Xubuntu 11.10 and my Netbook

Michael Reed — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:32:47 +0000

October saw the release of the latest version of the Ubuntu family and that includes Xubuntu, the Xfce edition. I’ve just installed Xubuntu 11.10 on my netbook and the experience was rather good.

The netbook in question is an eMachines (Acer) model eM350. The specs are: 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. I'd been using it for a couple of months with the default installation of Windows XP.

In this case, I installed Xubuntu by downloading the ISO as usual and using Unetbootlin to copy it to a flashdrive.

With each release, Xfce becomes more and more comprehensive. Xubuntu 11.10 uses Xfce 4.8 (covered here), and overall, the dark default Xubuntu theme looks attractive. As I've speculated in the past, I think that Xfce is going to become home to more and more users who want something that is under active development, yet looks and works like a Gnome 2, KDE 3 or even Windows XP desktop. In its default configuration, the task switcher, application launcher menu and status area are located on a bar at the top of screen. Moving the pointer to the bottom of the screen causes an icon-based application bar to appear, an efficient use of space on a netbook display as it retracts when not in use.

A layout that strikes a good balance between a traditional desktop and a space-constrained one.

As good as things looked initially, I began to notice a problem on the visual front: the font rendering looked rather blurry. Fortunately, a Google search turned up this neat little hack. Creating the two configuration files, as directed, altered the way that anti-aliasing is applied to fonts, giving them a crisp, smooth, if slightly heavy appearance. The default setup of the font rendering was so poor, that I honestly don't think I could have used it in that condition on a long term basis. Without the fix, text also had a misty quality when I installed Xubuntu within a VM on a desktop machine. I couldn't detect the same problem when I installed Ubuntu 11.10.

Xubuntu 11.10 installed in VirtualBox. Notice the misty quality of the Xubuntu text compared with the Kubuntu native rendering.

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Jolicloud: Cloud enabled and not just for netbooks

Michael Reed — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:00:00 +0000

by Michael Reed

There’s a Linux distribution for every occasion and the main purpose of Jolicloud is to present a web enabled GUI for netbooks and similar devices. I’m going to take a look at a preview release of the forthcoming 1.1 version. Under the hood, it’s based on the Ubuntu long term service release (10.04), and the front end is handled by a combination of the Chromium web browser and a full screen user interface that eschews overlapping windows.

Netbooks are the obvious target of this distribution, and by default, it’s setup as a browser for website and cloud based applications. However, it’s easy to expand, and I think this could be a distribution with a lot of uses. It’s possible to add applications, and it can also be installed on any hardware that standard Ubuntu can including desktop PCs. Even better, as well as focussing on convenience, it’s easy to use, meaning that it might be a good platform for people who aren’t very good at using computers.

So, what does Jolicloud offer once it’s up and running?

Following an install procedure that reveals the Ubuntu roots of the distro, the first screen that you will see is the home screen, with a set of large icons for launching the installed applications. Bear in mind, on Jolicloud, an application might not be software as such, but rather, a service that you access through the browser such as social networking site. The default set of applications are: the Chromium web browser, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Docs, Skimmer and a couple of games. There is a also an application built into the status bar called Social Stream that collates the output of multiple social networking sites.

When launched, an application takes up the full screen, apart from a status bar, and most people will find this arrangement superior to overlapping windows, given the type of device that this distribution is targeting. The aforementioned statusbar contains some smaller icons for getting you back to home screen, accessing the settings and accessing files on the local storage or a flash drive.

Clicking on the Chromium icon launches the browser as expected. If you’ve used this browser before, you’ll recall that its interface is, fittingly given the target hardware, rather compact, lacking a pull-down menu. The other default icons are effectively bookmarks for the web browser. There’s also a configuration icon, and from here, you can access some more technical, expert level settings and tools.

Adding applications to Jolicloud is a breeze as it makes use of the built in “application store" style package manger. The applications are a combination of actual software applications and links to online services.

Adding applications.

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