Remastered Ubuntu Distros

There are a lot of distributions that have been based off Ubuntu and also, a number of remastered editions of Ubuntu. These remastered editions fall short of being a seperate distribution as new version is made only after a new Ubuntu version is released.
I have been trying a few of them to see which one of them gives the best eye candy, easy tweaking and the most importantly out-of-the-box functionality.

3 of the popular remastered editions were used .

1. Super Ubuntu 2008.11
2. Artistx 0.6
3. Ultimate Edition 2.0

Super Ubuntu 2008.11 has nice software collection which is just for gnome. It has the open office 3.0.1 updated office pack. I personally like this idea of only gnome or only kde remastering of ubuntu. It has got the right amount of software that is required for daily use. It the the lightest of the the three remastered editions. But sadly, it is one of the worst looking remastered editions of Ubuntu with basically no choice of wallpapers and themes. Also, codes were not installed(website claims DVD support), quicktime videos did not play on the apple website! Mannual installation required! Here’s the draback! Although, it seems upgrade to a newer edition fixes the problem(as claimed on the website) but I havent had the time to check that.

Artistx 0.6 , created using the remastersys software, has all the latest software installed . It looks nice as well. The splash screen looks cool and the wallpaper is also very nice. Sadly, it failed to play any apple quicktime video from the apple website, and divx live streaming from some movie website and also, it is somehow slower to boot than UE2.0 and Super Ubuntu. Artistx website says it has kde4.2 installed but surprisingly i found that it was installed with kde4.1 .I had to manually uprade it to 4.2 . That was a downer as well! In all, too much software is crammed into the distro. Most of them wont be used at all.

UE2.0 has a lot of themes and icon sets. But it mostly concentrates on darker themes and wallpapers. I personally prefer light or semi-dark themes and a lighter wallpaper.
I found the clear winner was Ultimate Edition 2.0. Although UE2.0 is a little old compared to the others and does not have open office 3.0 installed, still I am giving the verdict to UE2.0 because of its out-0f-the-box functionality . This is the most important aspect for an average user.It should just work without any extra installation is most users’ demands. All multimedia formats and files could be played without installing a single extra codec. And handware detection of this remastered edition is truely amazing. It was tested in 3 different machines of different make, one assembled desktop and two laptops. It has the right mix of good looks and functionality.

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