wattOS Microwatt Edition

This is the Microwatt edition of the energy-efficient and open source wattOS Linux operating system, a remaster of the latest stable Ubuntu release, designed from the ground up to be a lot more minimal than all other wattOS editions. It is built around the lightweight Openbox window manager.

Availability, supported platforms and boot options

 
wattOS Microwatt Edition is available for download as a single Live CD ISO image, which has been tagged only for the 32-bit (non-PAE) architecture, but it runs well on 64-bit hardware platforms. It can be deployed to either a blank CD disc or a USB flash drive of 1GB or higher capacity.

It features the same boot menu as the LXDE and MATE editions, allowing the user to start the live environment with default settings or in failsafe mode, boot an existing operating system from the first disk drive, as well as to run a memory diagnostic test.

Minimal and energy-efficient window manager

As mentioned, this special flavor of wattOS uses the minimal and energy-efficient Openbox window manager, which provides users with a single and transparent panel located on the bottom edge of the screen, as well as a system monitoring widget that makes it look modern and cool, despite the fact that is quite minimalistic.

The main menu can only be accessed by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop. It includes the qBittorrent torrent downloader, QupZilla web browser, Leafpad text editor, PCManFM file manager, Xarchiver archive manager, GPicView image viewer, PDF Viewer, XTerm terminal emulator, as well as Synaptic Package Manager for installing, removing or updating packages.

In addition, the user will able to easily install Adobe Flash Player, a music player, a CD/DVD burning software, a webcam viewer tool, a video player, a password manager, as well as printing support with a click of a button.

Bottom line

Summing up, the Microwatt edition of wattOS is by far the most minimal energy-efficient Linux distribution that uses the latest stable and reliable base of the award winning Debian GNU/Linux operating system and a smaller memory footprint.

What is new in this release:

• i3 Tiling Window Manager - 4.10.2
• Subset of applications listed above with scripts included to install afterwards if wanted
• Midori web browser (with flash support) - 0.4.3
• Terminal tools like htop

What is new in version 8:

• Debian based instead of Ubuntu
• Microwatt changed from PekWM to customized Openbox
• Microwatt includes Qupzilla browser
• Non-pae support continues for 32bit systems/processors
• Changed to iceweasel browser for all versions except Microwatt
• Broad inclusion of wireless chipset support and their related drivers
• All versions built from scratch on base Debian images
• New simple installer (with tips and tricks taken from LMDE and Point Linux and their excellent installer implementations)

What is new in version 7.5:

• The addition of the 32 and 64bit MATE-Desktop versions
• The addition of the Lubuntu software center for LXDE and MATE-Desktop versions
• This greatly eases adding new software for casual users
• Microwatt Changes from Qupzilla to Midori Browser
• Multiple bug fixes on all versions including better software update support
• Better language support
• Updates to all versions to the latest upstream app and kernel updates
• Focus on slimming things down and making things simpler
• Changed login manager back to slim from lightdm
• Removed abiword and gnumeric
• MATE-Desktop simple menus and core apps only - very gnome classic like setup