{"id":634,"date":"2010-04-03T16:48:32","date_gmt":"2010-04-03T22:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=634"},"modified":"2010-04-04T20:17:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T02:17:29","slug":"first-impressions-of-lubuntu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=634","title":{"rendered":"First impressions of Lubuntu"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

Lubuntu, for those not in the know, is the variant of Ubuntu that uses LXDE as its desktop environment.\u00a0 I use LXDE over Ubuntu or Xubuntu on most of my computers.\u00a0 I like it a lot.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 That went almost smoothly.\u00a0 I got two error messages when I installed it and I have corrupted packages that can’t be repaired.<\/p>\n

No biggie… It’s an experimental installation and it’s not the official release yet.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I noticed that not only was the LXDE desktop package available in the repositories, but also the official “Lubuntu Desktop” package.\u00a0 Well gosh dern, I decided to give it a whirl.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Someone Else’s screen grab<\/p>\n

The package installed like I had seen the Xubuntu package install before from Ubuntu.\u00a0 It went smoothly and I rebooted.<\/p>\n

And right away I noticed that the official Lubuntu theme is flavoured with light colours.\u00a0 Not what I like, but easy to fix.\u00a0 I got my favourite themes installed, and my favourite icons, and made my customizations.\u00a0 Now to gripe.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if these problems are due to the pre-release nature of the software, but here goes.\u00a0 Mounting USB drives is broken.\u00a0 I had to manually install PMount, and even then, drives don’t appear in the side pane of PCManFM like they should.\u00a0 I created a link to \/media\/usb there, but the shortcut doesn’t allow me to mount or unmount drives.\u00a0 Not only that but I am unable (easilly) to get write access to a USB mounted drive without resorting to opening PCManFM as root.<\/p>\n

And PCManFM appears to be broken.\u00a0 I can’t navigate more than a few folders before the main window freezes and becomes unresponsive.<\/p>\n

At least the wireless applet in Lubuntu works perfectly.\u00a0 Before, I had to use WCID and manually activate a wireless connection at the beginning of each session.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

There’s also a “Menu Editor” in Lubuntu, which is a fantastic idea.\u00a0 It doesn’t work at all, but it’s a great idea.<\/p>\n

Oh well.\u00a0 I see that Lubuntu also installs Google’s Chrome browser and makes it the default.\u00a0 Bad Lubuntu!\u00a0 Fuck Google Chrome.<\/p>\n

And Fuck Apple too.<\/p>\n

I’ve decided that “Fuck Apple” will be my new motto.\u00a0 Like Cato the Elder<\/a> used to say “And furthermore, I believe that Carthage should be destroyed.” after every speech, regardless of the topic.<\/p>\n

Fuck Apple.<\/p>\n

So all in all, I’m not impressed by what the Lubuntu team has done with integrating LXDE into Ubuntu.\u00a0 The way I did it to my computers is much better, except for the new wireless applet.\u00a0 I hope that can be had the way I roll with LXDE.<\/p>\n

Oh, one more thing.\u00a0 I noticed that GRip is no longer in the Ubuntu repositories for 10.4.\u00a0 Damn it!\u00a0 That’s the best CD ripping software for Linux I’ve found!\u00a0 Grumble!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 I use LXDE over Ubuntu or Xubuntu on most of my computers.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,7,6],"tags":[254,554,8,253,555,194],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-linux","category-lxde","category-ubuntu","tag-geekdom","tag-linux","tag-lubuntu","tag-software","tag-ubuntu","tag-xubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}