Lubuntu is a fast, lightweight and energy-saving variant of Ubuntu using the LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) desktop.

Lubuntu is a fast, lightweight and energy-saving variant of Ubuntu using the LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) desktop.

It is intended to have low-resource system requirements and is designed primarily for netbooks, mobile devices and older PCs.

The LXDE desktop uses the Openbox window manager and is intended to be a low system requirement, low RAM environment for netbooks, mobile devices and older PCs. In this role it will compete with Xubuntu.

An initial review claims it uses half as much RAM as Xubuntu or Ubuntu on a normal installation or in typical use.

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Mario Behling has announced the release of Lubuntu 11.04, an unofficial Ubuntu variant that showcases the lightweight, but full-featured LXDE desktop: "Julien Lavergne has released Lubuntu 11.04. Features: based on the lightweight LXDE desktop environment; PCManFM 0.9.8, a fast and lightweight file manager using GIO/GVFS; LXDE, a lightweight GTK+ display manager; Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome; based on Ubuntu 11.04. Improvements since Lubuntu 10.10: new automatic way to build the ISO images; switch from Aqualung to Audacious for the music player; switch from Xarchiver to File Roller for the archives; switch from Cheese to GTK+ UVC Viewer for using webcams; new added applications - gucharmap, LXKeymap, documentation; Lubuntu is now HAL free; new theme."

Read the full release announcement for a full list of improvements.

Download: lubuntu-11.04.iso (680MB, MD5, torrent).

Recent releases.

• 2011-04-29: Distribution Release: Lubuntu 11.04
• 2010-10-11: Distribution Release: Lubuntu 10.10
• 2010-09-08: Development Release: Lubuntu 10.10 Beta 1
• 2010-05-03: Distribution Release: Lubuntu 10.04
• 2010-04-25: Development Release: Lubuntu 10.04 Beta 3
• 2010-04-12: Development Release: Lubuntu 10.04 Beta 2

The name Lubuntu is a combination of LXDE and Ubuntu. LXDE stands for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, while Ubuntu means "humanity towards others" in the Zulu and Xhosa languages.

The LXDE desktop was first made available as an optional package for Ubuntu starting with version 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex". LXDE can also be installed in earlier versions of Ubuntu.

In February 2009, Mark Shuttleworth invited the LXDE project to become a self-maintained project within the Ubuntu community, with the aim of leading to a dedicated new official Ubuntu derivative to be called Lubuntu.

In March 2009, the Lubuntu project was started on Launchpad by Mario Behling, including an early project logo. The project also established an official Ubuntu wiki project page, also under Behling's management, that includes listings of applications, packages, and components.

In August 2009, the first test ISO was released as a Live CD, with no installation option.

On 30 December 2009 the first Alpha 1 "Preview" version ISO for Lubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx was made available for testing, with Alpha 2 following on 24 January 2010.

rsion	Code Name	Release date	Supported Until	Remarks
8.10	Intrepid Ibex	30 October 2008	April 2010	Available as an optional desktop package only
9.04	Jaunty Jackalope	23 April 2009	October 2010	Available as an optional desktop package only
9.10	Karmic Koala	26 October 2009	April 2011	Available as an optional desktop package only
10.04	Lucid Lynx	29 April 2010	April 2013	Long term support version.