Unlike Ubuntu (which uses GNOME), Xubuntu uses the Xfce desktop environment. Xfce is a lightweight environment that, according to its creator Olivier Fourdan, “…loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources.” Xubuntu is really geared toward those using older hardware or who simply prefer a no-frills desktop without the gobs of eye-candy found in GNOME or KDE.

As you can see from the Linux Family Tree, Ark Linux is a main branch distribution (with a little inbreeding from cousin Redhat) that’s been around since 2003.

Keeping your system clean can be a time-consuming affair, unless you use specialized tools like BleachBit. With just a few mouse clicks, this nifty little utility can help you to purge all the junk produced by the system and installed applications.

Fedora 13 will bring a lot of interesting new features when it's released in late May, but also interesting is what's going to be missing. For example, official support for PowerPC. So what happens now, and what's the right thing to do for users on niche platforms?

Mark Shuttleworth just announced a version of Ubuntu for the dual-boot called Unity and a range of Light versions of Ubuntu, both netbook and desktop, that are optimised for dual-boot scenarios. These "Light" Ubuntu versions are optimized for the web.

I've been thinking about getting back to the small projects for some time. Today I burned a Slitaz disc. Couldn't get X to start. (And no, none of the vga=xxx boot codes would help.) So I turned to Tiny Core Linux.

After a discussion @ UDS-m, the blueprint for UNE default app selection was updated seconds ago and it now points out that some default applications might be changed in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10.

Lucid Lynx is enjoying glowing reviews, and Ubuntu in general is immensely popular, as Linux distros go. What is it about Ubuntu that gives it such a large, loyal following? Granted, not everyone is Ubuntu's friend -- "irritating" and "fatally flawed" were a few choice adjectives that pop up. But others figure that if Linux is going to have a flagship distro, Ubuntu might as well be it.