Older computer? Try Lubuntu!

There is no secret that I like Ubuntu, but I have an older computer (Dell D630 laptop) and all the new "bling" in the Ubuntu desktop version is just to much for my computer.

I have been looking for an alternative. For a awhile I ran Linux Mint with Cinnamon, and to be honest I really don't have a problem with that distribution, it has a lot of benefits and Cinnamon is an good looking alternative to Ubuntu's Unity, I do recommend it to anyone, but still too heavy for my hardware. So I started to look for something "lighter" and there is some out there. But most of them requires a lot "hands-on" and not really nice to look at. 

Half a year ago I got a tip about Lubuntu, so I have been running Lubuntu 12.04 now since it was released and I must say that I'm happy with the performances, look and feel. There is some hands-on, I will not hide that fact but it is a minimal and mostly too fulfill my need to test things out. To give some examples; I had some problems with a usb chip-card-reader (new e-ID from my bank, SEB, BankID) but I got it to work after a while (I will write a walkthru when I get the time). I also had some hardware specific issues, display don't shutdown (power off) as you sett in the power settings (only make the display black) and the network interface doesn't turnoff properly on suspend/hibernate but otherwise it has worked relatively smoothly.

 Normally when a new release is out i will do a backup and then try to do a upgrade (do-release-upgrade) and normally the outcome will be bad and I end up doing a full reinstall. So when the new release for Lubuntu 12.10 came out (about the same time/hour as Ubuntu) I did the same and to my surprise, it worked smoothly. The only thing that didn't work 100% were the repositories, I had gone to an 8 PPA's but it's pretty easy to add it again. I would recommended to remove all "own" repositories before you do an upgrade, it goes a bit faster also.

Lubuntu's new icon theme looks fresh and the new session manager is logical and works fine, you can read more about new features and issues on the Lubuntu Wiki 

I'm even experimenting with Lubuntu as my media center with XBMC, but this is really out of my comfort zone, but maybe it can create some posts about that experience as well.

Until next time, happy Ubunt-ing. ;)