayer for playing movies and other videos, which is based on the powerful MPlayer and has plenty configuration options:

gnome_mplayer

As for the terminal emulator, Lubuntu bundles two of them, namely LXTerm and LXTerminal, which are both lightweight:

lxterminal

The window manager doesn’t have compositing support, so transparency effects are not available, but you can install and use another window manager instead. For example, you could install metacity or kwin and use their compositing features by typing kwin –replace in a terminal.

The classic menu style may fit just perfectly old-school users who prefer a simple menu organized in categories. You can access installed applications, run a program by name or configure Lubuntu from here:

menu01

menu02

The default panel also comes with a workspace switcher, while the system tray, the clock and the logout entry are location on the bottom-right side:

tray

Adding panel applets – you can also set panel opacity here:

panel

Customizing the look and feel of Lubuntu is pretty straightforward, and the wealth of options gives you more than enough:

appearance01

You can change the theme (widget appearance like Clearlooks or Crux), colors, icon theme, window border, mouse cursors, and fonts. Here’s how Clearlooks with Humanity icons theme looks like:

clearlooks

PCManFM is the default file manager in Lubuntu. It has an interface similar to the one of Nautilus, support for tabs, editable location bar, dual pane mode, sorting by various factors, bookmarks, image thumbnail previews (can only be zoomed in by small factor).

For installing packages graphically, there is the powerful yet easy to use Synaptic Package Manager, which may be familiar to most of the users from the days before the Ubuntu Software Center:

synaptic

To sum it up, Lubuntu is perfect for those who want a fast desktop with a classic behavior, the only major disadvantage maybe being the lack of a compositor manager, otherwise pretty rich in options. Both Xfce and LXDE fit very well their niche, so it’s a matter of taste after all in choosing either Lubuntu or Xubuntu if you prefer a lightweight Ubuntu desktop.

jscottu says:

I am so THERE on April 17th…ready to put Lubuntu on most of my machines. I used to be in the Xubuntu camp but it is not as fast as Lubuntu. I will dual-boot with windows XP on many of my machines…thus giving new life to Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 machines (I put my only Pentium 2 out of commission last week…for everything there is a time appointed. Pentium 2’s time to die has arrived).

Craciun Dan says:

That’s some pretty old machines you got there :)

Carlos Arturo says:

Have you tried LXLE? Your Pentium 2 PC could come alive again with it. LXLE is based on Lubuntu but it’s even faster.

F1 says:

I lovet it! Lubuntu is the best. I just installed 14.04 tonight. I use compiz for the window manager compositing over compton & opensnap.

William Ruano says:

Hi, I installed lubuntu 14.04 with compiz I tried several configurations but the windows appear without the title bar and the laptop crashes. the problem seems to be the windows manager, I have installed metacity and it works fine without compiz. Please can you tell me how did you make it work?, thanks for your time and help…

Craciun Dan says:

Well I don’t use compiz, but I remember this happening to me too when using compiz –replace. Maybe try to install compizconfig-settings-manager, run it as ccsm and see if there is an option to display window decorations.

Have a look at these for similar problems:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/183902/compiz-in-lubuntu
http://askubuntu.com/questions/420975/compiz-on-lubuntu

Hope this helps you, good luck!

LinuxCanuck says:

Nice review, but it is Trusty and not Tidy. Unless you meant that is the way it looks.

I read all of your test drives. Great work!

Craciun Dan says:

Yes, just the way it looks. But nice comparison :) And thanks!

thor says:

It only 3 year LTS. Only ubuntu and kubuntu has 5 year LTS

Craciun Dan says:

You’re right, my bad. I’ve corrected it now.

Ignacio Garcia says:

I’ve installed Lubuntu 14.04 daily build more than a month ago, after checking all other *buntu variants and I’m happy as a clam. No major issues, it’s fast and responsive, and I can do all I used to with Ubuntu and Xubuntu. To me, there’s no going back to the others.

Lubuntu is great for those losing XP. 3 years is hardly LTS, but upgrading to 16.04 will probably be easy enough for those with adequate hardware…or one could just customize ubuntu lts with the lxde or tde for a comfortable XP migration with longer base system support that will still work on most older systems.

Rod Collins says:

I had teo old machines layying around catching dust I juts installed Xubuntu on an old dell inspiron 8200 that has to be qt least 14 years old and it works great with only a gig of Ram and 60 gig hard drive I have a Mac book 17 inch power pc and I have just installed the 12.04 version of Lubuntu, both machines have been given new life!

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