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In 2021, two anonymous Spanish IT students decided to create a new derivative of Ubuntu as a class project. They used a tool called Cubic (Custom Ubuntu ISO Creator), which is a graphical interface wizard that allows the easy creation of customized live ISO images, based on any Ubuntu or Debian-based distribution. Their result, which they call UwUntu, has now had two releases. Background With UwUntu, the intention was to create a custom Linux distribution that was as “weaboo” as possible. Weaboo refers to a western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture, especially anime. In times past, the term weaboo was used as an insult but, as is the case with many of these terms, it has now been appropriated by the people it was supposed to insult and they use it to identify themselves. The developers bill UwUntu as “The Best WeaboOS”.
The developers wrote: “We really did this as a school project on our free time, cause we wanted to create an OS that was to our exact liking, but then we invested more and more time in the project like, built the website, released the OS on the internet just to see if people liked it, etc, and as it was a good name to play with, we were lucky enough to find people who liked it.” It is worth noting that there have been other endeavors in this same field, including Moebuntu, which is a package of modifications and customizations that can be made to stock Ubuntu to make it “moe-moe”, which is an affection for anime and manga characters. It results in Ubuntu with a very pink, anime-driven, theme. The first release of UwUntu was 21.05, “Mochi Mango”, which was based on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS using Ubuntu’s modified GNOME desktop. The second and current release is UwUntu 22.10, “Leo Dango”, out on 22 October, 2022, and is based on Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 LTS. In the time since then, there have been no more releases and it is not clear if there will be any more. The official website notes over 63,000 downloads, but of course that does not equate to the number of people actually using it.
The distribution is not covered on DistroWatch or Wikipedia, nor have there been any reviews, so I thought it might be worth a look. Getting UwUntu The official website directs you to three external sites to get the current UwUntu ISO file. These are all free hosting sites: MediaFire, Mega.nz, and Google Drive. Yes, Google Drive. Obviously this is one way to save money on hosting large ISO files and this one is 5.0 GB to download. I actually did download it via HTTPS from Google Drive, and that worked fine. Both MD5 and SHA256 sums are provided which allows a quick command-line check to confirm that the download is received intact. I did not install the ISO, but ran it from a USB drive equipped with Ventoy 1.0.96. UwUntu is not listed as being supported by Ventoy, but Ubuntu Budgie is and UwUntu 20.10 booted fine.
System requirements The recommended system requirements for UwUntu 22.10 are: 4GB or more of RAM 64-bit capable Intel and AMD processors UEFI PCs booting in CSM mode Modern Intel-based Apple Macs 60 GB of free hard drive space Internet access is helpful Trying out UwUntu Booting up UwUntu brings you to a pretty stock Ubuntu Budgie desktop, and a wallpaper with a dog on it. There is no immediate sign of anything Japanese, which was a bit of a surprise given its weaboo pretensions. Looking through the menus, and trying out what is there, shows a distribution with a bit of an emphasis on gaming and ebooks, which is not surprising. As a general-use Linux distribution, it works well and even includes a few settings improvements.
Settings Checking the list of UwUntu 22.10 alternate wallpapers does show some photographs of Japanese landscapes including Mount Fuji, plus some Japanese theater masks. When one forum participant asked why there was no actual anime artwork included, one of the developers indicated that there were copyright issues for the public releases. It did sound like the first private test versions had more weaboo content, though. A number of commenters did point out sources for copyright-free anime illustrations from AI and other sources, but these seem to not have been incorporated, at least in the two releases so far. Also included is a cat-themed wallpaper from the previous UwUntu release, and even a spoof of “Bliss”, the Microsoft XP wallpaper, which at least shows that the developers have a sense of humor. Of the 16 included wallpapers, three are UwUntu themes and 12 are Japanese themed, plus the Windows parody one. Compared to stock Ubuntu Budgie, UwUntu 22.10 also has an expanded range of 22 window color themes, with Vimix-dark-beryl, a dark theme, as the default. There are some nice light themes available too, like Vimix or Vimix-ruby. Also included are12 icon sets and four cursor styles, which adds up to a wide range of user choices.
Applications Some of the applications included with UwUntu 22.10 are: Archive Manager (File Roller) 3.42.0 archiver Calibre 5.37.0 ebook editor and viewer Celluloid 0.20 movie player Cheese 41.1 webcam application CUPS 2.4.1 printing system Discord 0.0.20 messaging voice and video client* Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 42.0 optical scanner Document Viewer (Evince) 42.1 PDF viewer Drawing 0.8.5 image editor Firefox 106.0 web browser** Gnome Calendar 41.2 desktop calendar Gnome Disks 42.0 disk manager Gnome Screenshot 41.0 screenshot tool Gnome Software 41.5 package management system gThumb 3.12.0 image viewer ImageMagick 6.9.11.60 image editor Kitty 0.21.2 terminal emulator LibreOffice 7.3.6 office suite Nemo 5.2.4 file manager PulseAudio 15.99.1 audio controller Rhythmbox 3.4.4 music player Spotify audio streaming client* Steam 1.0.0.75 gaming platform Text Editor (gedit) 41.0 text editor Tilix 1.9.4 terminal emulator VLC media player * indicates proprietary software ** supplied as a flatpak, so version depends on the upstream package manager There are a few unexpected packages here, including two proprietary ones, the Discord messaging voice and video client, and the Spotify audio streaming client. While practical, this will not thrill free software advocates.
Also notable is the free software Steam gaming platform package included by default, as this is one of the best ways to get gaming on Linux. It is worth adding that while the client itself is free software, most of the games available are proprietary. Unlike all the official flavors of Ubuntu, UwUntu 22.10 provides Firefox as a flatpak instead of as a snap package. In testing, it works well. UwUntu 22.10 includes the LibreOffice 7.3.6 office suite. Like the official Ubuntu flavors, it is supplied complete, except for the LibreOffice Base database program. It is probably the least-used part of LibreOffice and can be installed if needed.
Conclusions As packaged and publicly released, UwUntu 22.10 is a bit of a curiosity. What you get is a nice Budgie desktop distribution that works well and comes with a good selection of software. What it falls short on is its aim, as stated by one of the developers, “we wanted this distribution to be as weaboo as possible”. In that vein, all it offers are a dozen rather generic Japanese wallpapers. As Aristotle noted, “one swallow does not a summer make” and he could have added “a handful of Japanese wallpapers does not a weaboo Linux distribution make.” In the end, you are left with a quite serviceable desktop distribution, but it really does not offer much more than the stock version of Ubuntu Budgie already provides. One unanswered question is, will UwUntu continue? With only two releases, will there be a third one? Time will tell if there is a user base and developer commitment, or whether it was just a school project that did not survive graduation. External links Official website: https://uwuntuos.site/ Moebuntu: https://moebuntu.web.fc2.com/home_eng.html