The Lubuntu project started in March 2009, with the purpose of creating a lighter and less resource demanding alternative to the Xubuntu operating system, using the LXDE desktop environment. The ultimate goal of this project is to join the ranks of Kubuntu and Xubuntu, and become an officially supported derivative of Ubuntu.
The developers claim that, while Xubuntu is often represented as a lightweight distro, it actually fails on running on older hardware, so they are targeting Linux their distribution at older legacy computers and devices with less than 256 MB of RAM.
While this project hasn’t received too much attention until now, the LXDE project received an invitation to become a self-maintained component of Ubuntu back in February 2009, straight from the Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth.
Features of “Lubuntu” :
- Removed Parcellite.
- New lxappareance.
- New theme, created by Rafael Laguna.
- New installer slideshow.
- LXDE is now HAL-free, but it still depends on HAL for the CD-burner app.
- Added the lubuntu-core package for minimal installations of Lubuntu.
- Added the lubuntu-restricted-extras package for users who want to install Java, Flash Player, and extra video/audio codecs.
- Indicator applets are now supported on lxpanel (they are turned off by default).
- lxdm is now supported by the Ubiquity installer.
- Added Xpad
- Added LXtask instead of Xfce4-taskmanager.
- Evince is now the default PDF viewer.
- Added various small games, powered by ace-of-penguins.
- Various other LXDE and Lubuntu updates and fixes.
Download Lubuntu 10.04 (ISO)
Download Lubuntu 10.10 Beta 1 (Torrent)