Excelixis is the awkwardly-renamed latest version of what was previously known as Workbench Linux. I liked that distro very much, so I was curious to see what (if any) improvements had been made.

Install:

Excelixis is built off of Xubuntu 8.04. I assume later versions will be based on 8.10. The installer is identical to that of all other Ubuntu flavors.

The first time I went through the installer, I got to the final confirmation screen and hit "Install." The desktop then spontaneously logged out and back in again. Normally I'd just dump the distro at this point, but I decided to try again. The second time through the installer worked. Not a great way to inspire confidence.

After staying at 94% for longer than I felt entirely comfortable, the installer finished and I rebooted. Everything seemed to be in order. I got a boilerplate, black and white boot prompt.

The GRUB menu showed "Ubuntu 8.04.1" as my boot option. Perhaps the devs need to do a bit more customizing.

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