For Pinguy, I tested the 32-bit version running with the fall-back version of Gnome 3.

There was no documentation, but that on the Ubuntu site would help. The live session is very slow and rather unstable: many things failed that worked perfectly after installation. The installer was the usual Ubuntu one. It offered to encrypt /home, but that caused the installer to lockup.

The screen is very cluttered: the Gnome panel at the top, Conky on the right, and two large docks at the left and bottom. Windows will not cover the bottom dock, leaving a very shallow screen if you have a laptop or a small monitor. If you can live without Docky and Conky, use System tools — Preferences — Start-up applications to stop them. The updates manager took 100% of the CPU (presumably there’d have been no problem if I’d had a dual core processor) and that was stopped by installing BUM and stopping the ‘unattended upgrades’ daemon.

There’s a lot of software: LibreOffice, Wxbanker, Firefox, Empathy, Gwibber, Thunderbird, Skype, Xchat, Mumble, Shotwell, Pinta, Openshot, DeVeDe, Clementine, VLC, Gnome-mplayer (not in the menu for some reason), XBMC, Wine, etc. Media codecs were installed and worked: Gnome-mplayer even coped with my ‘mp4 from hell’. I was also able to use my USB speakers, which so many Ubuntu derivatives can’t cope with.

Running from the CLI got minor warnings for Empathy, Gwibber, Thunderbird, and Openshot. The accounting program was of little use, as there is no help or documentation available. LibreOffice came with only an American dictionary. After searching the software centre in vain, I eventually discovered that I needed to run System tools — System settings — Language support. Firefox would not play Flash videos, although the plug-in was installed. I tried re-installing the plug-in and using different versions, but nothing worked. Luckily Chromium was in the repository and that worked perfectly.

In the endless supply Ubuntu derivatives, Pinguy is not as good as Mint or Solus, but it’s better than the others.