Which Ubuntu should I install? 12.04.1 or 12.10?

As it happens with every new release of Ubuntu, it is compared to the last release. And if the last release is an LTS, a comparison is definitely required to answer - is the new release good enough to motivate users leave the long term support version and embrace the latest one? My current review is focused on the same question.

From Ubuntu 12.10 Comparison

I am comparing here the latest Quantal release with the Ubuntu Precise 12.04.1 LTS release, both 32 bit. Also, point to be considered here is that both releases are just 6 months apart. So, I wasn't expecting anything radically different between the two, but just a few incremental innovations.

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Snowlinux 4 XFCE Review: The Smoothest one but very very bland!

Lets begin with a note of thanks to the Snowlinux developers - each one of their distro I have tested and/or used, are very stable and give amazing performance. However, I never really liked the themes they use, if Crystal was bland, Glacier is blandest with everything - wallpaper to panel, in white. In Glacier series, the less you speak of the default wallpaper (the Push to Start one), it is better. It is really bad.

From Snowlinux 4 XFCE

Anyway, my assessment involves more than aesthetics and delves deeper into the operating system's performance. Snowlinux 4 XFCE ISO is about 727 MB, quite smaller in size compared to average Linux ISOs these days. I used Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor & 2 GB RAM. Though the machine is 64 bit but given limited RAM, I used the 32-bit ISO for installation and evaluation. My evaluation involved using it for 3 days for all purposes.

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Fedora 18 Spherical Cow LXDE Review: Among the best in LXDE

Fedora has always intrigued me to keep track of the latest happenings in the Linux world and especially what's brewing at the RHEL stable! Also, if I think of a comparable distro to Ubuntu, Fedora is the only legitimate choice! Just like Ubuntu, Fedora also inspires innumerable spins (like Kororaa, Fuduntu, of which I am a big fan now!). So, when the release note of Fedora came on 15th Jan, I was quick to download all the four versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE). I have already covered the Gnome, KDE and XFCE spins in my earlier reviews. The final review is on one of my favorite desktop environments - the LXDE.

From Fedora 18

My assessment is based on installation on Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM and experience of using it for the last 3 days. I downloaded the 32-bit ISO (686 MB in size) for this testing. Fedora 18 has LXDE DE with Linux kernel 3.6.10, which gets updated to 3.7.2 on first update. With kernel 3.7.4 released, I guess within a couple of days, even this will be upgraded as well. PCManFM 1.1.0 is the default file browser and it is one of the lightest file browsers available in the Linux world.

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Fedora 18 Spherical Cow XFCE Review: Works well but a bit bland!

Fedora has always intrigued me to keep track of the latest happenings in the Linux world and especially what's brewing at the RHEL stable! Also, if I think of a comparable distro to Ubuntu, Fedora is the only legitimate choice! Just like Ubuntu, Fedora also inspires innumerable spins (like Kororaa, Fuduntu, of which I am a big fan now!). So, when the release note of Fedora came on 15th Jan, I was quick to download all the four versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE). My earlier reviews were on the Gnome and KDE spins and this is the third in the series on the XFCE spin.

From Fedora 18

My assessment is based on installation on Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM and experience of using it for the last 5 days. I downloaded the 32-bit ISO (694 MB in size) for this testing. Fedora 18 has XFCE 4.10 with Linux kernel 3.6.10, which gets updated to 3.7.2 on first update. With kernel 3.7.4 released, I guess within a couple of days, even this will be upgraded as well. Thunar 1.6.2 is the default file browser in Fedora 18 XFCE.

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Fedora 18 Spherical Cow KDE Review: Pure KDE centric and works very well!

Fedora has always intrigued me to keep track of the latest happenings in the Linux world and especially what's brewing at the RHEL stable! Also, if I think of a comparable distro to Ubuntu, Fedora is the only legitimate choice! Just like Ubuntu, Fedora also inspires innumerable spins (like Kororaa, Fuduntu, of which I am a big fan now!). So, when the release note of Fedora came on 15th Jan, I was quick to download all the four versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE). My first review was on the Gnome spin and this is the second in the series on KDE spin.

From Fedora 18

My assessment is based on installation on Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM and experience of using it for the last 3 days. I downloaded the 32-bit ISO (844 MB in size) for this testing. Fedora 18 has KDE 4.9.5 with Linux kernel 3.6.10, which gets updated to 3.7.2 on first update. With kernel 3.7.4 released, I guess within a couple of days, even this will be upgraded as well. Dolphin 2.1 is the default file browser and it is one of the best file browsers available in the Linux world.

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Fedora 18 Spherical Cow Gnome Review: Stable and efficient with professional looks but has Gnome 3 agonies!

Fedora has always intrigued me to keep track of the latest happenings in the Linux world and especially what's brewing at the RHEL stable! Also, if I think of a comparable distro to Ubuntu, Fedora is the only legitimate choice! Just like Ubuntu, Fedora also inspires innumerable spins (like Kororaa, Fuduntu, of which I am a big fan now!). So, when the release note of Fedora came on 15th Jan, I was quick to download all the four versions (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE). This is the first review of the series and I start with the Gnome spin.

From Fedora 18

My assessment is based on installation in Asus K54C laptop with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM and using it for last 5 days. I used the 932 MB 32 bit ISO for this purpose. Fedora 18 has the stock Gnome 3.6 desktop interface and this version has got the poweroff button back! Removing the shut-down button was insane and good that the developers of Gnome realized it! The desktop looks clean and professional I must say. However, Gnome 3 interface is not yet very intuitive to me, for example, changing a simple wallpaper takes quite a bit of steps whereas on any other desktop environment it is just a matter of simple right click! Same with simple minimization of open windows or closing an open window. Life is quite complex at Gnome 3, I suppose. Usual vices of Gnome 3 is there with this release of Fedora as they are with other stock Gnome 3 based distros. I haven't used Gnome 3 much lately, and using Gnome 3 on a daily basis made me even like Unity! People who read my blog regularly know how much I dislike Unity - Gnome 3 is worse.

From Fedora 18

Anyway, enough cribbing of Gnome 3 and back to Fedora 18. The downloaded ISO has Linux kernel 3.6.10 which upgrades to 3.7.2 upon installation. The default file manager is Gnome Files 3.6.3.  Hardware detection is at par with any other top notch Linux OS - resolution is perfect, sound card detected with ease, touchpad works with enabling touchpad option from mouse settings, Wifi and LAN detected immediately.

One interesting feature I saw is the live-boot or install options while USB live-boot. Seems like Fedora picked up a feather or two from Ubuntu! It is good option for the users and I am not complaining!

From Fedora 18

Applications
Fedora 18 provides users with quite a few of the essential applications, viz.

• Office: LibreOffice 3.6 Calc, Writer, Impress, Draw, Dictionary & Document viewer
• Internet: Empathy, Firefox 17, Remote Desktop, Transmission, Evolution mail & Calendar
• Graphics: Image viewer, Shotwell, simple scan
• Multimedia: Brasero, Cheese, Rhythmbox, Totem Movie Player 3.6.3
• Accessories: Archive Manager, Calculator, Clocks, Contacts, Disks, Documents, Files, gedit, Password manager, Screenshot, Terminal
• Others: Boxes

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

More or less a Fedora has a healthy list of applications. Firefox is the default browser but there is no Adobe flashplugin support out of the box. Html5 works, however, effortlessly. I could watch youtube videos where html5 option is available, right after installation.

From Fedora 18

However, it just takes couple of minutes to actually download the latest Adobe Flash plugin RPM packages and make them work in Fedora 18, namely:

1. Adding Adobe RPM packages to Yum (as root):  
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
2. Update and then download Adobe flash
yum check-update
yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio libcurl

Fedora doesn't have the restricted multimedia codecs installed. Fedora or Red Hat doesn't ship those as a policy. A little bit of research and  Rpmfusion came to my rescue. I entered the following command at the terminal to add RPM fusion packages:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-18.noarch.rpm'

From Fedora 18

Post submitting this command, a refresh of the Software Install showed me the non-free codecs as well as VLC. Imagine the plight before this, neither movie files (.avi & .mkv primarily) nor mp3s would play on Fedora, even though Totem movie player and Rhythmbox are present!

From Fedora 18

Another application that caught my attention is the Boxes. It is actually a lightweight Gnome virtualbox, similar to the more famous Oracle Virtualbox. I didn't try it for this review but will try it sometime in future.

From Fedora 18

Application-wise Fedora 18 is moderately rich and I give it a score of 8.25/10. The score distribution is given below:

Fedora 18 Gnome	Score
App – Office	10.00
App – Internet	8.00
App – Graphics	7.00
App – Multimedia	8.00
Applications	8.25

Given no Adobe flashplugin in either the distro or in the repository, I have given 8/10 in internet section. Otherwise, Fedora satisfy my criteria of a browser, chat client, email client and bit torrent client. In graphics, given there is no photo editor like GIMP, I gave 7/10. In multimedia, as there are no restricted codecs present even in the repo, Fedora 18 got 8/10 though a music player and a video player is present.

Installation
One of the main attraction of the Fedora 18 is the modified Anaconda installer. At a high level, it seems pretty simple and comparable to the Ubuntu installer. Just answer a few questions about language, location, keyboard, set root password, create user and that's it! No silly questions on grub and where to install grub, etc. just like Ubuntu. However, the design is a bit questionable and the orange notices popping up below every now and then is a bit irritating. At times I am not sure if I am doing the right thing or the wrong thing! The screeshots below have a mix of Gnome & KDE installation, as I forgot to take some snapshots from Gnome installation.

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

The installer is a bit bland in look and design. It is possibly designed keeping in mind the tablets and touch interfaces. But, it makes life a little tough on conventional laptops and desktops.

Life becomes more complicated with the installer once I try to create my own partition scheme and install Fedora. The installer is not very intuitive or as good as gparted. Moving on, straight forward installation takes about 20 minutes of time and it doesn't download the updates or codecs while installation like Ubuntu. I guess that makes life a bit tougher for any new user.

Post installation about 260 MB of updates were downloaded. I used terminal for the same with command "sudo yum update && sudo yum upgrade".

Repository
Yum is the default package manager with gpk-application 3.6.1 as the GUI for browsing and installing packages. As mentioned before, the stock Fedora repo isn't that rich in terms of non-free codecs or applications. I couldn't locate even Adobe flashplugin there! But, once I added RPM Fusion packages to it, things became a lot better. Interface of gpk-application is similar to synaptic and even here the gpk apps tells of the dependencies required to be installed as pre-requisites. If you don't want to go into complexities of the GUI, life is quite simple via the terminal as well, simply type "sudo yum install appname" and your app will get installed in minutes.

Some of the apps like Adobe flashplugin or Skype 4.1 are not there even in the RPM Fusion repo and required to be installed downloading from the respective website. For Skype, I tried the Fedora 16 installer available on Skype website and it worked well resolving all dependencies on Fedora 18.

From Fedora 18

From Fedora 18

Performance
Post updating to Linux kernel 3.7.2, Fedora 18 Gnome desktop consumed about 310-320 MB RAM and 1-10% CPU to load with system monitor running. I guess, it is pretty decent if I compare it to the latest Gnome 3 spins released in 2012-13. Fedora 18 resource consumption is almost equivalent to Fedora 17 and Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS. If I compare it to Ubuntu 12.10, Fedora 18 comes way better.

Linux OS	Desktop	CPU	RAM
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS	Unity with Gnome 3.4	1-10%	280 MB
Fedora 17 Gnome	Gnome 3.4.1	1-10%	296 MB
Zorin 6 Core	Gnome 3.4.1	1-10%	300 MB
OpenSUSE 12.2 Gnome	Gnome 3.4.2	1-10%	310 MB
Fedora 18 Gnome	Gnome 3.6.2	1-10%	310 MB
Pinguy OS 12.04	Gnome 3.4.1	1-10%	325 MB
Ubuntu 12.10	Unity with Gnome 3.6	1-10%	412 MB

Overall
I like Fedora 18 Gnome for it's clean, uncluttered interface. But, Gnome 3 is too much to digest for me to use. Actually Ubuntu Unity works much better, even though I hate it being inefficient. Now actually I understand why Ubuntu is pursuing Unity and Linux Mint is going aggressive on Cinnamon. However, I don't have much complain on the Fedora spin - they tried to be true to Gnome 3 desktop and it worked really well on my Core i3 laptop. It is fast, slick and I found it quite stable. I have mixed feelings about the upgraded Anaconda installer - it's good in patches but I felt, it is primarily designed for tablets. I guess the big distros like Ubuntu & Fedora will go aggressive to tap the tablet PC market pretty soon. Desktop users will have to be contended with Fedora/Ubuntu spins like Linux Mint, Fuduntu, Kororaa, etc.

Do I recommend Fedora 18 Gnome? I'll recommend it for advanced users who can take the pain for installing a new distro every year. For casual users, looking for a stable distro but love Fedora, try other flavors of Fedora like KDE. And if you can't live without Gnome, try Fuduntu instead. It work much better and has a rolling release with Gnome 2.32 desktop. Life is much easier and intuitive in Fuduntu.

Fedora 18 Gnome gets a rating of 8.35/10 from my side for being a solid stable distro with slick professional looks and good performance, but with Gnome 3 agonies. The score distribution is given below:

Fedora 18 Gnome	Score	Weights
Installation time	10.00	5%
Installation Complexity	8.00	5%
Hardware detection	10.00	10%
Applications	8.25	20%
Aesthetics & Usability	7.00	30%
Performance & Stability	9.00	30%
Overall	8.35	100%

You can download the 32 and 64 bit editions from here.

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Ultimate Edition 3.5 Review: Ugly but fully loaded!

My first exposure to Ultimate edition was with 3.4. I installed the 64-bit one to my newly bought Core i7 3rd gen. laptop with 8 GB RAM last year, but had to remove it bugged by it's instability. First the default interface is devoid of much aesthetics, Second, effects are too loud and most important, third, instability - not a single day passed with something or the other crashing in the background or my laptop suddenly stopped responding and would require a hard reset. First two issues on aesthetics and too much of effects I took care myself with 24 hours of usage but I couldn't handle the third one and replaced it with supremely stable Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon.

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

It may sound a sad tone to begin with - but, the disappointment is primarily due to my high expectation build around the distro and hope that it would really work for me. Tell me, where you get Gnome 3, Unity, Gnome 2, etc. desktop environments together in a single distro? Everyday you can use a different desktop! Plus, it is loaded with applications - it has almost the entire Ubuntu repository loaded there! 

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

With the new release note of Ultimate Edition 3.5 coming out on 3rd Jan, and that too in KDE flavor, I was really intrigued to check it out, with the expectation of more stability in the distro. UE 3.5 is about 3.5 GB, which is about 300 MB more than UE 3.4. Both are built on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. However, the upgraded version has quite a lot of added flavors like KDE 4.8, XFCE 4.8, LXDE, OpenBox, Cinnamon, in addition to Gnome 3, Unity and Gnome 2. Linux kernel is 3.2.0 as in Ubuntu 12.04.1. I downloaded the 32-bit version this time.

Testing was done for a week on my Asus K54C 2.2 Ghz Core i3 laptop with 2 GB RAM, decent specs to run any OS. I did a live boot from USB and then installed it on the same machine to use it for a week and make a fair assessment. At boot up itself, one can sense little attention to art-work, as UE 3.5 KDE started with a Lubuntu screen and an Ubuntu login window! Further, because of the GUI's dark theme along with dark fonts, visibility becomes a bit of issue in UE 3.5.


Applications
It will take me at least 2-3 posts to accurately provide you the applications in UE 3.5. Better you check a few screenshots to build an expectation. The screenshots are taken in UE with LXDE desktop, as in the default KDE menu, it is difficult to show majority of the apps. In nutshell, entire Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu - entire Ubuntu clan is present in UE 3.5 along with the Ubuntu repository. Actually there is no need to add any software center as there won't be any app left in repo! Multimedia codecs are pre-loaded and one can straight away listen to favorite music or watch movies immediately after installation or live boot.

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

Amazingly, you see Muon and Lubuntu software centers as well along with the default Ubuntu software center! Also, think of multiple file managers! Kind of over-abundance but I can live with it!

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

My only grudge here is LibreOffice is still 3.5, GIMP is 2.6 and quite a few of the other apps are also backdated. However, users can add the appropriate packages from Quantal/Nadia and upgrade the software.

Installation
Installation is typical Ubuntu and takes about 30 minutes. Steps are pretty simple and would not surprise even a newbie. Even here the installation steps have real font color problem and whatever is written, is barely visible due to white font and semi-transparent GUI. Seriously, the developers should take some help from an expert on art-work!

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

From Ultimate Edition 3.5

 
Performance
I downloaded the 32-bit OS for the test. Performance was assessed post installation and I tried all the available desktop options. Of these, Cinnamon 2D, Openbox and XDMC options didn't work for me. From the rest, LXDE was the least resource consuming option for me, followed by XFCE and Gnome classic mode. Surprisingly, KDE came out to be the most inefficient option!

Desktops	CPU	RAM
Cinnamon	1-10%	360 MB
Cinnamon 2D	-	-
Gnome	1-10%	285 MB
Gnome Classic	1-10%	286 MB
Gnome Classic (No effects)	1-10%	281 MB
Gnome/Openbox	1-10%	440 MB
KDE Plasma Workspace	1-10%	782 MB
KDE/Openbox	1-10%	774 MB
Lubuntu	1-10%	167 MB
Lubuntu netbook	1-10%	169 MB
Openbox	-	-
Ubuntu	1-10%	438 MB
Ubuntu 2D	1-10%	438 MB
XBMC	-	-
Xfce Session	1-10%	182 MB
Xubuntu Session	1-10%	182 MB
Ubuntu Studio	1-10%	185 MB

If the compare UE 3.5 desktop environments to the corresponding releases (from Ubuntu 12.04.1 and Linux Mint 13 stables), Ultimate's performances didn't deviate significantly from the parent distros (except for KDE). All the results are from installations on the same machine (which I tested at different point in time in 2012).

Competing Distro	RAM	CPU
Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon	6-10%	200 MB
Linux Mint 13 Mate	2-3%	207 MB
Kubuntu 12.04.1	2-10%	310 MB
Lubuntu 12.04	0-5%	119 MB
Ubuntu 12.04.1	5-20%	280 MB
Xubuntu 12.04.1	1-5%	160 MB

Stability
In my 10 days of usage, I found this edition of UE to be relatively more stable than the previous versions I had tested. Post initial update, I didn't have any background application crash. Except KDE, rest of the desktop environments were quite smooth to use. Specially I liked the Lubuntu version. Imagine the efficiency of LXDE with a whole lot of applications from Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu! Cool!

Overall
Using UE 3.5, as it is, is no fun at all because of shoddy artwork and really bad looking interface. I couldn't believe KDE can look so bad till I used UE 3.5. Anyway, users can improve the artwork. I don't mind the artwork when I see what I am getting in return - a whole lot of applications to work with and possibly never requiring to open the Ubuntu Software Center! Paradoxically, UE has 3 Software Centers to offer!

From version 3.4 to 3.5, there are quite a few plus points - the developers have toned down the effects quite a bit and now it doesn't hamper with productivity. All kinds of applications are out of the box and gives you a complete experience. I agree the distro is a bit inefficient compared to a single desktop distro like a Lubuntu or Xubuntu, but anyway, UE is not supposed to be installed to a low end machine! It is and absolutely is, recommended if you have a real good system (with dual core or high end processor and minimum 2 GB RAM) in your possession. Otherwise, don't even think of trying UE - it's not for the faint hearted.

Plus, I'll recommend UE 3.5 to Linux users with some experience. For newbies, it might be a little confusing to have so many desktops, file managers, system monitors, mail clients, browsers, and a whole lot of other apps for the same function.

So, if you are looking for a new experience, different desktop every day or a whole lot of applications to play with and can live with bad art-work, UE 3.5 is a must try. You may like it! You can download UE 3.5 32-bit and 64-bit editions from here.

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Fuduntu 2013.1 Review: Simple, effective and fast!

Fuduntu Linux was initially conceptualized to be somewhere between Fedora and Ubuntu by Andrew Wyatt - possibly to combine the fun of Ubuntu with the professionalism of Fedora, I guess. The distro is currently forked from Fedora and has rolling releases with four major updates coming in 2012. Continuing with the same trend, on 7th Jan'13, the first updated release of this year came out for Fuduntu with version 2013.1. With the release note in Distrowatch stating some major changes like moving to Cairo dock from AWN, Jockey to check hardware and detect the drivers required, no Jupiter, addition of Netflix and making Silverlight to work in WINE, nVidia optimus compatibility, still maintaining support for Gnome 2, etc., I was more than interested to actually try it out hands on.

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Further, given its Mac-ish looks, another intention was to compare with other Linux Mac OS X clones from Ubuntu derivatives, like Pear OS, Elementary Linux and Luninux. I'll add this week Fuduntu to the comparison I made of the Linux Mac OS X clones during December 2012. Now coming back to Fuduntu, I used my Asus K54C laptop (2.2 Ghz Core i3 with 2 GB RAM) to test this distro after installation. Also, I booted it up on my Asus EeePC 1101HA with 1.33 Ghz Intel Atom processor and 1 GB RAM, to check out if it still supports EeePC, for which Fuduntu was originally designed and also, it's performance in limited specs.
 

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Fuduntu has Gnome 2.32 as desktop environment (YES, pure Gnome 2 and not Mate!) and Linux kernel 3.6.9. I found hardware recognition very good with sound card, graphic drivers and touchpad properly recognized. The desktop looks clean and nice - kind of Elementary Linux look it has. Now Cairo dock has replaced AWN and it has added to the looks of the distro. Further, the developers have taken care of art-work really well as evident from attention to minute details like boot up screen, etc. Nautilus elementary is the file manager and it is fast and supports most of the commonly required functionalities.

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Applications
Fuduntu is decently rich in applications, the prominent ones being:

• Office: Document viewer, LibreOffice 3.6 Calc, Writer, Draw
• Internet: Chromium 23, Dropbox, Pidgin, Remmina remote desktop, Thunderbird 17
• Graphics: GIMP 2.8, Shotwell
• Multimedia: Brasero, Cheese, VLC 2
• Accessories: Archive Manager, Calculator, gedit, Shutter (Screenshot), Cairo dock

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

The developers could have provided the complete LibreOffice suite here. Other than that, the apps provided are good enough for everyday requirements. Multimedia codecs and Adobe flash player are in-built and I could play my favorite youtube videos and watch movies immediately after boot up or installation, without requiring to update the system. Below table shows a composite score for the applications in the distro:

-->

Fuduntu 2013.1	Score
App – Office	10.00
App – Internet	7.50
App – Graphics	7.00
App – Multimedia	10.00
Applications	8.63

Apart from general applications, Fuduntu repository has Netflix (working through Wine). It took me about 30 minutes to download Netflix desktop metapackage with all analogous components. It downloaded Wine, MS fonts, Firefox browser for Windows, among other things. However, in spite of spending a couple of days, I could not actually make it work. It would start and then crash. I reinstalled it at least three times but nothing worked. I'll try again tomorrow and will post an update if I am successful.

This small blip aside, rest of the things worked without any pain. The OS is real smooth to use and is really simple. Cairo dock is fun to use and has subtle animations which don't hamper with productivity. Further, Cairo has a lot of themes and if you are bored with a Mac-ish docky you can easily change theme of the Cairo dock to make it look like something else.

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Installation
Installation is easy and is similar to Fedora. I guess Fuduntu 2013.1 too uses Anaconda installer but unlike Fedora, it doesn't show the name. Otherwise steps are simple: keyboard language, location to install, location (geographic), root password creation followed by installation to the hard disk and then things are completed with user id creation and password allocation. Fuduntu installer takes care of where to install grub and other details and doesn't bother the user unnecessarily. All in all, it takes about 15-20 minutes. Pretty easy and efficient even in newbie standards!

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Repository
Like Fedora, Fuduntu uses the Yum package manager and there are separate icons for Add/Remove Package (gpk-application 2.32.0) and Software update in the Systems -> Administration section of the menu. Post installation initial update can be done through Software Update or via the terminal, if you are an expert. Terminal command is similar to Ubuntu, only package manager name changes here, viz "sudo yum update && sudo yum upgrade" and it works like a charm!

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Incidentally Sudo didn't work in earlier versions of Fuduntu and is supported from the present version onwards. I checked the repository, though it is sourced from Fedora rpm packages, Fuduntu maintains it's own repository and it is fairly updated. Most of the regular applications are present and is quite good. Below pictures show the repo GUI (which has a resemblance to synaptic) and how easy it was for me to install Firefox 17 from the repo.

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Performance
Fuduntu 2013.1 performs actually better than most of the XFCE distros on my laptop. To load the desktop with system monitor running, it takes about 155-165 MB RAM and 1-5% CPU. Also, Fuduntu booted up on my Asus EeePC 1101HA netbook and I could use it without any stress to the system. Pretty efficient I would rate and below is a comparison with some leading Mac OS X look-alike distros released in 2012 in similar conditions on the same machine. Being a Gnome 2 distro, Fuduntu actually performs way better than the Ubuntu derived Mac OS X clones, though its aesthetics may not be comparable to, say, Pear OS 6.

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Parameters	Elementary OS Beta 1	Pear OS 6	LuninuX 12.10	Fuduntu 2013.1
Size of ISO	651 MB	862 MB	1500 MB	1 GB
Booting time (post installation)	20-30 sec	20-30 sec	20-30 sec	20-30 sec
Desktop	Pantheon, Gnome derivative	Pear Aurora 1.0.5	Gnome 3.6 with Docky	Gnome 2.32.0
Linux kernel	3.2.0	3.2.0	3.5.0	'3.6.9
CPU Usage (post installation)	1-5%	1-5%	1-5%	1-5%
RAM usage (post installation)	270 MB	235 MB	280 MB	162 MB

From Fuduntu 2013.1

Overall
To my mind, Fuduntu is definitely not a "punny" distro, rather a real "serious" one! Funduntu 2013.1 impressed me a lot with its simple and uncluttered desktop interface, incredible speed, resource efficiency and high functionality. It reminds me a lot of Elementary OS (Ubuntu derived and has Pantheon desktop, forked from Gnome 3). I could not use Netflix (through Wine) even after repeated effort and I'll check if I can resolve it. Other than that, I found it stable and things didn't crash while using for a week or so. The distro looks good and is aesthetically pleasing. Use of Cairo dock has actually improved the aesthetics over use of square boxed docky in previous editions. In my scale of 10, based on the evaluation I give Fuduntu a score of 9/10. The breakup is given below:

-->

Fuduntu 2013.1	Score
Installation time	10.00
Installation Complexity	10.00
Touchpad/Wifi Detection	10.00
Applications	8.63
Aesthetics	8.00
Performance (Core i3 – installed)	10.00
Overall	9.00

As you can guess, a definite recommendation from my side and a must have for Gnome 2 lovers! You can download the latest edition of Fuduntu from here. Both 32 and 64 bit versions are available.

20th Jan 2013: On more addition, for last few days I am using Fuduntu as the only distro on my netbook, Asus EeePC 1101HA with 1.33 Ghz Intel Atom processor and 1 GB RAM. Really low powered machine by today's standards, no doubt. Fuduntu runs blazing fast on it, post removal of all desktop special effects. Further, I am impressed with it's juice saving ability - the netbook runs for 6 hours on battery and it's unprecedented from any Linux distro I have used on this machine! Performance is really good and no issues there. I installed uget download manager and Firefox 17 from Fuduntu repo and Skype 4.1.0.20, downloading the RPM files from Skype website. All of them worked as expected. Further, I used Conky Lua to decorate my desktop and below is a screenshot of the same.

One issue that I am facing is that the Anaconda installer automatically allotted about 50 GB space for root and another 100 GB for home directory from the available 150 GB hard disk space. Now the 50 GB for root is unusable as I don't have write access. I tried re-installing Fuduntu quite a few times but couldn't find a way to reduce the space allocated to root. And out of the 50 GB, 45 GB is free! But, I can't use :). Anyway, I am trying to find a solution to the same. Space issue aside, perhaps this is one of the better distros I have used which looks attractive, performs well and is easy to use.

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