LuninuX OS 12 LTS: Mac flavored Ubuntu For those who hate Unity!

What I like about Linux is the plethora of options available to choose your favorite distro. Say, if you hate Unity, but love the stability and abundance of apps in Ubuntu Precise, Luninux 12 can be a very good option for you along with Pinguy OS, Bodhi, Pear OS 5 among other and of course, Linux Mint Maya!

Luninux 12 32-bit ISO is slightly on the heavier side (~1.3 GB) and I downloaded it from Sourceforge. A quick boot up in Virtualbox and I was greeted with a blue screen with just "Ubuntu" written on it. Though I know that it is a Ubuntu derivative, but still developers should have cared to polish the boot up screen. Pear OS 5, another Mac-flavored Ubuntu, has Pear Linux logo and name at the boot splash.

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

Desktop & Interface
I was glad to see, however, that the developers have really put a good work on the desktop interface. Smart and polished! And of course, is similar to Mac with a docky.

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

Applications
It is rich, indeed, in terms of coverage. Almost all major apps are there, like LibreOffice, MPlayer, Chromium, Thuderbird, GIMP, Bit-torrent, drop-box, Cheese, etc. Notable app absent are Skype, VLC, Adobe Flash plugin to name a few. One thing I really liked is that the developers have renamed the apps though the app icon is the same. Like Chromium is renamed as "Internet Explorer" and likewise, Cheese as Photo Booth, and Gimp is Photo Editor. By default Wine & PlayonLinux are provided which will definitely make users happy, if they want to install MSOffice 2010 and other Windows specific apps.

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

CPU & RAM Usage
RAM usage is significantly lower in LuninuX, compared to Ubuntu 12.04. With only system manager running, CPU usage was 4-10% & RAM usage ~ 250 MB. I haven't seen many Gnome 3 based distros using lower RAM than Luninux.

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

From LuninuXOS 12 LTS

Overall
I found LuninuX quite good and it appears to be a very stable and low resource hungry distro. If you like Gnome over other desktops and prefer to use Docky, then LuninuX is definitely recommended for you though there are some caveats like no Firefox, no Flash out-of-the-box, no VLC. A lot of Ubuntu derivatives like Mint, Pinguy, Pear, etc. provide these out-of-the-box. Luninux is good but Pear OS 5 still is the best of the Mac-Flavored Ubuntu derivatives.

Some screenshots that I took are uploaded in my Picasa album.