Full Circle

REVIEW - LINUX LITE
you’ll get the “Welcome to Linux
Lite” pop-up screen, a rather
ingenious way of handling basic
system needs.
Unlike Mint’s welcome screen,
this one actually contains
information I found useful after
the first few boots (sorry, Mint,
but it did become repetitive until I
pulled the plug).
Inside this box you’ll find
headings for updating and
upgrading both the system and
software, plus there’s another
section for the installation of
“Lite” software to include Chrome,
Chromium, Tor, Dropbox, Kodi,
Skype, Teamviewer and Virtualbox.
This makes updating and
upgrading a simple one-click affair
instead of waiting for the system
to dump a 500MB surprise in your
lap at some future date.
mentioned above.
As for software installation, you
also find another neat program
minimally titled “Lite Software”.
Although the box itself seems
simplistic and somewhat crude by
design, it’s effective for its
intended purpose -- installing
roughly 1 5 to 20 of the most often
used or requested programs.
For other programs, there’s the
Synaptic Package Manager which,
in this case, is renamed
“Install/Remove Software” (but
when it comes up, the header
clearly states Synaptic).
The desktop is utilitarian Xfce
all the way. If you’re looking for
visual pizazz and gizmos galore,
you might prefer another distro.
It’s functional while not looking
ugly in the process.
For such a lightweight package,
LL does come with quite a few
standard programs such as:
• Firefox (with options to install
Chrome and Chromium).
• LibreOffice 5 (I mention the
number since other distros I’ve
tried have older versions) with
Evince as the PDF add-on.
• Thunderbird for email.
• GIMP and Image Viewer.
• xfburn for CD/DVD production,
Clementine and VLC for media
playback.
• The standard pot of accessories
such as calculators and screenshot
packages.
• Lite Tweaks, a program that
cleans the garbage out of your
system without having to rely on
somewhat questionable outside
programs that may do more
damage than good. If you’re
wondering, no, it’s not related to
Ubuntu Tweak.
• Systemback, a unique one or twoclick
backup that can create a live
version of your setup without
having to install anything else.
Not a bad selection for what
should be a light, limited distro.
Even more impressive is that
after adding a load of personal
program choices plus the built-in
offerings, my HDD is down just
7.1 GB.
Once you get everything loaded
to your liking, the system is not
only highly functional and stable,
it’s quick to perform also. In fact,
the only time I experienced a
slowdown was when I used
Systemback for a complete ISO
image (that did hijack my system
for roughly 1 5 minutes), but I
expected that.
As for the Lite software
programs, this must be partially
built in to the system because
installation was a whole lot easier
than downloading them
individually via Synaptic. I’d be
exaggerating if it took any more
than 5 minutes to download and
install all of those programs
That isn’t to state that’s in all
hunky-dory here, folks. There was
an odd failure to communicate
when I went to use the Lite
Software package after a couple
days of system usage. It developed
a tick in the software sources list
and gave me an update error
based upon the “trusty/main”
full circle magazine #1 08 45 contents ^