Xubuntu () is a

Canonical Ltd. Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff ...

–recognized, community-maintained derivative of the

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

. The name ''Xubuntu'' is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsXfce

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

, instead of Ubuntu's Unity and

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

desktop. Xubuntu seeks to provide "a light, stable and configurable desktop environment with conservative workflows" using Xfce components. Xubuntu is intended for both new and experienced Linux users. Rather than explicitly targeting low-powered machines, it attempts to provide "extra responsiveness and speed" on existing hardware.

History

Xubuntu was originally intended to be released at the same time as Ubuntu 5.10 ''Breezy Badger'', 13 October 2005, but the work was not complete by that date. Instead the Xubuntu name was used for the ''xubuntu-desktop'' metapackage available through the

Synaptic Package Manager Synaptic is a GTK-based graphical user interface for the APT package manager used by the Debian Linux distribution and its derivatives. Synaptic is usually used on systems based on deb packages but can also be used on systems based on RPM pack ...

which installed the Xfce desktop. The first official Xubuntu release, led by Jani Monoses, appeared on 1 June 2006, as part of the Ubuntu 6.06 ''Dapper Drake'' line, which also included

Kubuntu Kubuntu ( ) is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares the same repositor ...

and

Edubuntu Edubuntu, previously known as Ubuntu Education Edition, was an official derivative of the Ubuntu (operating system), Ubuntu operating system designed for use in classrooms inside schools, homes and communities. Edubuntu was developed in collabor ...

. Cody A.W. Somerville developed a comprehensive strategy for the Xubuntu project named the ''Xubuntu Strategy Document''. This document was approved by the Ubuntu Community Council in 2008. In February 2009

Mark Shuttleworth Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African and British entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the development of the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system. In 2002, Shuttleworth became ...

agreed that an official

LXDE LXDE (abbreviation for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements. This makes it especially suitable for use on older or resource-constrained personal computers such as netb ...

version of Ubuntu,

Lubuntu Lubuntu ( ) is a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and uses the LXQt desktop environment in place of Ubuntu's GNOME desktop. Lubuntu was originally touted as being "lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient", but now ...

, would be developed. The LXDE desktop uses the Openbox window manager and, like Xubuntu, is intended to be a low-system-requirement, low-RAM environment for

netbook Netbook was a commonly used term that identified a product class of small and inexpensive laptops which were sold from 2007 to around 2013. These machines were designed primarily as cost-effective tools for consumers to access the Inte ...

s, mobile devices and older PCs and will compete with Xubuntu in that niche. In November 2009, Cody A.W. Somerville stepped down as the project leader and made a call for nominations to help find a successor. Lionel Le Folgoc was confirmed by the Xubuntu community as the new project leader on 10 January 2010 and requested the formation of an official Xubuntu council. , discussions regarding the future of Xubuntu's governance and the role a council might play in it were still ongoing. In March 2012 Charlie Kravetz, a former Xubuntu project leader, formally resigned from the project. Despite this, the project members indicated that Xubuntu 12.04 would go ahead as scheduled. In the beginning of 2016, the Xubuntu team began the process to transition the project to become council run rather than having a single project leader. On 1 January 2017, an official post on the Xubuntu site's blog announced the official formation of the Xubuntu Council. The purpose of the council is not just to make decisions about the future of the project, but to make sure the direction of the project adheres to guidelines established in the Strategy Document.

Performance

The Xfce desktop environment is intended to use fewer system resources than the default Ubuntu

desktop. In September 2010, the Xubuntu developers claimed that the minimum

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

Xubuntu could be run on was 128 MB, with 256 MB of RAM strongly recommended at that time. Testing conducted by Martyn Honeyford at IBM in January 2007 on Xubuntu 6.10 concluded that it "uses approximately 25MB less application memory, and also eats significantly less into buffers and cache (which may imply that there is less file activity) than Ubuntu". Later testing showed that Xubuntu was at a disadvantage compared to

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

equipped with the Xfce desktop. Tests were conducted by

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information on ...

on a Dell Dimension 4500 desktop machine, with an Intel 2 GHz processor and 384 MB of memory in April 2009, that compared Xubuntu 9.04 against an Xfce desktop version of Debian 5.0.1. These showed that Xubuntu used more than twice the RAM as Debian in simple tasks. Xubuntu also ran out of RAM doing everyday tasks, indicating that 384 MB of RAM was inadequate. The review concluded "It was obvious I had already run out of RAM and was starting to use swap space. Considering I wasn't doing very much, this was rather disappointing". Subsequent experimentation by Distrowatch concluded that the performance advantages observed in Debian were due to Xubuntu's inclusion of memory-hungry software not present in Debian's implementation of Xfce. In a September 2009 assessment in

Linux Magazine ''Linux Magazine'' is an international magazine for Linux software enthusiasts and professionals. It is published by the former Linux New Media division of the German media company Medialinx AG. The magazine was first published in German in 199 ...

, Christopher Smart noted, "the Xfce desktop is very lightweight and well suited to machines with small amounts of memory and processing power, but Xubuntu's implementation has essentially massacred it. They've taken the beautifully lightweight desktop and strangled it with various heavyweight components from GNOME. In all fairness to the project however, they do not claim that Xubuntu is designed for older machines - that's just something the community has assumed on their own. It might be more lightweight than Ubuntu itself, but if so it's not by much". Subsequent reviewers emphasized Xubuntu's perceived deficiencies in performance to highlight

, a project with similar goals but using the

desktop environment (now

LXQt LXQt is a free and open source lightweight desktop environment. It was formed from the merger of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects. Like its GTK predecessor LXDE, LXQt does not ship or develop its own window manager, instead LXQt lets the user de ...

) as opposed to Xfce. For instance, Damien Oh of ''Make Tech Easier'' noted in May 2010, "So what about Xubuntu? isn't it supposed to be the lightweight equivalent of Ubuntu? Sadly, that is a thing of the past. The truth is, the supposed lightweight equivalent is not lightweight at all. While Xubuntu is using the lightweight XFCE desktop environment, it had been down by several heavyweight applications and also the integration with GNOME desktop also makes it lose its advantage". However, another reviewer, Laura Tucker also from ''Make Tech Easier'', in her 2016 article ''What OS Are You Using and Why?'' as survey of her writing team's computers, noted that Xubuntu is the favourite OS of one member of her team for her older desktop computer, as the writer reported, "because it is lightweight and works great". She also noted that it is easy to customize. In July 2019, Jeff Mitchell of ''Make Tech Easier'' recommended Xubuntu as one option to speed up a Linux PC.

Releases

Xubuntu 6.06 LTS

The first official stand-alone release of Xubuntu was version 6.06

long term support Long-term support (LTS) is a product lifecycle management policy in which a stable release of computer software is maintained for a longer period of time than the standard edition. The term is typically reserved for open-source software, where i ...

(LTS), which was made available on 1 June 2006. It was introduced with the statement: The version used

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

2.6.15.7 and Xfce 4.4 beta 1. Applications included the

Thunar Thunar is a file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems, initially written using the GTK+ 2 toolkit and later ported to the GTK+ 3 toolkit. It started to ship with Xfce in version 4.4 RC1 and later. Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meu ...

file manager, GDM desktop manager,

Abiword AbiWord () is a free and open-source software word processor. It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word "'' abierto''", meaning "open".Project MascoAbi the Ant ...

word processor and

Gnumeric Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released on 31 December 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License; it is intended to r ...

spread sheet,

Evince Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a free and open source document viewer supporting many document file formats including PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment. The develo ...

PDF document viewer, Xarchiver archive manager, Xfburn CD burner, Firefox 1.5.0.3 web browser, Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 email client and the GDebi package manager. Caitlyn Martin reviewed Xubuntu 6.06 in June 2006. She singled out its "bare bones approach" to the applications included, indicating that she would rather add applications she wanted than clean out ones she didn't want. On her aging laptop Xubuntu 6.06 proved faster than Fedora Core 5. She stated that: "Under Fedora when I opened a couple of rather resource intensive applications, for example Open Office and Seamonkey, the system would begin to drag. While these apps still take a moment to get started on Xubuntu they are crisp and responsive and don't seem to slow anything else down. I never expected this sort of performance and that alone made Xubuntu an instant favorite of mine". She had praise for the Thunar file manager, as light and fast. She concluded: "Overall I am impressed and Xubuntu, for the moment anyway, is my favorite Linux distribution despite a few rough edges, probably largely due to the use of a beta desktop".

Xubuntu 6.10

Xubuntu 6.10 was released on 26 October 2006. This version used Xfce 4.4 beta 2 and included Upstart, the Firefox 2.0 web browser, the

Gaim Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a free and open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to simultaneously log in to various s ...

2.0.0 beta 3.1 instant messaging client along with new versions of AbiWord and Gnumeric. The media player was gxine which replaced Xfmedia. The previous ''xffm4'' file manager was replaced by Thunar. It introduced redesigned artwork for the bootup splash screen, the login window and the desktop theme. The developers claimed that this version of Xubuntu could run on 64 MB of RAM, with 128 MB "strongly recommended". Reviewer Caitlyn Martin tested Xubuntu on a four-year-old Toshiba Satellite 1805-S204 laptop, with a 1 GHz Celeron processor and 512 MB of RAM in December 2006. She noted that Xubuntu ran faster than GNOME or KDE, which she described as "sluggish" and rated it as one of the two fastest distributions on her limited test hardware, placing with Vector Linux. She found the graphical installer to be less than acceptable and the text-based installer better. She concluded:

Xubuntu 7.04

Xubuntu 7.04 was released on 19 April 2007. This release was based on Xfce 4.4. Michael Larabel of

Phoronix Phoronix Test Suite (PTS) is a free and open-source benchmark software for Linux and other operating systems which is developed by Michael Larabel and Matthew Tippett. The Phoronix Test Suite has been endorsed by sites such as Linux.com, LinuxP ...

carried out detailed benchmark testing of betas for Ubuntu 7.04, Kubuntu 7.04 and Xubuntu 7.04 in February 2007 on two different computers, one with dual

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Clovertown processors and the other with an

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

Sempron Sempron has been the marketing name used by AMD for several different budget desktop CPUs, using several different technologies and CPU socket formats. The Sempron replaced the AMD Duron processor and competed against Intel's Celeron series of pr ...

. After a series of gzip compression, LAME compilation, and LAME encoding tasks he concluded, "in these tests with the dual Clovertown setup we found the results to be indistinguishable. However, with the AMD Sempron, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Herd 4 had outperformed both Kubuntu and the lighter-weight Xubuntu. Granted on a slower system the lightweight Xubuntu should have a greater performance advantage". In one ''Review Linux'' look at Xubuntu 7.04 it was faulted for not including

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

. The reviewer noted: "If you do decide to keep the default software, it will cover your basic needs. Xubuntu comes with light weight desktop in XFCE 4.4 and also less tasking programs. If you are thinking that OpenOffice will come pre-installed on your desktop, you will be greatly surprised as AbiWord and Gnumeric are your default processor and spreadsheet program". He indicated though that installing applications from the repositories was easy and made for simple customization of an installation.

Xubuntu 7.10

Xubuntu 7.10 was released on 18 October 2007. It was based upon Xfce, 4.4.1 and added updated translations along with a new theme, MurrinaStormCloud, using the Murrine Engine. Application updates included

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

2.2.0, (Gaim was renamed Pidgin) and

GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...

2.4. This Xubuntu version allowed the installation of Firefox extensions and plug-ins through the ''Add/Remove Software'' interface. The developers claimed that this version of Xubuntu could run on 64 MB of RAM, with 128 MB "strongly recommended". In a review of the release candidate for Xubuntu 7.10 that was installed on a Pentium 2 300 Celeron with 256 MB of RAM, equipped with an

nVidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

GeForce 4 64 MB video card, ''Review Linux'' noted that "the system was very fast". ''Review Linux'' positioned Xubuntu and its role, "The main difference between Xubuntu and Ubuntu is the fact that Xubuntu is a little lighter on system requirements and it uses Xfce as desktop. Xubuntu is perfect for that old computer just lying around in your basement".

Xubuntu 8.04 LTS

Xubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) was made available on 24 April 2008. This version of Xubuntu used Xfce 4.4.2, Xorg 7.3 and Linux kernel 2.6.24. It introduced

PolicyKit Polkit (formerly PolicyKit) is a component for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems. It provides an organized way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged ones. Polkit allows a level of control ...

for permissions control,

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating ...

and a new printing manager. It also introduced Wubi, that allowed Windows users to install Xubuntu as a program on Windows. Applications included were Firefox 3 Beta 5, Brasero CD/DVD burning application, Transmission BitTorrent client, Mousepad text editor, AbiWord word processor and Ristretto image viewer Reviewer Christopher Dawson of

ZDNet ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication. Hist ...

installed Xubuntu 8.04 on a Dell Latitude C400 with 512 MB of RAM, a 30GB hard drive and a 1 GHz Pentium III-M processor. He noted it provided better performance than the Windows XP Pro it replaced. He concluded: "This is where Xubuntu really shines… What it will do is take some very moderate hardware and provide a solid, reliable, and relatively snappy machine for a user with productivity needs or who accesses terminal services".

Xubuntu 8.10

Xubuntu 8.10 was released on 30 October 2008. This version of Xubuntu brought a new version of Abiword, version 2.6.4, the ''Listen Multimedia Player'' and introduced the ''Catfish'' desktop search application. It used Linux kernel 2.6.27, X.Org 7.4. There was an installation option of an encrypted private directory using ecryptfs-utils. The Totem media player was included. Darren Yates, an Australian IT journalist, was very positive about Xubuntu 8.10, particularly for

s, which were at their peak of popularity then, dismissing "ubuntu itself is nothing flash". He said, "One of the disappointing things about the arrival of netbooks in Australia has been the decline of Linux in the face of an enslaught by Microsoft to push Windows XP Home Edition back into the market. It's sad because Xubuntu is the ideal Linux distro for these devices. While the latest Xubuntu 8.10 distro lacks drivers for WiFi wireless networking and in many cases also the built-in webcams, those drivers do exist and incorporating them inside Xubuntu would neither be difficult or take up much space".

Xubuntu 9.04

Version 9.04 was released on 23 April 2009. The development team advertised this release as giving improved boot-up times, "benefiting from the Ubuntu core developer team's improvements to boot-time code, the Xubuntu 9.04 desktop boots more quickly than ever. This means you can spend less time waiting, and more time being productive with your Xubuntu desktop". Xubuntu 9.04 used Xfce 4.6, which included a new Xfce Settings Manager dialog, the new Xconf configuration system, an improved desktop menu and clock, new notifications, and remote file system application

Gigolo A gigolo () is a male escort or social companion who is supported by a person in a continuing relationship, often living in her residence or having to be present at her beck and call. The term ''gigolo'' usually implies a man who adopts a lifest ...

. This release also brought all new artwork and incorporated the Murrina Storm Cloud GTK+ theme and a new XFWM4 window manager theme. 9.04 also introduced new versions of many applications, including the AbiWord word processor,

Brasero Brasero may refer to: * Brasero (heater), a heater or an oven * Brasero (software), CD/DVD-burning software for Linux See also * Bracero program {{disambig ; UberStudent Linux :A discontinued education-use derivative of Xubuntu LTS releases ;UserOS Ultra :A minimal Xubuntu variant was produced for Australia's ''

PC User ''TechLife'' (formerly ''PC User'') is an Australian general computer magazine, published monthly by Future Australia. The magazine's regular content consists of computer hardware and software reviews and previews, technology news and opinion a ...

'' magazine. ;Voyager :A French distribution which comes with the

Avant Window Navigator Avant Window Navigator (abbreviated AWN or Awn) is a dock-like bar for Linux, which sits on an edge of a user's screen and tracks open windows. Instead of representing open windows as buttons or segments on a bar, it uses large icons on a translu ...

. ;ChaletOS :An English distribution similar to the Windows operating system in appearance.

References

External links

* * {{Portal bar, Free and open-source software, Linux 2006 software IA-32 Linux distributions Linux distributions Operating system distributions bootable from read-only media Ubuntu derivatives X86-64 Linux distributions Xfce