Xubuntu - Trying Xfce for the first time

To keep the theme of distro sampling I decided to give Xubuntu a go. As I mentioned on a previous post, I didn't find the Gnome Ubuntu to be an OS I would like to use personally. I thought the idea of simple, minimalist and intuitive sounded like a good match for me, less is not always more and simple functionalities that are not in Gnome are in my opinion an improvement over not having them and I don't see the need to remove them if they don't clutter or confuse things.

Anyway, my pick to try Xubuntu stemmed from the fact that I wanted a distro to run as a VM in my laptop, hence I needed something lightweight but with enough functionality to keep me happy. Xfce seemed like the place to go. As you may or may not know, Xfce is a desktop environment known for being lightweight, although not as barebones as some of the others out there like LXDE it still feel snappy and efficient.

I installed version 13.04 mostly just to try the most updated Xubuntu available. Nothing special about the installation process, it's much like all other Ubuntu distros I've tried, very easy to get going, even as a VM. This desktop environment definitely feels fast compared to Unity when I tried on my machine. I very much enjoyed the fact that the OS comes pre loaded with GIMP and a number of other applications I would have to install otherwise.

Update warnings show up on the taskbar in a discrete way and so far I feel it's very stable and user friendly. I appreciate that this distro still has multiple workspaces as default, which is no longer the case for Ubuntu. I understand that perhaps new user may struggle to understand the concept, but to be honest I don't think it's rocket science. But then again, I should assume Cannonical knows what their doing. Since I'm on this small tangent already, I would suggest that Ubuntu should have 2 options when you download, the newbie version which doesn't have default  options that may be unfamiliar to noobies and a version for more experienced users with defaults that I really miss such as multiple desktops, sticky windows with shortcuts and synaptic. I love Unity, and I would say it's my favorite Linux flavor but with every version of Ubuntu I feel they change it so I have to tweek more and more every time and I find that a tad annoying.

Anyway, back to Xubuntu, I highly recommend it to anyone that has some experience with Linux at all. It's not difficult to figure out, it is attractive despite it's light weight. Worth a shot for anyone that can't run Unity due to hardware limitations.

Lastly, for anyone curious, here is my conky config from this photo, it's nothign fancy but it's a nice config that works well out of the box.

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background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Sans:size=8
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 200
draw_shades yes
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color black
default_outline_color white
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 120
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}SYSTEM ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Host:$alignr$nodename
Uptime:$alignr$uptime
File System: $alignr${fs_type}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}PROCESSORS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${cpugraph cpu1}
CPU1: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}MEMORY ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}RAM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}DISKS ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}/ $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_used_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
SWAP $alignc ${swap} / ${swapmax} $alignr ${swapperc}%
${swapbar}

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}TOP PROCESSES ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}${top_mem name 1}${alignr}${top mem 1} %
${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
$font${top_mem name 5}${alignr}${top mem 5} %

${font sans-serif:bold:size=8}NETWORK ${hr 2}
${font sans-serif:normal:size=8}IP address: $alignr ${addr eth0}
ESSID: $alignr ${wireless_essid eth0}
Connection quality: $alignr ${wireless_link_qual_perc eth0}%
${downspeedgraph eth0}
DLS:${downspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totaldown eth0}
${upspeedgraph eth0}
ULS:${upspeed eth0} kb/s $alignr total: ${totalup eth0}

Using an SSH Client on Ubuntu 13.04

Since now I have an Ubuntu Server setup at home, I feel the need to use a client from my Ubuntu 13.04 VM. In order to do that I followed this great concise guide I found from ubuntulinuxhelp.com (from garymacritchie)

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The SSH Client

The SSH Client is the piece of software that you have on the computer you are sitting in front of and typing on. It sends messages to the SSH server which is on the remote computer (such as the webserver). We’ll assume that there is already a valid SSH server up and running that you are trying to connect to.

In Ubuntu, there is a SSH client installed as standard and it is called Open SSH.

To use it, you simply open a terminal and proceed any command with “ssh”.

For example, if you would like to log in to your remote server, just use the command…

ssh username@mysite.myserver.org

However, as this is a blog that likes to keep things simple (and annoy a lot of the die-hard Linux geeks), I’m going to suggest a different tool… PuTTY.

PuTTY is a client program for SSH (among other things) and gives a neat little interface for making SSH connections. It is also in my opinion one of the best pieces of software ever written. It has been around for ever and can also be used on Windows without installation (just runs as a .exe). Learn this little guy and you will never look for another SSH client.

Install PuTTY by typing the following into a terminal…

sudo apt-get install putty

You will then find the PuTTY program among your other internet applications.

(When you start it up, you will be able to enter the ip address or name of the remote computer you wish to contact and click connect. You will then be asked for password etc. If you are going to be using SSH regular, you can save that connection as a profile which makes things easier).