Asturix is another Ubuntu derivative, but if Mint is ‘Ubuntu done properly’, this is ‘Ubuntu done badly’.

The most conspicuous alteration is the On desktop. This takes the current trends in Unity and Gnome3 to their logical conclusion: the screen is covered with launcher icons and there’s no other way to start a program. Unfortunately, it does not match the size of the icons to the size of the screen, so nothing beyond LibreOffice was visible on mine. To launch a terminal, I had to type at least ‘te’ into a search box: that ensured that only icons with names including those letters showed, so I could then click on the correct one.

The software provided (which included Chromium, LibreOffice, GIMP, Clementine, and VLC) all worked well, and media codecs were installed.

One thing that did not work was the Ubuntu Software Centre: I could only install programs with apt-get. I installed jobs-admin to configure the default services, but it didn’t work. There was no support for workspaces, surely one of Linux’s best features. The only configuration tools provided are for installing printer or video drivers, and setting the language and repositories. You cannot alter the desktop, configure font rendering, or create keyboard shortcuts, for example.

After testing the live CD, I tried installation. The installer is the standard Ubuntu one and, as has happened to me occasionally in the past, it hung. After 45 minutes I shut it down and found that everything seemed to be present except Grub.