Xubuntu Precise Alpha 2 looking good

**Flymo** · February 27th, 2012

We love the LTS releases, but always check out the 6-monthlies so as to be aware of the latest stuff - and out of sheer curiosity.

With the next LTS - 12.04 Precise Pangolin - due in a month or two, it seemed the decent thing to check things out on our extensive cheap and ancient hardware so as to give feedback to the devs if needed.

We've struggled with 'Unity' and with Gnome 3 and find them not to our taste, so our old friend Xubuntu has come to the fore and we've downloaded the '-desktop' versions in i386 and AMD64 flavours. Been running them for a couple of days now, doing the usual things with them, and do you know what?

No problems so far!

Xubuntu Precise Pangolin 'Just Works' on our hardware, which is pretty pleasing in an Alpha 2 release. Well done the devs!

So... if you are looking to go with Xubuntu, or just fancy a change, may I encourage you to have a go with it?

The more of us that do so, the more bugs get ironed out which is good for everyone. And it's looking very good from here.

**mikodo** · February 27th, 2012

Nice post.

I have taken the Alpha 1 for a couple spins, with very favorable results also.

Oh ya, and filed a couple of bug-reports.

**Flymo** · April 10th, 2012

Hi Mikodo - sorry for delay...
But 5 weeks later the most recent Xubuntu Precise is still looking good!
Hope yours is working well.

**Herpythebrony** · April 10th, 2012

I like the look and feel of Xubuntu! Definatly a good alternative to those who are not fond of unity!

**sfang** · April 10th, 2012

Yes, it's definitely shaping up to be a great release. The two most notable improvements for me were: while in 11.10 I had to mess with Xorg to properly configure my touchpad, in 12.04 there's a GUI option and now you can easily configure the main menu. There are other important under the hood changes, but these were two features I was missing in Oneiric. On top of all that, the system is almost rock solid and very light on resources without being barebones. An excellent option for anyone looking for a more traditional desktop.

I didn't find a proper Xubuntu 12.04 discussion topic, so I'm posting here. Thanks for all your hard work, Xubuntu team!

**carrozza** · April 12th, 2012

I agree with all above comments: Xubuntu 12.04 is looking good, fast and very customizable, as Linux every OS used to be before the last desktop environments trends.
Keep it up Xubuntu team!

**petri.p** · April 12th, 2012

This is excellent!

I got a HP g7 Pavilion laptop a few months ago, with nasty dual mode graphics (both ATI low power & high power chips on it).

At the time, only the mint debian edition would boot it (ubuntu 11.10 and earlier failed), but even that one ran the graphics only with the high power chip, getting the laptop scary hot. And a few days ago, updating it caused it to fail boot in "waiting for /dev to fully populate".

So, I decided to try xubuntu 12.04 (I have been using ubuntu from 7.04 to 10.04 LTS, but it is no longer an option because of unity), and ... xubuntu 12.04 was the first distro after that mint debian which could even boot this thing with graphics! And I have tried a lot of distros for this.

And now, today after updating, the installation of restricted fglrx worked for the first time (the older version offered by jockey, the updated version still fails), and I finally could switch it to run on the low power chip. Ah, it is so cool now..

Fantastic!

**Lemuriano** · April 12th, 2012

I move from Ubuntu 10.04 to Xubuntu 11.10 in my laptop and 12.04 on the HTPC and even if that is a beta is very stable and the level of customization is fantastic.
My respects go for the Xubuntu Team.