Xubuntu 16.04 AMD_64 LiveUSB

[utu]

.
Used Windows 7 to locate, select & download 1.2 Gb Xubuntu 16.04 AMD_64 LiveUSB iso.
Used Windows 7 and UUI, Universal USB Installer, to create a LiveUSB on an 8 Gb Fat-32-
.....formatted Class 10 SDHC, with ~3 Gb persistence.
Xubuntu iso contains 1161 Mb squashfs linux which includes inxi, apt, GParted,
.....Firefox 45.0, LibreOffice 5.1.2, libc6 2.23 and Linux kernel 4.4.0.
Xubuntu uses overlayfs to combine ro and rw material in ram. Uses systemd throughout.
Windows 7 uses legacy boot. UEFI boot option available, but not tested here.

Used external wifi to download Synaptic, after reloading Synaptic, disabled ubiquity
.....and brought-in ttf-mscorefonts and b43-fwcutter & installer. Upgraded Firefox
.....from 45.0 to 47.0 to get away from Flash. Removed external wifi.
Set & reset router password as needed. Re-arranged favorites on Xfce whisker menu.
Set desktop time format and location to %l:%M %P and America/New_York respectively.
Brought-in .bash_aliases, ChezHoye bookmark material & Hiroshige print.
Adjusted Firefox browser homepage to ChezHoye, adjusted font sizes & deleted underlines.
Set desktop background to Hiroshige print & adjusted vertical gradient background.
Used Mouse & Touchpad gui to disable touchpad because of interference with typing.
Initially used ~ 400 Mb of persistence with upgrade, downloads & tweaks.

85 seconds to browser on-line; 14 seconds to shut-down.
By default, no ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X.
dmesg notes 'scanning for low-memory corruption once/minute; at least during boot; also
.....declares usb corrupted by improper shutdown, needing fsck & warns about ACPI bug.
md5sums for grub.cfg & loopback.cfg fail; 310 other md5sums are OK.

Summary of Xubuntu, as a LiveUSB:
Small footprint iso, but somewhat slow to load & shut-down.
Ubuntu paradigm live usb: uses squashfs for basic OS & overlayfs to provide persistence.
Automatically recognized all my Dell laptop hardware, including; keyboard, display, audio,
.....video, mice, wifi, clock, ram, cpu & all storage media.
Accommodates Broadcom wifi; may be slightly less sensitive than some other linuxes.
Very responsive, attractive, minimal-but-adequate Xfce desktop with essential apps,
.....plus ready access to other apps if needed.
Clever, elegant whisker menu; Firefox Oracle Flash replaced with Cisco H264.

Xubuntu 16.04 AMD_64 has a lot to offer as a LiveUSB in a small package.
.....A good substitute for a missing 'CD-size' Knoppix, IMO.

[philo]

Some people who claim to know a lot about the Ubuntu family beg to disagree, vide:


http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-xerus.html

[utu]

.
Dedoimedo has changed his mind on Xubuntu.
He has an attractive review of Xubuntu 16.10 at
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/x...kkety-yak.html
His reviews are attractive and cover a lot of territory, but without
much depth or specificity, IMO.

Having used Xubuntu 16.10 exclusively for a few months, here's how I would
review it in comparison to current Knoppixes.

Xubuntu is a Ubuntu-derived Linux which uses Xfce4 for a desktop.
An Xubuntu iso may be used to create a Live USB with persistence functionally
similar to that which was provided by earlier in CD-size Knoppix isos,
and in a number of ways offers some improvements. The dissimilarities are few,
but potentially significant, notably:

1. Xubuntu's Xfce4 desktop is similar to Knoppix's LXDE, but has some neat
additional GUI applets unavailable with LXDE, including whisker menu, a better
touch-pad manager, a start-up manager, and a better CPU monitor.

2. Xubuntu includes a popular assortment of services and applicatons which
would not be possible with a CD-size iso, by ignoring CD-size as a limitation
in the current era of relatively inexpensive USB read-write media. For example,
a compressed LibreOffice accounts for ~420 Mb of Xubuntu's 1.3 Gb iso.

3. Xubuntu lacks the inclusion of the enormous catalog of included Linux
applications which a DVD-size Knoppix iso might provide, but these missing apps
may easily be added, if needed, to a working Xubuntu installation with adequate
storage capability.

4. Xubuntu uses systemd rather than SysV-init but does this quite tolerably
while maintaining boot and shutdown times similar to Knoppix. In so doing,
this allows some experience to be gained using systemd, rather than avoiding it.

5. Xubuntu's base uses a single version of Debian's base, rather than a unique
mixture of experimental and stable versions. This might lessen potential
program upgrading difficulties inherent in Knoppix's mixed version usage.

6. Xubuntu uses squash files rather than cloops to capture condensed read-only
images of filesystems. Klaus K is the designated maintainer of the Linux cloop
package and he feels there are good reasons to prefer cloops over squash files.
I’m not competent to argue against cloops, but squash files do seem to be more
commonly used than cloops.

And one important similarity in common with Knoppix:

7. Xubuntu provides a relatively late proprietary 64-bit Broadcom wifi driver
which performs very well with high speed broadband, as does Knoppix 7.7. This
driver provides about twice the broadband throughput speed of earlier 32-bit
wl and b43 wifi drivers.