Well, out of boredom and a need to express my geekdom in as many ways as I can, I’ve installed “Lubuntu” on my netbook.
Lubuntu, for those not in the know, is the variant of Ubuntu that uses LXDE as its desktop environment. I use LXDE over Ubuntu or Xubuntu on most of my computers. I like it a lot.
For my experiment with my netbook, I went ahead and installed the Ubuntu 10.4 Beta (or maybe it’s an Alpha release… I’m not too sure) on it first. That went almost smoothly. I got two error messages when I installed it and I have corrupted packages that can’t be repaired.
No biggie… It’s an experimental installation and it’s not the official release yet.
Once I had that all done, I went looking to install the LXDE desktop, which is how I got my other systems so damn nice to use. I noticed that not only was the LXDE desktop package available in the repositories, but also the official “Lubuntu Desktop” package. Well gosh dern, I decided to give it a whirl.
Someone Else’s screen grab
The package installed like I had seen the Xubuntu package install before from Ubuntu. It went smoothly and I rebooted.
And right away I noticed that the official Lubuntu theme is flavoured with light colours. Not what I like, but easy to fix. I got my favourite themes installed, and my favourite icons, and made my customizations. Now to gripe.
I don’t know if these problems are due to the pre-release nature of the software, but here goes. Mounting USB drives is broken. I had to manually install PMount, and even then, drives don’t appear in the side pane of PCManFM like they should. I created a link to /media/usb there, but the shortcut doesn’t allow me to mount or unmount drives. Not only that but I am unable (easilly) to get write access to a USB mounted drive without resorting to opening PCManFM as root.
And PCManFM appears to be broken. I can’t navigate more than a few folders before the main window freezes and becomes unresponsive.
At least the wireless applet in Lubuntu works perfectly. Before, I had to use WCID and manually activate a wireless connection at the beginning of each session. I don’t know if that new applet is available in the standard LXDE package, but I will find out once the release version of Ubuntu 10.4 comes out and I reinstall it on my netbook.
There’s also a “Menu Editor” in Lubuntu, which is a fantastic idea. It doesn’t work at all, but it’s a great idea.
Oh well. I see that Lubuntu also installs Google’s Chrome browser and makes it the default. Bad Lubuntu! Fuck Google Chrome.
And Fuck Apple too.
I’ve decided that “Fuck Apple” will be my new motto. Like Cato the Elder used to say “And furthermore, I believe that Carthage should be destroyed.” after every speech, regardless of the topic.
Fuck Apple.
So all in all, I’m not impressed by what the Lubuntu team has done with integrating LXDE into Ubuntu. The way I did it to my computers is much better, except for the new wireless applet. I hope that can be had the way I roll with LXDE.
Oh, one more thing. I noticed that GRip is no longer in the Ubuntu repositories for 10.4. Damn it! That’s the best CD ripping software for Linux I’ve found! Grumble!