Tech thoughts: Xubuntu 11.10 changes

Since XFCE and Xubuntu seem to be popular subjects on this blog (from the number of hits they’ve received), here’s another post on the desktop environment/distro.

Next month (October 13) sees the release of Xubuntu 11.10 (along with the other Ubuntu-family variants’ newest versions). So far, there’s a beta of the final release available (not meant for use by anyone but developers, of course). It looks like a lot of the changes are under the hood; the most noteworthy ones from an end-user’s standpoint I can find are:

• gThumb being added (and possibly replacing GIMP?) as part of the default installation. gThumb was a long-used Ubuntu program for handling photographs, until it was replaced several versions ago by F-Spot (and F-Spot more recently replaced by Shotwell). I did like gThumb at the time, so will be interesting to see how it’s held up against newer software like Shotwell.
• Leafpad is replacing mousepad as a default text editor, since leafpad’s being more frequently maintained. I’ll still probably stick with installing gedit for a few extra features, however.

Will watch out for what else may be in store as October 13 approaches!