Xubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" Review: Buttery smooth and lightweight

With GNOME 2's sad demise, a lot of users like me, shifted to another lightweight and customizable alternative - XFCE desktop environment. Those days I was most comfortable with Ubuntu, and so my natural choice was Xubuntu. And based on my experience with XFCE in Xubuntu/Manjaro for the last couple of years, I can safely say that it is the most stable desktop environment I have used along with LXDE.

On April 17, 2014, Xubuntu released it's much awaited Long Term Support (LTS) release - Xubuntu 14.04, nicknamed "Trusty Tahr". Pasi Lallinaho announced the release of Xubuntu 14.04, a desktop distribution shipping with the latest development build of the Xfce desktop, version 4.11: "The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 14.04. Xubuntu 14.04 is an LTS (long-term support) release and will be supported for 3 years. The highlights of this release include: Light Locker replaces XScreenSaver for screen locking, a settings GUI is included; the panel layout is updated, it now uses Whisker Menu by default; Mugshot is included to allow editing personal preferences; MenuLibre for menu editing with full Xfce support replaces Alacarte; a community wallpapers package which includes work from the five winners of the wallpaper contest; GTK+ Theme Config to customize desktop theme colors; updated artwork, including various enhancements to themes as well as a new default wallpaper."

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I downloaded the 913 MB 64-bit ISO for this review. I created a live USB using Linux Mint Image Writer and booted it up on my Asus K55VM with 2.3 Ghz Core i7 processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM and 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce 630M graphic card. Next, I installed it on a 50 GB HDD partition.


Aesthetics
Xubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with Xfdesktop 4.11.6 running on XFCE 4.10. Superficially I didn't notice any major change in appearance (except for the bottom panel gone for good), but under the hood, Xfdesktop 4.11 has significant improvements to speak of. Xubuntu has Linux kernel 3.13.0.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

The wallpaper design has changed a bit from the last edition and it looks good. Unlike previous versions of Xubuntu, the LTS spin doesn't come with a whole lot of wallpapers. There are some Debian wallpapers in /usr/share/wallpaper. Xubuntu 14.04 ships with Whisker menu. I prefer the simple menu as it is easier to browse and more efficient. But, whisker menu definitely looks more stylist and adds glamour to the desktop.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

In previous version of XFCE, wallpaper setting wasn't an issue but inevitably they would vanish from wallpaper settings. However, the recent version remembers the pictures folder and shows all available options from there. It is a good improvement that I noted in Xfdesktop 4.11. Further, now XFCE has the option to set a picture as wallpaper by simply right clicking on it.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

XFCE as such looks a bit bland and definitely less attractive than KDE / GNOME. To make it more attractive, I installed conkies, compiz-config and downloaded attractive wallpapers from internet. The result was quite stunning as you see below.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Like other Ubuntu spins, font rendering and application appearance is pretty neat in Xubuntu. Thunar looks pretty clean and professional; it works really fast and is lightweight.USB and drives are mounted automatically.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

In overall, Xubuntu is meant to be a lightweight OS to be run in low powered machines, which is why it shuns unnecessary glitz and glitter. Otherwise, the boot splash is graphical with Xubuntu logo, appearance is professional and the desktop is cutomizable. Hence, I go with a good score for Xubuntu 14.04 LTS for aesthetics.

Score for Aesthetics: 9/10

Hardware Recognition
Xubuntu has top notch hardware recognition and everything works without fail - wifi, lan, touchpad, sound, screen resolution, etc. etc., without any manual intervention.

Score for Hardware Recognition: 10/10

Pre-Installed Packages
Xubuntu ships with the basic packages, with a clear focus on lightweight packages, namely:

• Office: Abiword, Gnumeric, Dictionary, Document Viewer, Orage calendar, Orage Global time
• Internet: Firefox 28, Pidgin IM, Thunderbird Mail, Transmission bit torrent client, Xchat IRC
• Graphics: GIMP 2.8.10, Ristretto Image Viewer, Simple Scan, Screenshot
• Multimedia: gmusicbrowser, Parole Media Player, Xfburn CD/DVD writer
• Accessories: Archive Manager, Calculator, Catfish file search, Mousepad, Notes, Terminal emulator

Notably Startup Disc creator is missing from the list. I find it a very useful software to create live USB and expected it to be there in all the Ubuntu spins.
Never the less, the application list fulfills most of the normal requirements. Abiword and Gnumeric are lighter alternatives of LibreOffice and work well as Word and Spreadsheet processing apps.
Internet section is very strong and has all the normal packages expected. I am a bit surprised to see GIMP here as I find it quite heavy.
Both gmusic and Parole are quite lightweight and work better than VLC on limited resource systems.
I am not sure if Xubuntu dropped Leafpad permanently but I used to like it. Anyway, mousepad is also quite good.

Settings manager is integrated in Xubuntu and it seems to have more options. Even the compiz-config I installed appeared in Settings manager along with Nvidia settings. A well integrated settings manager definitely help new users to have more control over the distro and makes Xubuntu easy to use without doubt.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Overall, it is good that Xubuntu ships with lightweight packages suitable for limited resource systems. I miss a download manager, a VoIP client and a live USB creator here and hence, I go with 8.5/10 for pre-installed packages.

Score for Pre-Installed Packages: 8/10

Installation
Installation is similar to Ubuntu and takes about 15 minutes of time. Typical questions like location to install, time zone, language, keyboard preference and user ID creation are asked in the process and should not challenge any user remotely familiar with any operating system.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Score for Installation: 10/10

Repositories
Xubuntu sources it's packages from the Ubuntu Trusty repositories and has Ubuntu Software Center as interface. I miss a synaptic package manager here as it works faster than Ubuntu Software Center.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I installed conky, compiz-config and few other packages from the Ubuntu Software Center and they worked as expected of them.

Installing drivers for NVIDIA GeForce 630M
To counter laptop heat and stress on battery, I initially installed bumblebee with nvidia-331-updates as discussed on my previous reviews of Ubuntu and Kubuntu 14.04 LTS. However, I was not satisfied with the performance of bumblebee in Ubuntu 14.04. Laptop heat was still there though not as serious as without bumblebee.

So, I decided to try something else - using the proprietary drivers of Nvidia in Ubuntu. Hence, first I purged all bumblebee files from the system by:
$ sudo apt-get purge bumblebee*
Next I installed Nvidia prime which will help me to choose graphic card:
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-prime
Post reboot, I opened the Nvidia settings manager and changed graphic card to Intel from Nvidia. One big short coming of this package is that it requires user to log out for a change in graphic card.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Bumblebee is easier to use, but somehow I got terrible performance in Ubuntu Trusty. Nvidia prime worked far better will little or no laptop heat even after running my system throughout the day.

Prime indicator is a 3rd party package which helps in easier selection of graphic cards. Even it requires logging out to change graphic card but it can be easily accessed from the panel. To install, I had to add a 3rd party repo and install prime indicator.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt-get update
$  sudo apt-get install prime-indicator

However, the prime indicator logo didn't come good in XFCE.

From Xubuntu 14.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

For security reasons, I disable the third party repositories post installation of the package. It may not be necessary but I care about it.

Performance

Xubuntu 14.04 LTS gave me decent performance and worked very smooth. It boots really fast at around 23 seconds, which is about 57% faster than average KDE4 distros and 44% faster than average GNOME 3 distros. I don't have so rich a data for XFCE and LXDE 64 bit distros and hence, I don't have a comparison table for Xubuntu. However, next week I plan to writer an article on Ubuntu vs Xubuntu vs Lubuntu vs Kubuntu vs Ubuntu Gnome. Possibly it will give a comparison how fast and efficient Xubuntu is!

Boot time	Average (sec)	Best (sec)
KDE4 64 bit	52	35
GNOME 64 bit	41	22
Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit	23

RAM consumption is at 310 MB, with task manager running. I find it decent for a 64 bit distro. Xubuntu is definitely way ahead of KDE distros but the same can't be said of GNOME. Some Mate / GNOME forked distros perform better than Xubuntu. All these metrics are recorded on the same system at different points in time in 2012-14.

RAM Consumption	Average (MB)	Best (MB)
KDE4 64 bit	555	423
GNOME 64 bit	383	262
Xubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit	310

Overall, Xubuntu 64 bit is quite a good performer with really low booting time and moderate resource consumption. 

Score for Performance: 8/10

Overall

Xubuntu is the first distro to ship Xfdesktop 4.11 and comes with some under the hood improvements. Superficially it appears exactly the same as the previous releases (which is not a bad point either - I am tired of drastic changes in Linux DEs of late). Talking of performance, Xubuntu works quite well and has everything expected of an LTS distro. Xubuntu is supported for 3 years but I think security updates for Ubuntu will be available till the life of the Ubuntu Trusty repositories for Xubuntu. Anyway, domestic users mostly update their systems for every LTS and I guess most of us will upgrade to 16.04 LTS once it is released. So, for me 3 years of support for Xubuntu makes no serious issue.

Xubuntu 14.04 LTS is definitely a distro worth recommendation to all Linux users, seasoned and novice alike. Though XFCE is still not as good as GNOME 2 but I can see it improving and Gnome 2 lovers may like this release. I hope Xubuntu continues the good work of providing an easy to use distro with lots of user customization options.

You can download the 32 and 64 bit versions of Xubuntu 14.04 LTS from here. 

Overall Score: 9/10

Breakup:

Installation (20% weight) = 10/10

Aesthetics (20% weight) = 9/10

Hardware Recognition (20% weight) = 10/10

Pre-Installed Packages (10% weight) = 8/10

Performance (30% weight) = 8/10