Xubuntu 22.04: Not my top choice, but a serious contender

Although between MX-Linux 21 XFCE and Kubuntu 22.04, my OS-needs are fulfilled, I couldn't resist getting a copy of Xubuntu 22.04 and giving it a spin. What I found was basically a fun distribution with lot of good stuff, but also with some minor problems, and not a slick as Kubuntu 22.04 or Linux Mint 20.3. Still, I could easily live with it.

The main feature I wanted to try on Xubuntu was zooming the screen with a keyboard, which turned out to be easy, with the help of a couple of simple xdotool commands which someone posted to the internet:

running the following command from the terminal, zooms in:

xdotool keydown Alt click 4 keyup Alt

and this command zooms out:

xdotool keydown Alt click 5 keyup Alt

As he suggested, I turned them into shell scripts, but ultimately assigned each one to a function key. (First create the scripts, give them execute-permission, and then put them somewhere safe such as in a bash-scripts folder in your Home directory, and perhaps make them read-only so they can't be deleted inadvertently. To create a shortcut-key, select Settings in the main menu, then the Keyboard utility, and then the Application Shortcuts tab, and the rest should be obvious.) He suggested a key-combo, but each time the command is run, the display in or out by a discrete amount, and if you want to zoom more, you have to press the key-combo again, which isn't convenient. But by assigning it to a function key, I can hold the key down, and it continues to zoom, although still not smoothly.

My other main interest was whether it's particularly well suited for use as an offline installation which cannot be connected directly to the internet, which it isn't. However, it can be used as such using the technique I describe in this post for authenticating a package index obtained via APT-offline by installing it via APT-offline on an installation of the same type which has been updated via a direct internet connection.

A direct update installs missing keys and updates outdated keys, but without providing any indication that this is taking place. I learned this accidentally, by entering "echo 'Binary::apt::APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages "1";' | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10apt-keep-downloads" (which can be copied w/o the beginning and ending quotes, and pasted into the command-line via Ctl-Shift-V, and ensures that software-modules which are installed via a direct connection are retained in /var/cache/apt/archives after being installed - the archives-directory is the destination for software-modules downloaded as part of the normal installation-process). I entered this command before performing a direct update on Kubuntu 22.04, and later found the Debian-archive-keyring package in the archives-directory even though I hadn't installed it or anything which requires it. So, it was obviously installed during the direct update, without any indication that it was being done. As far as I've been able to determine, there is no other way to install or update keys, without a thorough familiarity with the APT security system, and as far as I can tell, there are no current, publicly-available descriptions of this system.

Although debian-archive-keyring apparently isn't installed during the initial direct update on Xubuntu 22.04, as it is on Kubuntu 22.04, some keys are apparently installed or updated on Xubuntu 22.04, because until a direct update is installed, some of the required keys are apparently missing or outdated, as indicated by the "cannot authenticate packages" (CAP)-warnings which appear when installing software, using a package index which has been installed via APT-offline. (The package manager, APT, is disabled until the package index is updated. The direct update required a 45MB download, and the update via APT-offline required about 48MB.) It appears that APT's developers designed its security system so that keys can be updated whenever necessary, without regard for a schedule, and distributed with updates, so that the updated package index can be authenticated.

Xubuntu 22.04 has a good selection of apps, although the text-editor doesn't have a functional spelling-checker (it has a plugin, but I couldn't get it to work). One of my posts describes a "custom action" for Thunar, XFCE's file manager, for opening text-files with the spelling-checker Aspell (included in Xubuntu) by right-clicking on them and selecting the spelling-check option. The image viewer is great except for its limited zoom-capability, so I usually install Eye of Mate. Although Xubuntu has some good widgets, it doesn't have a disk I/O widget, but you could use Conky with the MX-Linux standard configuration (described in one of my posts), nmon, or GKrellM. I decided against installing APT-offline's GUI, because it would have required many packages, totaling about 18MB. Installing Kdenlive would require a 200MB download, as opposed to 60MB for Kubuntu 22.04.

Xubuntu 22.04 doesn't have a package-installer GUI, which surprised and disappointed me until I realized that the command "sudo dpkg -i <deb-pkg>" accomplishes the same thing. So, I was wrong about not being able to install APT-offline on plain Ubuntu until the package index is updated.

The bottom line is that although Xubuntu 22.04 isn't the most highly-polished distro I've used, and it has some minor problems which are apparently left as an exercise for the user, it's fun to use, unlike some distros I've used, such as MX-Linux Fluxbox, which is too much work for too little reward, and not sufficiently polished for my tastes. But Fluxbox is fast, and compared to antiX, which looks as if it was designed by someone who is legally blind, and which for example can't copy/paste between apps or open encrypted drives without entering text-commands, even Fluxbox is very user-friendly.