Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 Review: Xubuntu LTS spiced up!

I recently came across Emmabuntus in Distrowatch, it is a Xubuntu 12.04.2 LTS based distro which comes with a large number of pre-installed applications. You can say it to be Ultimate Edition for Xubuntu. Naturally, I was inclined to try it out - to check if it is just mindless collection of applications or the developers have used their judgement in selecting those apps.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

I downloaded the 3.5 GB Emmabuntus ISO. And used an 8 GB pendrive to create a live-USB using unetbootin. I did a live boot followed by installation in my Asus K54C with 2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB RAM. Initially I thought Emmabuntus to be just another dump of all available applications but once I started using it, I realized it brings in some very good features in addition to dumping all available apps. Details in the remaining part of the article.


There are 3 choices once you bootup after installation - full feature, 4 kids and I guess, another is minimalistic. Hardware detection is as expected from any Ubuntu derived distro - it is pretty good. Emmabuntus could easily recognize my wifi, lan, touchpad, display and sound settings. Things worked right out of the box without requiring any manual intervention. Only hiccup I faced was that the default keyboard language was French and I had to manually change it to English.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

The login screen shows XFCE, Xubuntu and a couple of more options (Cairo-dock with Gnome, Cairo-dock with Unity). Only XFCE and Xubuntu work out of them and both boot the same desktop! The default look of Emmabuntus is vanilla XFCE 4.8 DE with a cairo-dock. Linux kernel used is 3.2.0 as in Xubuntu LTS and Thunar 1.2.3 is the file manager. The default wallpaper is quite gaudy, but it has quite a few other good wallpaper options as well. In addition, cairo dock themes can also be installed to make the desktop more appealing. I didn't go for all these, simply I changed the wallpaper and added a conky. Below is the look created by 2 minutes of effort.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Applications
Well, almost I every application I know of has been dumped in Emmabuntus, as if, almost in a mindless fashion. The result is 3 music player, 3 movie players, 4 image viewers, 2 email clients, 2 IMs doing the same thing (Empathy & Pidgin), couple of office suites (LibreOffice and OOo4kids along with Abiword, Gnumeric) and browsers (Firefox and Chromium), to name a few. 

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Of course, OOo4kids office, though similar in look and feel to Libreoffice and share the same base (openoffice), is a simplified version targeted to 7-12 year old kids. I tried creating a few charts and doing some calculations in OOo4kids Calc, it works well though offering limited options compared to LibreOffice Calc.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

I won't bore you with detailed application list here. It has almost all the usual applications you can think of in addition to Wine, PlayonLinux, Virtualbox, Skype 4.1, Teamviewer 8, LRF viewer, Wammu phone, Picasa, etc. Some good educational softwares are there too - not all but some of them are in French.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Cairo-dock has group level short-cuts like movie player, music player, communication (IMs), etc. and individual application can be accessed from the cairo dock as well apart from XFCE menu.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Firefox is the default browser though Chromium is present. Firefox has almost all common plugins added though the Novell Moonlight (similar to Microsoft's Silverlight) doesn't work with the latest version of Firefox. Both the browsers have a good web-blocking plugin and effectively blocks inappropriate websites. Good for parental control!

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Multimedia codecs and Adobe flashplugin are in built and Emmabuntus can play your favorite movie, music and live stream without requiring any additional download.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Repository
Ubuntu Precise Pangolin Repository is the main repository and packages can be downloaded via Ubuntu Software Center and Synaptic package manager. Ubuntu has the richest repository in the Linux world and almost all possible Linux compatible applications you can think of, are available here. I installed Midori browser, compiz and conky from repository and they worked as expected. Below is the desktop cube I created using compiz.

From Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com

Also, given playonlinux and wine are installed, you can actually install MSOffice 2010 and other Windows based programs as well. You can check it out here.

Installation
Installation is usual Ubuntu stuff and it took me about 30 minutes to install Emmabuntus. Queries are the usual ones: Language, Location, Keyboard language and type, Location to install and user ID creation.

Performance
In spite of being loaded with applications, I found Emmabuntus to perform quite decently. With task manager running, at steady state it took about 180 MB RAM and 1-5% CPU usage. It is more or less in line with what we see in an XFCE distro, all 32 bit and tested on the same system at different point in time, under similar conditions (at least I tried to have similar conditions!).

Parameters	Size of ISO	Base	Desktop	CPU Usage (post installation)	RAM usage (post installation)
Snowlinux 4 Glacier XFCE	727 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	87 MB
Debian Wheezy XFCE	868 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	100 MB
Snowlinux 3.1 Crystal XFCE	639 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	110 MB
Linux Lite 1.0.4 XFCE	755 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	120 MB
Mint 13 Debian XFCE	1.2 GB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	125 MB
Bridge XFCE	696 MB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	130 MB
Linux Lite 1.0.0 XFCE	916 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	130 MB
Mint 14 XFCE	914 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	140 MB
Fedora 17 XFCE	705 MB	Fedora	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	160 MB
Manjaro 0.8.3 XFCE	817 MB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	160 MB
Mint 13 XFCE	850 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	160 MB
Sabayon 11 XFCE	1.3 GB	Gentoo	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	160 MB
Xubuntu 12.04.1 LTS	715 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	160 MB
Xubuntu 12.10	727 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	160 MB
Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04	3.5 GB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	1-5%	170 MB
Fedora 18 XFCE	694 MB	Fedora	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	180 MB
Sabayon 10 XFCE	1.3 GB	Gentoo	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	180 MB
Manjaro 0.8.2 XFCE	1.1 GB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	200 MB
OS 4 13.1	1.5 GB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	200 MB
Voyager 12.10	991 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	200 MB
ZevenOS 5	734 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	1-5%	220 MB

On stability part, couple of times it showed broken packages but things got resolved once I ran the command $sudo apt-get install -f. It happened with me at least. Especially it happened I guess due to language pack removal that I opted for. In addition to some European languages (like Portuguese, German, etc.) I removed French as well and retained only English. It might have left certain broken packages. Otherwise, Emmabuntu is quite stable and works like Xubuntu.

Overall
I found Emmabuntus to be good and you can call it as Ultimate Edition for Xubuntu 12.04 LTS. Given Xubuntu LTS has a couple of more years of support left, I guess it is safe to try it out. Emmabuntus performs as good as any other XFCE distro available in the market and I did not note significant instability.

If you are in the habit of installing a lot of applications, Emmabuntu may be a good choice for you. Also, for Linux novices who are not sure about how to install apps and others, Emmabuntu is a perfect OS for you. It brings the best applications of Linux world (though not judiciously chosen) to your system all of which work right out of the box.

Definitely recommended for Xubuntu and XFCE lovers and you can download it from here. I guess only the 32 bit version is available for Emmabuntus.