X Marks The Spot

Part Two in an occasional series on terrible puns minimal GNU/Linux distributions

I’ve already gone over the basics of minimal Linux distributions (“distros” henceforth) and what benefits they can impart on older hardware, so let’s just get down to brass tacks. Today we’ll be looking at another lightweight distro running on another old notebook computer. The distro is Xubuntu, a derivative of Canonical, Ltd.’s popular (relatively speaking) Ubuntu Linux and, by extension, another variant of Debian. Xubuntu forgoes Ubuntu’s heavier, “kitchen-sink” Unity desktop environment for the lightweight and highly configurable Xfce. Xubuntu also strips out some of Ubuntu’s meatier packages in favor of lighter-weight alternatives. Despite this, you still get access to the Ubuntu software center and the large selection of semi-curated packages therein, all driven by Debian’s robust APT package management framework.

Out With A Bang: Breathing Life Into Older Hardware

Part one in an occasional series on minimal GNU/Linux distributions

For years, the typical lifespan of a computer was considered to be about 2-3 years. The rapid development of faster and more efficient processors and graphics cards, the ever-growing amounts of RAM that could be crammed into a single stick (and used up by a single program), and the massive size of mechanical hard drives (and again, the files and programs you would be storing on them) made it a simple matter of practicality: After roughly three years, your old computer simply couldn’t do what you wanted it to anymore. This cadence was also reflected in the release schedule of new operating systems. Microsoft would release a new version of Windows every 2-3 years, and Apple a new version of their Mac OS; in both of these cases it was often most economical to simply buy a whole new computer with up-to-date hardware, rather than pay in excess of $100 to upgrade your operating system to a new version that may not even run very well on your current machine.

Then, in the mid 2000s, something changed. Microsoft released Windows XP in 2001, and in that same year Apple released their completely redesigned Mac OS X. While both of these operating systems had the usual teething problems at launch, each would bring about something unexpected in the following years. Microsoft opted to simply keep the popular XP up to date with free service packs as the development of its successor, then code-named Longhorn, dragged on far past the initially expected release date. Apple, on the other hand, continued to release near-annual $130 updates to Mac OS X, but unlike in the past, these updates had an unexpected effect: Each new version ran better on existing hardware than the one before it, finally making the idea of replacing your hardware for every new OS upgrade obsolete.