It’s no secret that people do not like Snap packages, like Flatpak packages, they can be useful, but mostly fill up a lean system with bloat and ignore system settings. Linux Mint is the most well known non-snap version of Ubuntu. It comes with its own flagship desktop environment to boot. However, today we want to compare apples with apples, so we are going to take three non-snap Ubuntu derivatives and run them all with XFCE. We will look at what comes with each and how they perform with the same resources. Before we plop it onto metal, it may be a good idea to see how they perform in a virtual environment. We will assign 3 CPU’s and 8Gb of memory to each. First up is Linux Lite 7.0. Booting: The startup was reasonable, with a pleasant tinkling of sound sprinkled in. The top ten speed hogs are as follows: Twelve and a half seconds for networking being the longest, followed by zfs-load-module at two and a half seconds and lightdm at one and a half. Overall, decent, with a lot of services you will probably remove, depending on your system set up. To confirm, we did a restart and got almost the same results, except this time Plymouth-quit-wait was not in the top 10 and systemd-udev-settle replaced it at almost 1 second. We are greeted with a Linux Lite Welcome window with various tasks pinned.
Ce n'est pas un secret que les gens n'aiment pas les paquets Snap ; comme les paquets Flatpak, ils peuvent être utiles, mais, pour la plupart, ils gonflent un système mince et ignorent les paramètres système. Linux Mint est la version d'Ubuntu sans Snap la plus connue. De plus, elle est livrée avec son propre environnement de bureau principal. Cependant, aujourd'hui, nous voulons comparer des pommes avec des pommes et nous allonos prendre trois dérivés sans snap d'Ubuntu et les exécuter avec XFCE. Nous allos voir ce qui est livré avec chacune et leurs performances avec les mêmes ressources. Avant de les mettre sur un vrai ordi, ce sera sans doute une bonne idée d'évaluer leur performance dans un environnement virtuel. Nous allons donné 3 processeurs et 8 Go de mémoire à chacun de ces dérivés.
En premier lieu, nous avons Linx Lite 7.0.
Démarrage :
Le démarrage était raisonable avec des petits tintements agréables. Les dix premiers utilisateurs de temps sont les suivants :
Douze secondes et demie pour le réseau étant le plus long, suivi de zfs-load-module à deux secones et demie et lightdm à 1 et demie. Globalement décent, avec beaucoup de services que vous enleverez probablement, selon la configuration de votre système. En confirmation nous avons fait un redémarrage avec les mêmes résultats, ou presque, sauf que, cette fois-ci Plymouth-quit-wait n'était pas dans le top 10 et systemd-udev-settle l'a remplacé avec presqu'une seconde. Une fenêtre d'Accueil de Linux Light s'affiche offrant tâches diverses.
Htop tells us that the resting memory is 743 Mb, which is reasonable for XFCE.
Look and feel:
By default, the distribution ships with Materia as the style and Papyrus Adapta as the default icon set. Though the distribution is Ubuntu-based, the default font is Roboto. The terminal is the standard XFCE terminal with bash, and the prompt has been pimped out with a powerline-style look. There is no “development” or “games category in the default menu and no applications installed that could be considered such. The layout of the menu is category left and contents right, with the logout and switch user icons at the bottom.(quite small) We have one panel running across the bottom with sensible icons and placing. The panel is still confused as in the previous version, placing the window bars representing windows down in alphabetical order, instead of the order opened. The desktop comes with a few desktop icons. The default mouse theme was boring adwaitha, and it ships with another similar theme.
Applications:
The office package is LibreOffice with all the applications installed as well as all the languages. The default browser is Chrome, not Chromium and the default file manager is Thunar. It comes standard with a paint program, that you seldom see and all the “Lite” applications. One of these is the “Lite Software”, that allows you to install popular software quickly. Unlike version 6, it does not offer the Snap version of Firefox. This is also where you install the “restricted-extras” package, should one require it. This is handy for newbies, who may not have their script ready for first install. The Lite-widget is not on by default as in previous versions and you can enable it separately. Linux Lite, curiously still ships with a CD/DVD burning application. There is also a default HiDPi setting application that ships with the distribution, for those with screens larger than 1920×1080. (this is separate from the “scale” in the display settings). The update manager is simple and functional.
Overall:
The distribution does not favour any package type over another, it does not ship with Flatpak instead of Snap and you are left to do your own thing. (this is the main reason Linux Lite is usually my daily driver) After about an hour of usage, we closed all the applications and ran htop again, to be pleasantly surprised by 661Mb in use. Out of the box it is a good experience backed up by a slew of “Lite” applications unique to this distribution.
Second was Linux Mint 21.3.
Booting:
The start up was snappy and there was no sound. Linux Mint ships with a slightly older kernel, so here things may not be 100% on par. However, it does not suffer the penalties you see in other distributions when booting.
All the wait states are below one second. Multiple boots never saw any of these over one second. Once logged in, we are greeted with the Linux Mint Welcome screen.
Htop tells us that the resting memory is 681 Mb, which is reasonable for XFCE.
Look and feel:
The one thing that struck me about Mint XFCE was how similar it looked to Mint Cinnamon. The menu icons were well chosen, as they fill the menu bar nicely and are not too small. Little attention to detail is what makes Linux Mint so popular. There is no “development” or “games category in the default menu and no applications installed that could be considered such. The layout of the menu is category left and contents right, with the logout and switch user buttons in line with the user name and similarly sized. By default, the distribution ships with Mint-Y-Aqua as the style and Mint-Y-sand as the default icon set. The default font is Ubuntu. This all comes together nicely for a good out-of-the-box experience. The default terminal is XFCE terminal with green colouring and comes with bash as standard. Though the terminal is easy to customize, I would have liked to see a bit of effort put in here too. There are no icons on the desktop. The mouse theme was stylish bibata.
Applications:
The office package is LibreOffice with all the applications installed as well as all the languages. I would like there to be an application to remove all the other languages, or not install them once you have chosen the default. The default browser is Firefox and the default file manager is Thunar. It comes standard with a TV application called “Hypnotix” and other stand-out applications are compiz-manager, warpinator and redshift that you do not see as default on other distributions. Other than the Mint Welcome application, there are no specific Mint applications. Linux Mint does ship with mintinstall as its default software manager. One of the weird choices for Linux Mint was that it does not ship with htop. The default text editor is Xed. For people with bigger screens, they have to be content with the scaling of the display settings.
Overall:
The distribution does not favour any package type over another, but it does ship with Flatpak instead of Snap and there is no choice other than Flatpak for some applications in the software center. After about an hour of usage, we closed all the applications and ran htop again, to find 718 Mb in use. Linux Mint looks gorgeous as always, just being let down by a bland terminal.
Finally we looked at Asmi Linux.
Booting:
The startup is fast and there is no sound. There are no real, speed hogs:
Restarting a few times, the zfs-load-module kept being between one and two seconds. Nothing else over one second. As you can see, this was the only distribution I did not need to install the virtualbox-guest-addons. There is no welcome screen, but this distribution is not aimed at newbies.
Look and feel:
By default, the distribution ships with Yaru-blue-dark as the style and Telabudgie-dark as the default icon set. The default font is Ubuntu. The terminal is the standard XFCE terminal with bash, and the prompt has been pimped out. (as well as a few other surprises!) The distribution also ships with fish as an alternative. (you will find many alternatives in this distribution) There is no “games' ' category in the default menu and no applications installed that could be considered such. There is a “Development” category, with Geany and Meld installed and Geany has been pimped for you. The layout of the menu is category left and contents right, with the logout and switch user icons at the top, in line with the username. (same size as the font) We have one dock rather than a panel running across the left with a more standard Ubuntu look and feel. The time applet is at the top and not the bottom. There is no “show desktop” icon or space by default. There is a asmi-indicator icon that allows for more actions. The icons for opened applications are placed sanely, as you open the applications, rather than alphabetical as in the previous distributions. The desktop comes with a “home” icon. The default mouse theme was breeze light and not the standard pointer.
Applications:
The office package is LibreOffice with all the applications installed as well as all the languages. The default browser is Firefox and the default file manager is Thunar and they put effort in configuring it so that it is transparent whilst dragging. It comes with Nemo as an alternative. (you will find many of the applications come with alternatives) There is a distribution-specific application, named asmi settings. This allows you to change your layout, ala Zorin OS, set default browsers and turn Flatpak and Snap on or off as well as wine. The distribution ships with CherryTree installed. You have a screen recorder, vokoscreen and uget installed by default. We have already mentioned that Geany was set up correctly and that you can use it as both a text editor and an IDE. There are some KDE applications like Kdiskmark and Kvantum manager in the mix as well. It ships with version 0.5.0 of mission center as well. There is no software centre, but synaptic is included. Variety is also included as standard, so your wallpaper changes often.
Overall:
The distribution favours Appimage over Flatpak and Snap and comes with an Appimage launcher built in. As mentioned before, you have the option to enable the others. After about an hour of usage, we closed all the applications and ran htop again, to find 848 Mb in use, this is to be expected running KDE and Gnome applications and some QT applications too.
The more “traditional” windows layout.
While they all pursue their own goals, they are similar in that they offer a Snap-free version of Ubuntu that is still compatible with all the myriad of software that ship with Ubuntu only binaries. I will now test these on metal and I will add anything here if there are any issues.
*they performed the same as they did in the virtual machine