Bringing our web presence to 2012

February 3, 2012 —

After a long, long wait and much hard work, we are ready to proudly present the new Xubuntu website!

New looks

The appearance is updated and more sleek, clean, professional, informative, beautiful and representative. It’s easier to navigate on the site. The header area is less obtrusive. Generally speaking, you get faster to the content. We are also finally using our new branding.

The long-awaited migration

We’ve switched from Drupal to WordPress under the hood. We are no longer depending on any hacks, neither in the technical side or the appearance side. Administration is easier, which will hopefully result in more frequently updated website. The Xubuntu website team is also much more familiar with WordPress than Drupal, so working the site technically should be much easier in the future as well. The theme was hand-built from scratch, so we do know how to work with that as well. Even in the case we needed to extend or update it.

The most important thing – content

The site is undergoing a massive review of content and content-related issues as well. These things include, but are not limited to:

  • Hand-picked Frequently Asked Questions -article (and the FAQ-category), which covers all the most frequently asked questions and will be updated for each release
  • Developer tools, which presents you all the useful tools to get started or keep going with Xubuntu development
  • Article browsing on the sidebar
  • Up-to-date screenshots

We’re really sorry that we aren’t able to present you all the fruits of the content-reviewing process. While it would have been optimal to release the new website with all-new or at least all-reviewed content, it was more sensible to release what we have now, and fix the rest of the site later. This being said, if you notice any issues in the content, or are willing to help us work on it, please contact us. The best way is to file a bug or send email to our developer mailing list.

Finally, thanks to the following people who helped make this happen: Pasi Lallinaho (knome), Elizabeth Krumbach (pleia2), madnick, Bruno A. Benitez (GridCube), Simon Steinbeiß (ochosi), Phil Whitaker (beardygnome), Unit193, Steve Dodier (SiDi) and all the others who helped us testing the site or gave any feedback.

Xubuntu 12.04 alpha 2 released

February 2, 2012 — —

The Xubuntu team is proud to announce the Alpha2 release of Xubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin!

Updates for this release include

  • New greeter + theme
  • xfdesktop4 has been updated to support single click to open items, thumbnail support for the desktop.
  • xfce4-settings has been updated to include the new mouche/touchpad dialog (backported from 4.9.x)
  • Some other syncs, updates and patches from Debian and upstream, including: xfce4-power-manager, Ristretto and gmusicbrowser
  • Minor updates to default settings and packages, mostly appearance (including Terminal font size change)

Visit the download page to give it a try. Be sure to report your testing results to help the Xubuntu developers – see the ISO testing tracker. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for support, please see the #ubuntu+1 or #xubuntu IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. Before testing this release, make sure to review the release notes.

Known issues

  • For the desktop images, installing from the CD menu is failing, however, allowing the CD to spin until it stops at “try Xubuntu”, “Install Xubuntu” works
  • Xubuntu upgrade testing is not done for Alpha2

FAQ for Xubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

November 19, 2011 — — —

1. I can’t hear a sound. How can I get my sound back?

There are many reasons why sound can be lost on a system, most of them if you try to use different audio protocols. The usual way to get sound back is to run sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart.

If this doesn’t work you can try running sudo alsa force-unload and sudo alsa force-reload.

Pulseaudio can sometimes cause conflicts with ALSA. If you are sure you don’t need one or the other, you could try purging pulseaudio with sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio.

If you still have problems please join the forums or IRC channels and feel free to ask all the questions you need.

2. I need a program (to do thing) X, how do I install it?

Xubuntu uses the same software sources (package repositories) than the rest of the Ubuntu family, that means you can install any software in Ubuntu in Xubuntu as well. To do this, use one of the following:

  • Ubuntu Software Center in   Applications menu »  Ubuntu Software Center
  • Synaptic Package Manager in    Applications menu » System »  Synaptic Package Manager
  • apt-get

3. How do I configure my network connection?

You can configure networking with the Network manager from the main panel or by running it with Alt+F2 and running nm-connection-editor. For PPPoE connections, you should use pppoeconf.

4. Gnome Keyring keeps asking me for the correct password, how do I remove the prompt?

You have to delete ~/.gnome2/keyrings and start over.

5. My window decorations/panels are gone! How do I get them back?

You can restore window decorations by pressing Alt+F2 and running xfwm4. To restore panels, press Alt+F2 and run xfce4-panel.

If the window decorations and/or panels don’t start automatically on login, add the respective commands to your session from   Applications Menu » Settings » Settings Manager   in Session and Startup on the Application Autostart tab.

6. How can I edit the Start Menu?

In Xfce 4.8 (Xubuntu 11.04 and newer):

  • Install Alacarte from terminal, sudo apt-get install alacarte --no-install-recommends
  • Run Alacarte and edit the menu

In Xfce 4.6 (Xubuntu 10.10 and older):

  • Copy /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu to ~/.config/xdg/menus and customize it
  • You can also create desktop entries in ~/.local/share/applications to override the existing applications (change or hide) or add new ones.

See http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu for more information.

7. How can I add custom themes or new themes to Xubuntu

Yes, you can use themes for GTK and install themes directly to ~/.themes or /usr/share/themes. You can obtain more themes from various sites, like xfce-look.org.

8. My mouse pointer/cursor doesn’t change on demand, how do I fix that?

If the cursor doesn’t follow the theme set for 11.04 and above, try chmod +x ~/.Xdefaults. .Xdefaults also must be executable for Xfce 4.8, this is a change from Xfce 4.6.

9. Can I install Compiz on Xubuntu?

Yes, yes you can, but keep in mind that Xubuntu doesn’t package Compiz and does not provide any support for it. You can install Compiz by running sudo apt-get install compiz

Once Compiz is installed you need to replace xfwm with Compiz. Do this by pressing Alt+F2 and running compiz --replace.

Also see “How do I enable Compiz in Xubuntu?” at askubuntu.com. If you still have problems please join the forums or IRC channels and feel free to ask all the questions you need.

My question is not covered here, how can I get more help?

Visit the Help & Support page to learn about the available help resources.

Xubuntu 11.10 released

October 13, 2011 — , —

There are a few times when, through hard work and diligence, we get things right. The developers and contributors of Xubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” believe they have it right. They are proud to announce the release of Xubuntu 11.10, “Oneiric Ocelot”. Through the outstanding efforts of all involved, this sleek and smooth release offered for your enjoyment and use.

Changes for this release include the following applications included by default: gThumb, pastebinit, and onboard. The team has also chosen to switch from GDM to LightDM as the default display manager and from mousepad to leafpad as the default text editor.

We invite you to give this newest member of the Xubuntu family a spin. The Xubuntu Desktop CD can be used on either USB drives or burned to a CD. Either will allow you to try this fantastic distribution before you install it.

Visit the download page to give it a try. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for support, please see the #xubuntu IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Before installing this release, make sure to review the release notes.

Xubuntu Oneiric Ocelot beta2 released

September 22, 2011 — —

There are a few times when, through hard work and diligence, we get things right. The developers and contributors of Xubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” believe they have it right. They are proud to announce the second beta release of Xubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”. This is still a testing build designed for developers and is not suggested for anyone looking for a stable system. Please do not install Oneiric Ocelot Beta2 on your production system.

Visit the download page to give it a try. Be sure to report your testing results to help the Xubuntu developers – xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com. Bugs can be reported in Launchpad. If you are looking for see support, please see the #ubuntu+1 or #xubuntu IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. Before testing this release, make sure to review the release notes.

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