Lubuntu Alpha 3 Released (Screenshots added)

By , Published February 26, 2010

The third alpha release of new Ubuntu spin Lubuntu is now available to download.

New features in Alpha 3 since Alpha 2 are: –

  • Chromium is now the default browser
  • GNOME-Mplayer is default video player
  • network manager replaces the previous network application
  • New artwork (see below)
  • ‘Lubuntu-netbook’ session available at login
  • PCMANFM2 is now the default file-manager

Screenshots

image

Lubuntu's new theme uses the elementary-monochrome icon set

image

Chromium is the default browser

image

The default file manager has been re-written from scratch

image

Lubuntu Netbook session, selectable from the login window

Download

Download @ http://people.ubuntu.com/~gilir/lubuntu-lucid-alpha3.iso (379MB)

Alpha releases are not intended for default usage.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. Lubuntu Alpha 2 Released; Gets New Bootsplash, Artwork, File Manager
  2. Lubuntu login manager LXDM now fully themeable
  3. Lubuntu 10.04 Alpha 1 – Visual Overview
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  • http://c2games.wordpress.com/ marcoc2

    Chrome as default =O
    I highly agree. Chrome is a lot lightier than Firefox.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      The Lubuntu team ran some benchmarks to pick a browser and Chromium just blew the rest out of the water.

      • Kadath

        What about Midori?

        • Anonymous

          As much as I like Midori, it is quite unstable. Its implementation of Webkit leaves a lot to be desired as well, apparently. I haven’t seen any problems but I’ve read lots of comments people left on how poorly it renders certain sites.

          • Anonymous

            ah myth and lies >.< The only problems Midori has with sites are ones that exercise browser discrimation. Identify as a different browser and it'll be fine. Not to mention that I haven't had a crash in Midori since 0.1

          • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

            I’m a bit of a Midori fanboi, too. That said – i’ve found it to be a little buggy with the latest release. Prior to that it was solid.

            I’ve been working on a little midori project this week…

          • Anonymous

            you keep saying that ;) I want to read it :p

          • Anonymous

            Even if it’s browser discrimination and not the browser’s fault I think it’s better to include, by default, a browser that won’t suffer from browser discrimination; Normal users won’t know that’s what’s happening and will just assume that Lubuntu comes with a buggy browser.

          • Anonymous

            I assumed as much. I do have problems with it crashing every now and then but it’s still in development, so that’s to be expected. But I’d never had it render pages incorrectly unless I set it to identify as Midori or Internet Explorer. Set to render as Firefox or Safari though, it works great.

          • Marierocks

            Midori is more stable these days. Midori, Chromium, and Epiphany are all faster and/or lighter than Firefox. :)

        • Anonymous

          Midori does not use v8 so it’s not as fast as Chrome or Chromium.

        • Anonymous

          Midori does not use v8 so it’s not as fast as Chrome or Chromium.

      • Saskvoch

        Its amazing Lubuntu goes with Chrome as Chrome has problems viewing my folders on the UbuntuOne website. I have to keep going into it and click around until it shows my files and folders correctly. I dont have this prob with FF…. although, I still use Chrome as everything is faster for me.

    • Jeff

      Are you crazy? No way in hell Chrome is lighter than Firefox. Chrome’s memory usage is obscene. It starts up faster and then lags your whole system. Just google ‘chrome firefox memory usage’. Apart from this, though, kudos to the Lubuntu team. I’m thrilled with the prospect of an Ubuntu flavor lighter than Xubuntu (which uses slightly *more* RAM than Ubuntu/Gnome), and one that keeps up to date, unlike Fluxbuntu.

      • Anonymous

        My experience is much different. I gave up on FF when I saw it at over 800mb with about 5 tabs open. I had a VM running too and some other stuff, so it really wasn’t acceptable. I’ve never seen Chrome get anywhere near those figures.

        Firefox has historically been bad with memory leaks, everyone always seems to bitch about it on every release, hoping for it to be fixed.

      • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

        I’ve run into huge amounts of memory being used by Chrome, but only when I have (or had – it doesn’t seem to clean up after itself well) lots of tabs open. I use Chrome on my old (ancient) laptop, and with a little restraint (no middle clicking every link I see), I’ve found it to be quite a bit snappier than FF. Nothing scientific, but it *feels* that way.

        I’m also really excited about the Lubuntu project. I’ve never been bold enough to try Flux, and my Xubuntu experience was similar to yours. It will be nice to finally have an option that might make that laptop usable again.

      • http://c2games.wordpress.com/ marcoc2

        The memory usage of both are nearly equal, as I have observed.
        But FF seems to not decrease memory usage as you keep using and closing tabs.
        The “one process per tab” Chrome’s style looks better to manage memory usage.

        Besides memory usage, Chrome really looks faster. You can see this when you change between the tabs.

      • Anonymous

        You must remember that each tab in chromium/chrome is a completely independent task on the computer. Each tab usually use around 30mb so if you have several tabs opened you’ll be using lots of RAM. When using chromium/chrome it’s best to have this in mind and close a few tabs every now and then; the good thing is that once the tab is closed the system recuperates the RAM very fast. Extensions are also their own independent process so you shouldn’t install many if you don’t have much RAM in your computer.

        Let’s also remember to call it Chromium and not Chrome. Lubuntu will come with Chromium which is the open-source version of google chrome. Let’s give credit where credit is due.

        • Jeff

          You’re right, I should not confuse Chrome and Chromium. I have used only Chrome so far, and will test Chromium with Lubuntu. Hopefully you’re all right and I’m wrong with regard to Chrome and Firefox.

  • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

    I didn’t catch the “L” in “Lubuntu” in my first read of this article, and I just about crapped myself when I read that Chromium is the new default browser. :) I re-read it while scooping my jaw up off the floor, and it made a lot more sense. Anyway, I think Chromium as a smart choice for a lightweight distro/spin. I’m looking forward to the day when Lubuntu is stable enough to use on my old laptop.

    • http://wakoopa.com/yo2boy yo2boy

      L is for the new desktop environment LXDE

      • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

        I know, I know, but when I first skimmed the article I read the title as “Ubuntu Alpha 3 Released” (and I think I was reading it in Liferea before the screenshot was posted). Anyway, it was just a misread on my part, but I wouldn’t have been shocked if *Ubuntu* Lucid Alpha 3 had somehow switched to Chromium without me hearing anything up until now. :)

        • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

          We can hope :p

          • http://www.martinsmucker.com Michael Martin-Smucker

            You’re darn right we can. :)

  • Anonymous

    Can’t wait to try this on the laptop I bought for $300 8 years ago (VIA CPU and video, 768MB of RAM, hard disk is toast so using USB key, won’t boot Karmic at all, will boot Hardy in about 12 minutes and then be useless for browsing, will boot Puppy Linux in about 5 minutes and be barely usable for browsing thanks to their choice of SeaMonkey.)

  • John

    Looks promising! Does Lubuntu have the same release cycle as Ubuntu?

    • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

      Apparently, yes =)

  • http://livinginagoogleworld.blogspot.com/ Jonathan Frederickson

    Oh wow this is awesome. I like the new menu button, and Chromium as the default browser… wow, this release is just full of win.

    On that note, though… Chromium isn’t GPL…

    • Anonymous

      so what its not GPL? BSD is much easier to deal with anyways and it needs to be BSD so they can slap to google name on it (chromium vs google chrome)

  • Thomas Berends

    The file manager looks like the Xandros OS, and everyone knows how that ended up, i hope they will create a more ‘normal’ file manager, otherwise Lubuntu will never be ready for a lot of users.

    • Thomas Berends

      *file manager = netbook session

  • http://orkutcidio.deliriocoletivo.org Peterson Espaçoporto

    OMG it’s beautiful!!!

    The artwork team has really made awesome choices. The menu on the bottom left corner is whispering “I rock” =D

    And Chromium was really very clever. They didn’t even put GTK clothes in him, right? The default blue looks good…

    But hey, is Chromium in Lucid’s repository, then?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Yes i do believe it is!

  • http://livinginagoogleworld.blogspot.com/ Jonathan Frederickson

    Of course it would be even better if I could get the thing up and running on my old P2 Dell laptop… but sadly I can’t install it as there is no alternate installation disc and this disc doesn’t appear to be working on it. =/

  • Anonymous

    Ok, so, is this an update thats like… 8.04 to 9.1? Or is this an entirely new branch of ubuntu thats going to be having its own updates and 10.04 will be something entirely different, or what?

    • Anonymous

      Entirely new branch of ubuntu, kinda trying to follow the ubuntu main release schedule.

    • daas88

      It’s based on lxde instead of gnome, so it’s very different from normal ubuntu. Its aim is to provide a light version of ubuntu, as Xubuntu failed at that.

  • Anonymous

    Cool, so how much faster does this run on older hardware than Xubuntu?

    I’m running Xubuntu on a really crappy old computer, can’t remember the specs, but it’s pretty slow.

    • http://livinginagoogleworld.blogspot.com/ Jonathan Frederickson

      Some people have actually reported Xubuntu as being a bit slower than Ubuntu (weird, right?) so Lubuntu should be a huge improvement.

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        Oh yes. Xubuntu being useful for “low end hardware” is largely a myth – it’s recommended specs aren’t that different from GNOME!

        Lubuntu on the other hand FLIES.

    • daas88

      I don’t know about Lubuntu specifically, but lxde can fly with an old PII with 128mb ram.

  • http://twitter.com/Ferrantonovsky Fot Angúnia

    I like it very much!!

  • Jeff

    I installed Lubuntu Alpha 3 on my “old” Dell today, and discouting some video issues, it ran quite smoothly and it is indeed lighter than any other environment I experienced. But I was annoyed by this release’s inability to automount external media (USB), something I also experienced with Alpha 2 (Ubuntu and Xubuntu Alpha 2 & 3 do not present this problem). I also couldn’t straightforwardly access my root folder from the file manager (pcmanfm). Any thoughts on a way out of these problems? Can’t wait for the stable release! Many thanks in advance.

  • vezar

    What about samba? PCFILEMAN cant use.

    • Anonymous

      I always mount samba shares via fstab and smbfs. But pyneighborhood is a good app for manually doing that.

  • Calvin

    Nice icons, file manager and general aesthetics, @##$%$# browser. My PC, no matter what OS it’s on, Chromium is the slowest.

    My non-scientific testing, SeaMonkey is the clear winner – Firefox is fast when you keep using it, but has a lethargic cold start, that SM doesn’t have, plus it uses the Firefox engine.

    When Lubuntu hits Wubi, my crapbox will run this, right after apt-get purge chromium && apt-get install seamonkey.

  • hugmyballs

    That’s one seriously ugly menu icon.

    I don’t see much if any benefit of going with lubuntu over ubuntu. Plus chromium sucks.

    • Anonymous

      It is way faster on low-end systems. Plus chromium is fast.

      • hugmyballs

        How is it faster? It looks like it’s just running gnome with a few lightweight applications that can, in any case, be installed in Ubuntu. So what’s magically faster about it?

        • daas88

          have you ever tried lxde? if you compare the performance of regular ubuntu and Lubuntu in a computer with 128~256mb ram, you’ll see the difference. The ram memory footprint is waaay lower.

        • Anonymous

          It doesnt use gnome at all. It uses lxde. Which is wayyy faster than gnome. Please first look into stuff before you start commenting on it.

          • Marierocks

            LXDE and XFCE are great. Too bad Lubuntu is only beta, rc, or alpha…they do not have a stable release. For me, Xubuntu is the balanced choice. :)

  • Anonymous

    Fugly menu button. Reminds me of windows XP :(

  • daas88

    Why did they rewrite pcmanfm from scratch? could you give us further information about that?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I will do indeed. I started writing an article about it about a week ago… >.< I'll get my skates on!

    • http://brettalton.com/ Brett

      http://pcmanfm.sourceforge.net/

      “Due to some limitations and unresolved bugs of the original PCManFM included in LXDE, its author, 洪任諭 (Hong Jen Yee), decided to totally redesign and rewrite the whole program.”

  • http://brettalton.com/ Brett

    Is that actually PCManFM2? It’s not even released or in the Ubuntu repositories…

    • lxder

      Yes, that’s PCManFM2 which support gvfs so you’ll get full access to remote filesystems just like nautilus. The only differences are it’s faster and much lighter.