 Ubuntu just had a big release a couple of days ago, version 22.10, codenamed Kinetic Kudu. I've already taken a look at the flagship edition of Ubuntu with the GNOME desktop infirmary today. I'm going to take a look at six of their flavors, and the flavors I'm going to take a look at are Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Zootbuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Monte, and Ubuntu Unity. The first official flavor I want to take a look at is Kubuntu, Kubuntu 22.10. During the installation, I have to admit I was a little confused by the installer because I know Kubuntu has been talking about eventually moving away from the ubiquity installer to the Calamaris installer. And the installer actually had me confused because I thought maybe they had already made the switch because this installer does look like Calamaris, but not quite. So actually what I did was I fired up a terminal and I ran the exprop command inside the terminal to take a look at what exactly am I looking at here. By the way, is a X Windows Properties command. It will give you like the property name of that windows. It'll tell you exactly what a program is if for some reason you're confused about what it is. And in this case, the installer is in fact the ubiquity installer. Now, during the ubiquity installer, it's the standard kind of ubiquity install you would get with the flagship edition of Ubuntu. So you're offered minimal and normal installation options. Also, you have the ability to download updates and install proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs during the installation. Also, one thing to notice is unlike the flagship edition of Ubuntu, there is no advanced options button in the installer where you have the option if you want to to use ZFS for a file system. That is not available inside Kubuntu, unfortunately. With Kubuntu 22.10, a plasma whaling session is available for testing if you so choose, but do know that it is not officially supported. A whaling session can be started by selecting it at the login screen. But by default, Kubuntu 22.10 will use X11. Let's talk about some of the packages under the hood. So this is KDE Plasma version 5.25.5, KDE Frameworks 5.98, Qt version 5.15.6, and the kernel version is 5.19. All of these flavors of Ubuntu should be on the 5.19 kernel series, just like the flagship edition. And just like in mainline Ubuntu, Kubuntu has replaced pulse audio with pipe wire. Checking system resource usage, let me fire up a terminal. And this will be KDE's console with a K. Now, one thing to note is Htop is not installed out of the box on Kubuntu. Unfortunately, much like the flagship edition of Ubuntu, Kubuntu does not ship with Htop or with VIM installed out of the box. Two programs that I find kind of curious why any modern Linux distribution wouldn't just ship those out of the box. But I've installed Htop, and you can see KDE Plasma is a really lightweight desktop environment these days. I'm only using 627 megs of the six gigs of RAM that I gave this VM. And this is pretty much on a cold boot. I really haven't done anything in this virtual machine just yet. You can see CPU usage right now is next to nothing, which is not surprising. We were doing nothing that should be taking any CPU. Let's talk about the wallpaper. The default wallpaper is absolutely gorgeous. I love the default wallpaper. And if you go into the desktop settings for wallpaper, you can find the wallpaper pack is really quite stunning. All of these wallpapers, though, these are nothing new. These are just standard Plasma wallpapers that you've seen before. So there's really not much new here. But all of these are just fantastic, mostly abstract art wallpapers that I just think are some of the most beautiful wallpapers out there. Moving on to Lubuntu 22.10. Now, Lubuntu is actually using the Calamaris installer rather than the Ubiquiti installer. Once again, I've verified this by using XProp from the terminal XProp. You can clearly see that the class name for this window is Calamaris. That tells us that this is, in fact, the Calamaris installer. Now, because it's Calamaris rather than Ubiquiti, some of the choices that are in the Ubiquiti installer are not available in the Calamaris installer. For example, there's no option for whether you want to do a normal installation or a minimal installation. There's no toggle checkboxes for downloading updates during the installation or installing proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs during the installation. There's also no advanced button where when you click on it, you're offered ZFS as a file system, if that's your choice. So no ZFS here inside Lubuntu. Now, after the installation of Lubuntu has completed and you log into the LXQt desktop environment, you will notice not much has changed from this version of LXQt from the previous one. It's essentially the same desktop environment. The only real noticeable difference is some of the community-driven artworks, such as this excellent default wallpaper. If you want to change wallpaper, right-click on the desktop, go to Desktop Preferences, go to the Background tab, and then click on the Browse button, and then in this directory, you will find some excellent nature photography as well as some other abstract art. Many of the abstract art photos are backgrounds from previous versions of Lubuntu. Now, one interesting thing to point out with Lubuntu, compared to some of the other official flavors of Ubuntu, is pipe wire is not here. If I open a terminal and I do a where is pipe wire, you can see I don't get anything returned. Normally, if pipe wire was installed, we'd have pipe wire colon, and then it would give me the location to the binaries and libraries and man page for pipe wire, but pipe wire, again, is not installed. Now, if I make this terminal full screen, I do a uname dash R. You can see the kernel is 5.19. Again, that should be the same for all of these official flavors of Ubuntu. 5.19 is what all the 2210 flavors should be on. If I run htop, we can get system resource usage, and one thing to mention about Lubuntu is unlike all of the other official flavors of Ubuntu, Lubuntu is the only one that ships both htop and Vim installed out of the box. So I do want to congratulate the Lubuntu team on a, I would say, a more informed decision compared to some of the other distro maintainers in the Ubuntu family. Now, looking at system resource usage, let's look at the RAM usage. It's very lightweight, 495 megs of the six gigs of RAM that I gave this. So LXQ is not a hungry girl at all. She's actually quite slim, and this makes it a really nice choice for those of you that are running underpowered equipment or older equipment. Moving on to Zubuntu 22.10 with the XFCE desktop environment. Zubuntu uses the familiar Ubiquity installer because it uses the Ubiquity installer. Both the normal installation option and the minimal installation option are offered as well as the check boxes for downloading updates during the installation and installing those proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs is available as well. Also, we have the advanced button that offers ZFS as a file system, if you so choose. Moving on to the XFCE desktop environment. Not much has changed. The panel, the menu system, all looks the same as XFCE and past releases. Now, some of the applications themselves, the individual XFCE application, some of them have seen some tweaks and improvements. Lunar, which is the file manager for XFCE, now has a better file search utility. It includes a built-in recursive file search utility. Also, Mousepad, the text editor, now has a search history as well. If I hit Control Alt T inside Zubuntu that brings up a terminal and let me go ahead and make this full screen. And I'm gonna zoom in here. And if I do a where is pipe wire, you can see pipe wire is also not installed in Zubuntu. So the default audio server is still pulse audio. You name dash R. You can see our kernel is 5.19. Htop is not installed. Neither is VIM. Let me do a sudo apt install Htop. And checking system resource usage with Htop. You can see that the XFCE desktop environment is only using 562 megs of the six gigs of RAM I gave this VM. For wallpapers, let me right click on the desktop. Let's use desktop settings. And the wallpaper pack for Zubuntu is actually quite good. There's some excellent photographs as well as some really cool abstract art as well. I really like though, the default wallpaper here for Zubuntu 22.10. Ubuntu budget 22.10 features the familiar ubiquity installer because it uses ubiquity. We have the options for both a normal installation or a minimal installation if we prefer. Also, we have the toggle buttons for downloading updates during the installation or installing our proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs during the installation as well. We also have the advanced button that offers us ZFS for a file system if we so choose. Looking at the budget desktop environment, the budget desktop environment is gorgeous. I love everything about Ubuntu budget as far as the aesthetics. I love the default wallpaper. I like the time and date widget on the desktop. I love the translucent panel. And of course the menu system is a very traditional feeling kind of menu system that is easy to navigate. Of course the budget desktop environment is a GTK based desktop environment. They are using the GNOME 43 stack with Mudder 11. If I do control Alt T to bring up a terminal here inside of Ubuntu budget and I zoom in, let me make this window full screen. If I do a where is pipe wire. You will see pipe wire is installed. Pipe wire has now replaced pulse audio for everything audio related. New name dash R. Once again, our kernel version is 5.19. If I try to run htop, htop is installed out of the box inside Ubuntu budget. Thank you Ubuntu budget team. You guys get a gold star. You can see for RAM usage, Ubuntu budget is using 685 megs of RAM of the six gigs of RAM I gave this VM. CPU usage is also quite light. Actually we're using a little bit of CPU right now. I don't know if it's trying to do like a system update or it may be a package management thing where it's checking if there are any updates available but it's settling back down to about 5% CPU now. One thing I haven't done in the other flavors but I will do now in Ubuntu budget. If I do a snap list, you will see the snaps that are installed out of the box are pretty much the same on all the distributions. That's why I didn't do it. Firefox is the default browser on all these distributions. Firefox is installed as a snap and I know that causes some people some frustration but if you're one of those people that do not like Firefox as a snap, you can find a PPA that will install Firefox as a dead pack if you so prefer. One nice little tweak to the menu system here inside Budgie is we have this familiar kind of menu system where all the apps are grouped basically all together so you get a list of every single application and they're not broken down by category but now we have this little button here that if you toggle that on, that is a more traditional kind of menu system where apps can be broken down by category. If I hit super and search for desktop settings, the Budgie desktop settings is the name of the program. One of the things you will notice under style is under styling, you can set the preferred application style and you can see you have preferred dark, preferred light or the application preference. By default, it is preferred dark and what this does, it allows you to go ahead and set that dark or light style for all GNOME 42 and lib handy based applications. Moving on to Ubuntu Mate 22.10, Ubuntu Mate still uses the familiar Ubiquiti installer. The Ubiquiti installer also offers us the normal installation option or the minimal installation option. We also have the ability to download updates during the installation and install our proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs during the installation. Also, we have the advanced button that offers SZFS for a file system if we choose that. Now what has changed in Ubuntu Mate 22.10? Well, not much. From 22.04 to 22.10, not much has changed. This is a rather modest release of Ubuntu Mate. Everything is pretty much the same as it's always been and part of that is because the lead dev of Ubuntu Mate, Martin Wimpress, he has been working closely with the Debian team trying to bring the Ubuntu Mate desktop experience over to Debian Mate. And the reason he's working so hard to get Debian Mate straight is of course Debian being upstream of Ubuntu. If most of what is baked into Ubuntu Mate is already in Debian, it just makes things a little easier. It makes everybody's life a little easier. So most of the changes for this release of Ubuntu Mate are gonna be under the hood changes. I do apologize for this blinding white terminal. The Ubuntu Mate team really should default to a dark terminal color scheme, but bear with me, if I do a where is pipe wire, you can see that pipe wire has now replaced pulse audio for all your audio related stuff. If I do a unnamed dash R, you can see they're using 5.19 for the kernel and Htop is installed in Ubuntu Mate. Way to go, Ubuntu Mate team. The Mate desktop environment, she's only using 627 megs of the six gigs of RAM I gave this VM CPU usage is next to nothing. And for those of you that are a fan of aesthetics, the wallpaper pack in Ubuntu Mate may be the best wallpaper pack out of the bunch. They have some absolutely gorgeous Kudu related wallpapers. I mean, these things, I don't know who did the artwork for these, but these are absolutely stunning wallpapers. I may actually have to rip off some of these. I really quite like that one. I may leave that one as my default. And the final flavor I wanted to take a look at is Ubuntu Unity Edition 22.10. Ubuntu Unity uses the familiar Ubiquity installer because of that, once again, we have the normal installation option, the minimal installation option. We have the ability to download updates during the installation. We have the ability to download our proprietary drivers and multimedia codecs during the installation. We do have an advanced features button, but ZFS is not a listed option. Now Ubuntu Unity is a new member of the Ubuntu family, but it is now an official flavor of Ubuntu. Looking at the Unity desktop environment, I've got to say that they have made some really nice tweaks and improvements to the Unity desktop. One of the things I noticed in this version is this little icon in the panel. Now, if I click on it, you see switch theme. If I switch theme, it switches us from that default dark theme to a light theme. And if I click on it again, switch theme, now it switches us back to the dark theme. Also, switch accent color. We have a variety of accent colors. Let me go ahead and hit the super key and search for our files manager. So this, of course, is Nautilus. The accent color you can see is orange. We've got orange icons here. And if I switch accent color and go to purple, you can see we now have the purple accents for the icon set. If I switch to sage, we have a really kind of grayish green sage color here. There is Viridian. That's a little brighter. But I think more appropriate for our purple wallpaper would be to do something like magenta. Yeah, that's really nice there. I'm going to leave that. The Unity desktop environment is actually light and peppy. If I go and look at our installed applications, you can see the menu system actually works quite nicely. You can see the search is rather nice. Also, you can see we have our global menu here. If I make something full screen, we do have the global menu integration. Also, you can see that the window control buttons are on the left-hand side of our windows, even when it's not maximized. So that is something to be aware of if you are new to the Unity desktop environment. And the reason those windows controls are on the left-hand side of the windows is because everything happens on the left-hand side of Unity. It wouldn't make sense to also have stuff going on way over on the right-hand side. If I hit Control-Alt-T here inside Ubuntu Unity, let's go ahead and make this terminal emulator full screen. I'm going to zoom in. Let's check if Htop is installed. It is not. I will do a sudo apt install Htop. And someone should file a bug report with the Ubuntu Unity team, letting them know Htop is missing. And Htop. And you can see the Unity desktop is actually a little heavier than the other flavors we've taken a look at today. It is using right at a gig of RAM of the six gigs of RAM I gave this VM. It's using a little bit of CPU, not much. If I do a uname dash R, you can see the kernel. Once again, it's 5.19. If I do a snap list, you can see Firefox is installed as a snap. If I close the terminal and right-click on the desktop and change desktop background, you can see we have another very excellent wallpaper pack, including some really nice abstract art with the Kudu. Even though it's kind of a strange animal, an animal I had never heard of, I really am really impressed with the wallpapers that each official flavor of Ubuntu has come up with for this series. So there you have it. That was just a very quick and cursory look at six of the official flavors of Ubuntu. I do want to congratulate everybody involved with this Ubuntu release, both on the flagship edition of Ubuntu as well as these official flavors. I really am impressed with what some of these official flavors are doing, some of the community behind these distributions, some of what they are able to achieve. I think the official flavors, in many cases, are as good, if not better, than the actual flagship edition of Ubuntu, which is actually an incredible feat considering that, of course, the main edition of Ubuntu is corporate-backed, but I have been really, really impressed with what I'm seeing out of the official flavors here recently. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode and, of course, I'm talking about Gabe James Matt, Maxim Minut, Mitchell Paul West, while you bald homie, Alex, Armoredragon, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Diokai, George Lee, Marstrum, Nader, Yon, Alexander, Paul, Peace, Arch, and Vitor, Politech, Realities for Lesbert, Profit, Roland, Steven, Tools, Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons. Over on Patreon, without these guys, this episode you just watched would not have been possible. The show's also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right guys, peace.