Remember Ubuntu Lite? The lighter-than-Xubuntu, more-graphical-than-Fluxbuntu variant of Ubuntu seemed about to get off the ground last year. Then it disappeared. In that time, Fluxbuntu has floundered, too. And while Xubuntu has never looked better and generally runs pretty well, I'd like to see Ubuntu play in the space occupied by Puppy, Damn Small Linux, DeLi and AntiX.

To that end, Ubuntulite is back. Rather than being its own ISO, the Ubuntulite install begins with a server install of Ubuntu and then uses a script to add the Lite-ness from the Ubuntu and Ubuntulite repositories. Here are the instructions. One thing I learned: There's a Ubuntu Feisty net install CD. I'm a great believer in the network install -- one of the greatest things about Debian.

The new Ubuntulite was announced today:

Ubuntulite 0.6 is now officially available by means of the repository. It now features the addition of menu, slim, and mtpaint and the removal of xdm, gimp, slocate, scrollkeeper, genisoimage, fetchmail, and bogofilter as dependencies.

The install script is now updated and is now version 1. Please update How-to's for the new package. Hopefully updates to the install script will now be less often thanks to a change I made to its coding. The mini.iso is now named mini-feisty.iso too, so please update accordingly.

From the Ubuntulite "about us" page:

History

Evidences points to Matic Ahacic creating the Ubuntulite project in May 2005. Another person instrumental to the beginnings of Ubuntulite is Colin McDermott who designed the original site. Matoc Ahacic and Colin McDermott, however, could no longer contribute to the project around May 2006. Then the current project leader, Shae Smittle, took over. Progress was slow at first, but the results are a changed program selection and a renewed vigor for development. The future for Ubuntulite is bright.

Mission Statement

Ubuntulite strives to make modern software available for older computers in an easy-to-use distribution while upholding the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and contributing back to the community.

Goal

Provide a distribution with regular releases that can comfortably run on computers that currently run Microsoft Windows 98.

There's already a Google Group for the emerging distro.

The window manager for Ubuntulite is Openbox. Here's where you can get the needed files to do the install. I can't believe that an 8.8 MB image can do the network install. Debian's installer is much larger, if I remember correctly.

I wish much luck to the people putting Ubuntulite together. The quicker they get their own installer, the better. Going up against projects like Puppy and DSL is daunting, as is trying to add a flavor to the Ubuntu ice-cream truck and actually get it to official status. It'll be interesting to see what happens (if anything).

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made some progress -- and some discoveries -- today with my Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty installation on the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client.

First of all, can we all agree that the GIMP, in its heaviness, doesn't really fit in with the Xubuntu philosophy of lighter apps for a lighter window manager?

And with this heaviness in mind, today I installed my first Debian package -- mtPaint, which despite having greater capabilities than GNU Paint while being as quick to load, is not available as a Ubuntu package, either in Universe, Multiverse, or any other 'verse. I found it and downloaded it from the Web, then clicked on it to install. I couldn't figure out how to add it to the Applications menu, but I was able with Xfce to create a desktop shortcut.

Incidentally, I did try out GNU Paint, which is a Ubuntu-approved application, and quite nice for what it does, except that it can't resize images, which is the main thing I need an image-editing program to do.

But the result is that I have, indeed, installed a Debian package in Xubuntu, and it couldn't have been easier. I'll look into getting mtPaint into the Graphics menu under Applications -- how hard can it be? But another thing I did learn is that while the GIMP is torturously slow to load, and probably is quite a memory hog on this 256 MB box, once you have it loaded, it's not any slower or faster at actually processing images. I didn't detect any speed boost using mtPaint ... except for the fact that it loads in about 3 seconds ... as opposed to the GIMP's 60 or so seconds.

The other thing I did was add Wine and Internet Explorer 6 in my quest to do work on Dailynews.com in Linux. Wine is about as mysterious to me as it gets, but I did go into the Ubuntu Multiverse (or whatever 'verse it is) and install Wine from the Synaptic Package Manager. As an aside, it's interesting that besides Synaptic, there's the Add/Remove Programs utility, and I almost prefer it to Synaptic at this early stage.

Back to Wine: I installed Wine from Synaptic and then used IES4Linux to get Internet Explorer into the Wine world. I did this successfully once before with Xubuntu when running it as a live CD, so I knew that this worked. I had IE6 on my desktop, and it actually worked. And while I was able to use the Daily News Web-publishing software (which is browser-based and requires IE), that system is so buggy that I really couldn't run it under Wine due to repeated crashes. The problem is more ours than Wine's, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I tried to install some other publishing software under Wine by moving entire directories from my Windows box to the Xubuntu box, but nothing would run. I'll have to delve further into Wine to see exactly what I need to do. It may be a lost cause, but I'm not expecting much. Still, I'm not above giving Codeweavers a try.

That said, it was only with the IES4Linux package that I got Internet Explorer at all. I wish I didn't have to use it at all, because sticking with Linux-specific browsers and not dealing with Wine at all is a whole lot easier than the alternative.

And what about the 256 MB memory ceiling of this thin client? Some commenters said that it's not an enviable position, to be with this little memory. All I can say at this point is that while there's been quite a bit of use of the swap partition on the hard drive, the system hasn't gone down once, even with all the stress I'm putting on it.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

UPDATE ON APRIL 11: It was all a joke, I guess "April 1" should've tipped me off:

It didn't happened April 1, but you'd think it did, according to this portion of the Ubuntu forums.

I've given Fluxbuntu middling marks in the past, but I see why the Linux community needs it. To have the lightness of Damn Small Linux (albeit without the ease of use) along with the repositories, support and sheer numbers of Ubuntu would be a very powerful thing indeed. But joking about how your distro is doing better than it really is? I guess if you said something like "CIA adopts Fluxbuntu as spies' distro of choice," it would've been absurd enough, but making your joke along the lines of "if we didn't have so much work to do, what I'm joking about could really happen," that's just a little bit sad.

Where Fluxbuntu can make up for its obsession with "the CLI," as they call it (command-line interface), they'll have to really step it up when it comes to documentation. I think plenty of users would be OK going to the command line for many more things if they knew exactly what to do once they got there. There has to be a Fluxbuntu Cookbook in the mix. (I'm reading the No Starch Press version of the "Linux Cookbook," and am so far very impressed.)

In keeping with this now-not-happening "promotion" for Fluxbuntu, its Web site is down so it can be rejiggered to reflect the change, the forum writer bodhi.zazen incorrectly reports:

Yes, the Fluxbuntu web site is being re-designed to reflect the change. The (first) Fluxbuntu release is due out within a few days of Feisty (Previous releases have been n builds and beta builds).

and on the expansion of the Ubuntu brand ...

The numerous "versions" of Ubuntu are a sign of a large healthy community of Ubuntu users and a testament to the flexibility, versatility, and power of Linux. With a large community there are varied needs. The various "versions" of Ubuntu allow us all to configure the Ubuntu OS the way we like. Personally I like the clean elegance of Fluxbox and I appreciate Fluxbuntu as a lean, fast, and efficient OS.

Fluxbuntu is NOT an ubuntu desktop installation + fluxbox.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This 24-year-old teacher has been converting old iMac G3s to Linux with Xubuntu. He's got a helluva lot of comments on this post (which I found at Low End Mac).

He asks about whether or not he's using the right distribution, and in the comments, there was a link to this page on how to set Ubuntu up for high speed on low-spec systems. The writer, K. Mandla, says that his experience with Arch Linux made him (or is it her?) want to tweak Ubuntu for Arch-like speed:

I’ve built these systems on a variety of hardware. I used the core elements of this to put together a 75Mhz Ubuntu box, a 120Mhz Pentium system, a 300Mhz laptop for my mom to use, a 750Mhz laptop for music and movies, a 1Ghz desktop for gaming (you laugh, but I can run NWN at 1280×1024 on that ) and a 2.26Ghz see-if-you-can-break-it machine.

The results depend on the hardware, as you might imagine. But my proudest achievements are the fact that the 75Mhz Pentium build gets to the desktop on less than 22Mb (19Mb for the 300Mhz laptop!) and the 2.26Ghz machine goes from the Grub menu to the desktop in 27 seconds. It’s a joy to watch.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It turns out that there is no stable .iso from which to make a Ubuntu Lite CD, but you can turn your existing Ubuntu installation into the Lite version with apt-get. Here's how.

There was some antipication about a Ubuntu Lite CD being ready "in the near future," but these posts are a year old now ... and a year is an eternity in Ubuntu Standard Time.

My 2 cents: The method described -- and the problems therein -- are beyond my geekery capabilities. I'll stick with Puppy and Xubuntu for now.

Posted by Steven Rosenberg at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)